Most recognize the importance of separating business and personal. Just because someone is tough to work with doesn’t mean they don’t make an excellent person to hang with after hours. Same goes for vendors or clients or anyone else. It’s important to focus on the context that we are dealing with someone in.
It’s that context that matters because over time when we deal with someone long enough we eventually deal with them in lots of contexts. The vendor becomes a friend, confidant, and adviser above their supplier role. This makes it difficult when it’s time to renegotiate the vendor side. How do you separate the rest? What happens if the vendor can’t separate?
There’s no good solution. But it’s important to remain honest and keep everything above the table. It’s the honesty that will win overtime as everyone involved uses that as the anchor point for the correct context. This is why there is no business and personal – it’s done in the name of business by people. We’re all flawed and going to have some bad times. The key is coming out of it still standing tall.