The title sounds a little harsh.

Maybe it is.

But I learned a long time ago that there is a difference between building a strong team and pretending the people who work for you are your family.

My first tour in Somalia was eye-opening, to say the least.

How I ended up there is an entirely different story—and one I will certainly tell another day. This story is about false promises, unnecessary pressure, and what happens when we confuse professional relationships with personal ones.

I arrived in Mogadishu and met the Country Manager on my first day. I liked him immediately. He was a good guy, personable and easy to talk to. His management style was very much about being everyone's pal. He surrounded himself with people he considered friends and believed his friends wouldn't let him down.

There was just one problem with that philosophy.

Friends sometimes let you down too.

But that's another story.

After meeting his second-in-command and several of the senior people, we started making the rounds to meet the support staff.

Our first stop was Security.

That seemed like a particularly good place to start.

When I had stepped off the plane in Mogadishu the night before, I had been issued a Kevlar vest and a helmet. This was not exactly standard equipment in most kitchens where I'd worked.

I'm a cook.

I'm not a soldier.

So meeting the man responsible for keeping us alive seemed like an excellent idea.

And this guy looked the part.

He was a brute of a man who radiated a very clear message: Don't mess with me.

Exactly what you want in the person running security in a place like Mogadishu.

We talked for a while, and eventually he began explaining the culture of the operation.

“We're one big happy family here.”

I stopped him.

“Family?”

“YES!” he answered enthusiastically.

Now, I have always been a little suspicious when I walk into an operation and immediately hear people describing themselves as a family. Sometimes it's genuine affection. Sometimes it's management trying to manufacture loyalty. And sometimes it's simply a convenient way of avoiding the uncomfortable distinction between friendship and accountability.

So, being the smart aleck that I occasionally am, I looked at this enormous security man and calmly asked:

“Okay. Which one of my brothers is taking a bullet for me? Because I'm just the cook.”