I’m glad that so many women are out there starting their own businesses and filling niches successfully. I hope that one day I can do the same.

A couple of thoughts come to mind:

Set a time to meet with her privately, to talk about the issue. If it’s difficult to have a confidential conversation in the office, you might want to ask her to meet you elsewhere, though I would avoid “doing lunch” as it might confuse matters by implying it’s a social date. Set out your concerns as directly as you can, and be sure to lay out the business case.

She *is* going through a very difficult time, so rather than stating things in a personal way (e.g. “I find it annoying…”), keep things professional and explain to her that you are concerned that it’s affecting productivity in the office. You may want to ask her to consider that as a senior employee (I’m assuming by “Employee #1″ you mean she’s the first person you hired), you look to her to set an example for other staff, and that you need her to try and keep the personal conversation to a minimum.

It can be very effective to simply state the problem, and then ask your employees to help you solve it. You might say something like, “I wanted to talk to you about the stuff that’s going on in your personal life, because I’m concerned that your stress levels are affecting your work. I know this is a really hard time for you and I want to support you in any way I can as your employer, but I also need to balance that with the business needs, including making sure that we have clear boundaries in the office with respect to personal conversation. I have some ideas about how to resolve this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts, too.”

In my experience, good employees know there’s a problem as well, and are usually relieved to hear it stated in the open as a challenge to solve together.

A couple of other thoughts…

1) If you are indeed friends outside of work hours, you might suggest making a regular dinner or coffee date after work, to give her a chance to vent in an appropriate venue.

2) I might also suggest she take some time off, to deal with her breakup. You can decide whether this would be paid or unpaid time, but in my opinion, you could quite possibly justify a couple of paid days’ leave if it’s going to improve you and your other employee’s efficiency levels. In any case, you could ask her whether she needs time off to deal with it and see how she feels; it may be that when you suggest it, she’ll recognize the gravity of the situation.

3) Since it sounds like you two are quite close, use your knowledge of her personality to help figure out her motivations. To give you a personal example of what I mean, I’ll tell you a story that recently took place in our office. My maternal grandmother passed away a few weeks ago, on the last day of a week-long vacation I had taken. Because I’d been off work for a week, I went into the office the next day and buried myself in work. A day or two later, though, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with grief while I was in the middle of a meeting with my business partner, and she gently suggested I take the rest of the day off. I resisted, telling her, “I just need to get this out of my system, but I’ll feel better if I can do something productive.” She tried two or three times to send me home, and each time I got more stubborn about staying. Finally, she sighed and said, “Lauren, I’m going to feel really bad if you don’t go home right now. You lost your grandma and it’s a big deal and you need to go home.” A smile broke across my face because I realized she’d played her trump card: She knew I’d only look after myself if I thought it was doing someone else good. So I sent off a couple of emails to clients letting them know I’d be responding to them in the morning, and went home to grieve privately.

I tell this story because when I was in that head space of being emotionally overwhelmed, I was consumed with the idea that I had a duty to fill at work and that looking after my personal needs was secondary. But I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that the presence of an emotionally overwhelmed person in the office is very disruptive. Emira found a way to send me home firmly without making me feel badly about it. If you can discern the thing that will give your employee permission to look after herself on her own time and take it out of the office, the problem may just take care of itself.

I hope this is helpful. If you have other thoughts, please post them.

Congratulations on your success — I hope your business continues to prosper!

And thanks for buying the book.

Problem:Employee #1/ we both have a lot to share,kids at the same school etc ….but employee is going through a tough ,marriage break up situation..bending my ear way too much during work time . I have kindly, with humor (and occasionally by snapping ) asked her not to talk to me about personal stuff during work time but it just does not sink in . My dilemma is that I really feel for her and her kids and my husband and I try to assist her by giving her playdate breaks etc..she has proven through her work to be smart, efficient, capable and trustworthy - therin lies the dilemma !!! anyone else have this experience ? I don’t want to be thinking of her issues all the time, I want to get on with the joy of small business with efficient and happy employees.I would love to hear responses from employeres and employees alike.