Co-Workers As Friends?
Artwork by Mel Kadel
Friends at work and friends outside of work hold unique characteristics that often do not overlap and at times, shouldn’t.
Avoiding giving details about your personal life helps keep co-worker friends in the professional versus personal sphere (See “Quieting Steamy Liaisons”).
If you must ask for advice on personal rather than professional topics from them, make sure you are prepared to open yourself up to their criticism. Suddenly, instead of being Level-Headed Sandy at work, you become Doubting, Unsure of Herself Sandy at work. Once the line is crossed, heading back to the professional side can be touchy. While we’d like to think we can remain objective about a person professionally, sometimes the personal anecdotes we know about that person can cloud that judgement.
Note that you’re not under obligation to be friends with co-workers based simply on the fact that you work with them and see them every day. Friendships at the office, like friends outside the office, take time to build, and the status isn’t reserved for everyone. How close you get to your co-workers depends on your preference. If you’d like to single out one or two people to see outside the office or rely on during work hours as a friend, then by all means. And, if you prefer not to let any of your co-workers see your personal side, then fine.
You don’t have to be a positive, all-encouraging friend-making-machine to everyone on your floor. That’s the relief in the work world. Business is business. Personal is personal.
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| Design © 2008
May 18th, 2009 at 1:07 PM
I disagree. In a research effort to find what makes the most productive workplaces, Gallup studied 80,000 managers and found 12 elements that the best managers did differently than everyone else. One of those elements is that their team members strongly agreed that they had a “best friend at work.” Human beings are social animals, and work is a social institution. Long-term relationships are often formed at work — networking relationships, friendships, even marriages. In fact, if you did not meet your spouse in college, chances are you met him or her at work. The evolution of quality relationships is very normal and an important part of a healthy workplace. In the best workplaces, employers recognize that people want to forge quality relationships with their coworkers, and that company allegiance can be built from such relationships. I have a best friend at work. I call her when I have 2 hours of work to do and 45 minutes to do it, and she is there for me because of our relationship. We share what we are doing with each other so we can leverage new ideas with our respective clients. I call her when I am frustrated and she talks me off the cliff! I love talking to her about my work because she gets it more than my other friends and can help me solve issues. Because of her, I am more productive, more inovative, have more laughs, and I’m more excited to come to work every day.