Kashbox Coach Note: Corporate Coaching
If you have friends at work, you most likely enjoy your job more. But did you know that you make better decisions, are more engaged in your work, and are more committed and productive?
Making friends at work is more important than we give credit to. Research shows that workplace friendships are one of the strongest predictors of productivity. Psychologist Ron Friedman points out in his book The Best Place To Work that managers don’t often recognize the importance of workplace friendships.
“It’s easy to confuse the concept of friends at the office with the notion of fooling around,” Friedman explains. Close friendships are perceived as a source of gossip, favoritism, and distraction. But that’s the wrong way to think about what happens when working with friends.”
Meaningful connections are vital to our psychological and physical well-being. Performing at our best is impossible unless we feel connected to others.
But making friends at work isn’t always easy. Work relationships can be complicated by notions of hierarchy and perceived utilitarian motives and efforts to befriend someone can feel forced.
Meeting another person for the first time is a defining moment in how that relationship will develop. Neurologically, the human brain instantly picks up clues as to whether a person is a friend or foe.
We select which coworker relationships to cultivate. Friendships at work are different from those in other contexts. The organization’s culture most likely has unspoken rules about appropriate social contacts.
Three Types of Friendships
Aristotle described three kinds of friends that meet different purposes.
- Friendships based on utility: people connect and maintain relationships based on mutual benefits.
- Friendships based on pleasure: The relationship is based on mutual enjoyment and emotional rapport.
- Friendships based on good: People connect and support one another based on shared goals and values. This third type of friendship combines elements of utility and pleasure.
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The Golden Rule of Friendship
According to author Jack Schafer, Ph.D., in his book The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agents Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over, many of us make friends by using this unspoken rule:
The Golden Rule of Friendship: if you want people to like you, make them feel good about themselves.
The Golden Rule of Friendship is the key to all successful relationships, whether short, medium, or long. This vital skill sounds easy but may require practice.
People gravitate toward individuals who make them happy and tend to avoid people who bring them discomfort. This seems so obvious that we assume we always act accordingly, but we don’t. What gets in the way is our own ego.
At our core, we see ourselves as important and worthy of attention. We like to impress others. However, to appear friendly and attractive to others, we must forgo our ego and pay attention to the other person and their needs and circumstances.
Other people will like you when you make them the center of attention. In our busy work days, we focus on what we want and need, so we don’t pay enough attention to what others want.
Ironically, others will be eager to fulfill your wants and needs if they like you.
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Friends and Self-Disclosure
For two people to connect deeply, talking shop is not enough. Both people need to share personal details about themselves. As the relationship grows, the level of self-disclosure needs to grow.
When researchers from Washington State University interviewed coworkers about how they became friends, they discovered a pattern of self-disclosure that included sharing problems from one’s personal, home, and work life.
Sharing emotionally sensitive information can lead to awkward situations in a competitive work environment. In an article in Business Insider, How to Make Friends at Work (January 2016), author Rachel Gillett suggests an eight-step process for self-disclosure.
Here’s how to open the right way in the workplace:
- Start on a positive note: While sharing personal stories helps strengthen a relationship, starting with a foundation of positive experiences before divulging more sensitive information is best. Your first few conversations with a colleague are crucial. Everyone pays attention to first impressions, so your early interactions should show warmth and skill to divulge personal sensitivities.
- Don’t rush the process: You do not want to rush into self-disclosure. By starting small, sharing incrementally, and slowly moving towards divulging more emotionally sensitive information, you become more confident that your sharing is mutual.
- Keep interactions positive: As a general rule of thumb, for every negative discussion you have, there should be five positive discussions. This offsets whining and prevents conversations from becoming gripe sessions.
- Look for similarities: Similarity is a basic building block of friendship. Find subjects of interest you have in common with your colleagues, whether they be sports, Netflix series, children, or hobbies.
- Find areas of common struggle. Conversations can also center on collaborative assignments where you and your colleague need one another to succeed.
- Open up to non-work topics: The more people talk about non-work topics, the more likely they are to be friends. Rather than always discussing your boss or impossible deadlines, consider discussing your weekend plans, family activities, or your newest hobby.
- Share outside of work: Limit the more private aspects of your friendship to off-work hours. Be inclusively friendly with everyone in the office while at work.
- Evaluate the friendship together: Discuss your friendship, especially concerning any boundaries that might be important to either of you at work.
Do you have friends at work? If you’d like to deepen friendships, try these suggestions.
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I help people discover their potential, expand and develop the skills and attitudes necessary to achieve a higher degree of personal and professional success and create a plan that enables them to balance the profit motives of their business with the personal motives of their lives.
