We can agree that having friends at work helps us stay engaged, productive and satisfied with what we do all day.  It’s so important that the most commonly used employee engagement survey asks respondents to weigh in on having a best friend at work.  We discover new opportunities, get valuable – often unfiltered feedback – and grow because of our true connections on the job. Friendships at work build culture, lead to great collaboration and innovation, and fun!

And yet… friendship at work can be complicated. We explore this in greater detail in our latest episode.

Eric leads the exploration of how shared accountability can be fuel for friendship at work, and also a source of potential tension.  Whether we have a manager/employee relationship or are both accountable for a piece of work we’ve all been in situations where conscious creation of ground rules and conversation about ‘how we’re going to do this’ can help protect the relationships with the people we care about in the office.

Nayla wonders how information and shared experience can be the building blocks of friendship, but also risky terrain when the impulse to share news with a friend can be costly down the road.   We talk about how self-awareness and self-regulation can help us make decisions that are in line with the friend we want to be at work – taking care, anticipating the impact of our actions, and doing right by those we call our friends.

In line with our philosophy, we think friendship at work is a great way to explore the inside job.  Acknowledging that we’ve all made missteps we encourage our listeners to really define the kind of workplace friend they want to be, the kind of friendship they want to have, and to take deliberate action in that direction.

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Resources we mention in this episode:

• Gallup Polls and the ‘best friend at work’ question

• Create a User’s Manual to help protect your workplace friendships

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