Have you ever wondered how many of the people in your workplace are friends and how many just colleagues and work buddies? Let me borrow a definition of “friend” from Merriam-Webster “a person who has a strong liking for and trust in another <really close friends who like to do everything together and are always sharing secrets>” That is a tall order and I guess you won’t find many of these in the workplace, but you still have many people around you that you enjoy working with. So what is it that makes most of your colleagues pretty close to being friends (at least in a healthy organization)?

Proximity

Obvious one. You spend eight to ten hours a day with these people in a confined space. You talk and whether you want or not you share a lot from your life and you learn about theirs. It is natural and if you are in environment where this doesn’t happen chances are you are not particularly happy and won’t stay for long.

Common professional purpose

You and the team around you hopefully share the same professional purpose and goals. There is a project to be delivered, product developed, number to hit. You share the success and failure. Chances are you talk about work related stuff even when you are not required to, at lunch, or when taking a ride on the same bus.

Similar educational background

Especially if you work in the same department or in similar roles you most likely have similar educational background. This helps to have the same understanding of the things around you, the same understanding of meaning of things and to certain extent even similar interests.

Similar life values

Even when it comes to life values chances there will have at least some similarities with your colleagues. At the end the values are based on your cultural background, upbringing, education, and influenced by the environment and people around you. And yes, there will be a value or two that you won’t share with your work buddies as at the end each of us is unique.

You didn’t pick your colleagues

So far so good and we are really close on the road to friendship however there is one thing that stands in the way. You pick your friends but you usually don’t pick your colleagues. And even when you have the power to pick your colleagues (being part of the hiring team) you consider other criteria than you would use when picking friends.

Being friends is about chemistry and ability to count on each other in difficult life situations. These are the things that may not be present with most of your colleagues. It is neither good, nor bad, it is just a reality. It is also a reason why some of our best friends are usually the ones from our childhood when we haven’t spent too much time over analyzing whether someone is “the right” friend for us and when we decided more instinctively.

In today’s fast moving society you may work at different team or company every couple of years, you may even live in a different city, you are surrounded by hundreds of people who may want things from you and you from them. All this can be rather overwhelming and may limit you from forming a really strong and ever-lasting friendship.

So next time you are on Facebook counting how many friends you have consider how many of them are just work buddies or associates you barely know and how many of them are the real friends who would be there for you even in twenty years and in the time of the biggest need. And maybe, you want to consider how much time you spend with people who fit into this category and who really care about you.

How many true friends do you have at work? And how is your relationship with your colleagues different from that you have with friends you never worked with?

Photo: © Kurhan / Dollar Photo Club

Categories: Life

Tags: Coaching, friends, Life