Friendship Shifting the Paradigm of Work

I have recently finished a change process as a interim manager for a government institution. As I am looking around for a new project, I have time to write, paint, read and be with friends. A welcome change from the loneliness of my recent leadership role in the civil service. In fact, I so much enjoy these conversations that I want to do my next project with people I want to hang out with. Just image what you could accomplish if the work you do is with your friends! It struck me how much friendship or the lack of it, has impacted my personal career. Friendship as a core value also shows up within a larger context of organizational and maybe even societal change. Why is friendship such a pivotal value and can it actually drive and support change?

Friendship as a measurement of a healthy worksplace

When I was doing a change program for a multinational organization, their engagement program was measured by the Strengthfinder questionaire and annual Gallup measurement reports. One of the measurements is ‘friendship.’ This is what they say:

The development of trusting relationships is a significant emotional compensation for employees in today’s marketplace. Thus, it is easy to understand why it is such a key trait of employee retention, customer metrics, productivity, and profitability.

In a research effort to measure the health of a workplace, Gallup studied more than 80,000 managers, focused on discovering what great managers do to create quality workplaces. One of them was employees reporting having “a best friend” at work. Those that did showed:

• 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition for their work in the last seven days.
• 37% more likely to report that someone at work encourages their development.
• 35% more likely to report co-worker commitment to quality.
• 28% more likely to report that in the last six months, someone at work has talked to them about their progress.
• 27% more likely to report that the mission of their company makes them feel their job is important.
• 27% more likely to report that their opinions seem to count at work.
• 21% more likely to report that at work, they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day.

Friendship shifting the paradigm of work

If friendship at work is that important, if employee retention, customer metrics, productivity, and profitability, hinges on friendship, setting up a project with friends is the best guarantee of success. Taken to its extreme the concept of friendship could change the entire paradigm of work. Putting it simply:

“Not only is friendship at work important, work is ultimately an excuse to have a good time with your friends.”

Some examples

1. The other day, I was talking to the co-owner of a highly successful restaurant in Amsterdam. I mentioned that some years before I had witnessed their crew celebrating the restaurant’s 1st anniversary and noticed the camaraderie between staff and management. She agreed: “Friendship between and among us was and continues to be the basis for our success.
2. Recently, I was involved in charting the ties between the members of a global network organization. The objective was to increase opportunities for working and learning in the network. We did two things: (1) Send out a questionnaire and doing a network analysis and (2) start a bottom up research process whereby network members reach out to other network members and have live interactions that result in a collection of stories showing the prevailing patterns in the network. Personally, the impact of the latter approach was stunning. I had rich conversations with members that I had not been in contact with. With one I even spent an entire day, cooking, philosophizing and chilling out at a city beach in Amsterdam. We strengthened our friendship and made plans to learn and work together.
3. Finally, returning to Gallup and the question of engagement. When I worked at the production department of multinational designing a management development program, I noticed that programs sent down from HQ to generate friendship to the shop floor were hopelessly ineffective and generally met with ridicule and disengagement. The consensus among employees was, that friendship can not be instilled by a day’s training. In contrast, as we were working on the the MD program friendship was developing naturally. We started the project by having dinner together and share life-changing events. From then on people started to feel comfortable with having courageous conversations about, parents dying, divorce and personal health issues. The Gallup scores for this department improved significantly over the years and so did employee retention, and productivity measurements.

When we are with friends….

Looking at these examples I wonder what are the drivers of friendship that according to Gallup create healthy communities and successful workplaces. When we are with friends:

• We are so much more than the tasks we do.
• We like to play, have stories to tell, we love to learn new things
• We dare to be courageous and are not afraid to be open and trusted.
• We want to work with someone not for someone.
• We know things and love being asked things, we like to be adventurous and have somebody close to help when things go wrong, we have fun and free space to talk about work and life.
• We work to live, not live to work
• When we settle down we like to do so with a sense of fulfilment, of having been important to someone close, to have given freely not expecting something in return and thus to have lived purposefully.

So, now for the next project I am resolved to recruit my colleagues from the people I love. I have friends and colleagues close and far that inspire me. I am going to them with ideas of setting up a project about the future of education. Trusting what emerges. One of life’s secrets is when you realize the thing that you’ve been looking for was right in front of you all along. Friendship is the difference that makes a difference. Driving and supporting change at all levels: personal, organizational and societal.