It's indeed rightly said. The effort invested in making friends as an adult is higher than a kid. An average individual spends nearly 40-45 hours every week at work which means that we tend to spend more with our colleagues than our friends and family.
Is it smart to keep our personal and professional lives separate or cultivating a workplace friendship at work is a good call? Although we tend to click with individuals post having conversations with them, the idea of investing in a friendship becomes a good question to self in your professional journey.
Friends, Forever?
Developing work friendship can be a mixed blessing. While creating workplace friendship can be a boon, it’s imperative to find the right set of friends at the workplace as they make work more enjoyable while providing effective feedback. This in turn leads to enhanced creativity and productivity. Many people get jobs due to friendship and organizations have referral programs to reward their current employees.
Having someone who is willing to go the extra mile and help complete work tasks because of the bond shared, can help boost personal confidence and performance improvement. It’s a pleasant feeling to get motivated and come to work if you know there are friendly, happy faces waiting for you at work.
Being Overly Friendly:
Though having a buddy at work can lead to better health and happiness, revealing details and your opinions about managers, co-workers and workplace can often be tricky and risky. The fear of information being diverted to others stays high. On the flip side, having the wrong group of friends at work can be infectious.
The danger of spending a lot of time chatting up at workplace buddies can lead to less work and more fun hours. It can also lead to jealousy amidst other co-workers and spoil your relationship with them. Personal conflicts can also lead to tension at work often leading to retaliation.
While climbing up the career ladder and jumping between companies, we tend to meet a new set of people who become our mentors and friends at work. But there’s always a specific group of people whom we work with and develop the deepest form of bond with, and surprisingly they are the same people one makes during their first job.
At the beginning of our careers, we tend to get inclined towards people who share the sameness as us. Overtime, it's important to also gel with people who are not so similar. This helps build perspective and makes you respect viewpoints. It becomes easier to connect with people who have the same knowledge and work focus as us. In my opinion, analyzing and spending the right amount of time with an individual and withdrawing yourself from situations that might be a topic of conflict remains to be a healthy option.
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