Lots of articles from so-called experts these days on how to define your co-workers: are they friends? Are they “work spouses”? Should they be considered family? Or are they just people who show up to the same place you do every day to get paid for the time spent and the work they do, and then go home to their separate life for the majority of the hours in a day?
A recent article in Fast Company discussed this growing debate. https://www.fastcompany.com/91108867/why-work-is-not-your-family. “The end of work spouses and office besties: Why now, more than ever, work is not your family.”
There’s no question people should have a healthy and separate personal life, distinct and far away (at least psychologically if not geographically) from where they work every day. A person’s identity shouldn’t be 100% based on what they do for a living and for whom.
I get that. I appreciate that. I AGREE with that.
But let’s not make this a one-or-the-other discussion where you can’t have the very best of both worlds.
I believe it’s also healthy and productive to have strong relationships with your co-workers. It’s beneficial to have friends at work. How close you become is ultimately up to you: some people are “hey” neighbors, some are juicy gossip sources, some are work and personal mentors or confidantes, some are friends you will go out on weekends with, some might become lifelong friends, best friends, or even spouses.
Life happens and you can’t always predict who you get close to or with. But intentionally blocking people off because you want to maintain space is harmful in two important ways:
- It can make for a long day feeling like you’re just a worker, just a paid-hand, or just a supervisor to someone else’s work. There’s no connection to the work, to other people, or to the organization. It’s just 8-10 hours a day where you have to be somewhere doing something.
- Others will see that you’re not interested in creating a bond with them and they will distance from you, whether they do it outwardly or more subtly. That can hurt work production if you work on a team. And you can’t blame someone for not wanting to get closer (or to go above-and-beyond) for someone who doesn’t want to get closer to them. It’s a two-way street.
Maybe I’m just old-school but I enjoy developing relationships with people at work. I’ve maintained 25-year friendships with people I’ve met through work, even though we’re all on to different companies and different careers now. I never would have enjoyed those friendships through the years if I chose to maintain my distance and let co-workers be simply that.
Then again I’m also not a fan of the remote work culture. I personally benefit from seeing people every day, whether I work closely with them or not. I enjoy the energy of a community; I like hearing the hubbub of a busy cafeteria; I value having a separation between the “place where I live” and the “place where I work” — meaning, I like to go to work all day and then go home at night. Two different places to satisfy two different roles in my life and two different parts of my brain.
I don’t want to go so far as to say people are wrong for not wanting to create strong bonds with their co-workers because everyone has a different set of values, but I will say that I think they are missing out. To which they may reply “Yeah, no, I’m really not,” and that’s their prerogative.