Don’t allow personal bonds interfere with professional performance.
Workplace friendships can make those long hours at the office go by faster. It can add some fun in an otherwise dreary and predictable day. Some workplace friendships turn into lifelong relationships and even marriage.
If boundaries aren’t in place, it can begin to affect other relationships, how you’re viewed, and limit opportunities.
A successful workplace friendship requires respect, trust, maturity, discernment, and self-reliance.
If you are always together, seen as inseparable by clients, coworkers, or management they may exclude you from invitations, because if one comes, so does the other.
5 Ways A Workplace Bestie Can Hinder Career Growth
1) Two-peas-in-a-pod: Perception that it’s an exclusive relationship. Forces coworkers to engage and like both of you. Awkward if they don’t favorably related to your bestie.
2) Management sees “high school clique”: Career opportunities may be limited because it is perceived that you aren’t a team player.
3) Confidentiality: Doubt or assumptions that you will tell-all to your best friend. Therefore, you may be left out or not offered a position that requires confidentiality.
4) Flexible ethics: Will you come forth with the truth or cover up for your friend? Are they a true friend if they ask you to compromise your ethics?
5) Distractions and time management: How much time are you spending on personal chit-chat? Do your constant texts or office pop-ins deter you from completing a task?
6) Discourages change: Rejecting a new position, exploring new companies, or attending a conference because the other can’t go, is not a friendship. Nor is diminishing or trash talking new opportunities.
If your workplace besties happens to be your boss, there are a few more complexities for both of you. For example, favoritism, distrust, label you as an informant, etc.
RELATED VIDEO: Good Day Sac “Breaking Up With Work Bestie”
FINAL THOUGHTS:
- Consider what is best for your careers.
- Agree to limit your interactions at work.
- Agree to maintain confidentiality when required.
- Don’t question each other about other relationships.
Business Etiquette Training: Communication skills, social skills, picking up on social cues, office gossip…
Contact me to discuss how we can work together by providing a customized workshop for your staff. Workshop are available for youth, high school, college students, community organizations, sales team, actors, athletes attending fundraisers, general professional development, to support Code of Conduct, to support implementing new employee standards in 2025.
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