Work Besties

Practical Applications in Servant Leadership, part 10

(Previous posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9)

No one wants to feel alone, and yet we’re hearing more and more about loneliness. One of the reasons I was hesitant to become a coach was that it seemed like it was going to be me working all alone in between client sessions. Figuring out ways of diminishing my alone time was an important step in starting Diadem Coaching.

In 2023 the US Department of Health and Human Service released a report about what they called a loneliness and isolation epidemic. Human beings are designed to be connected to one another in our community and daily work. Yes, even you introverts. How connected depends on the specific work you’re doing and your own natural bent.

As a leader of a team in your organization, a part of your job is enabling those relationships and connections between your direct reports and co-workers in general. Which brings us to the next question in the Q12 survey:

Q10: I have a best friend at work.

Note first off that this doesn’t say “I work with my best friend.” Gallup isn’t trying to measure how many coworkers have bonded at such a deep level that they spend their free time together. We’re looking at whether each person has someone at work with whom they connect well and enjoy working with.

Secondly, don’t immediately dismiss this area as beyond your control. You have more influence over the connections made on your team than you may realize, especially if you’re involved in the hiring for your team.

As a side note, this particular question can be an outlier positive if the culture (or your leadership!) are bad. People can pull together and form bonds while they’re struggling in an unhealthy or even toxic environment. If you do your Q12 survey and this one is the highest score, be aware of that.

What can you do to produce a feeling of belonging and an environment to forge close friendships among your direct reports? Here’s a few ideas:

1. Find ways to create teamwork through projects. If you’ve created a culture of quality work, there will already be some respect among your direct reports. Pairing up two of your team members on a project allows them to get to know each other’s talents and styles. Mix and match this over time and you’ll figure out which of your team members work exceptionally well with each other and enjoy it. Make sure you’re doing retrospectives on those projects to glean what you need to on its success and how well each of the team members sees the partnership going!

2. Have your team profiled with an assessment that allows you to identify complementary strengths and energies. I’ve outlined my two favorites here earlier: The 6 Types of Working Genius and the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessments. This will give you a good idea of which team members will benefit from working along side one another as they compensate for each other’s gaps. I recommend doing this profile through a team workshop of some sort like the ones we offer at Diadem. You’ll get real value out of the expense by leaning into the expertise of a coach in helping with the application of the assessments.

3. Encourage conversation around non-work items. People should be free in your area to talk about hobbies and loves and to get to know one another more. The less relational anonymity people have, the more appreciation each person will have for his or her coworkers. That appreciation can grow into the types of friendships where both people encourage the success of the others.

4. One of the ways that people often find that best friend at work is by referring a friend for a job opening. When friendship exists before joining your team it’s easier than building one from scratch with a stranger. If you’ve got a high performer who loves her or his job and they want to suggest hiring a friend into an opening, it’s something you should strongly consider, especially if the friend brings some diversity to your team in skills, energies, background, or demographics. Be wary if it makes your team more homogeneous, but otherwise you’ll often make the team better by hiring someone who already likes one of the team members. In general, it’s a good sign when your staff recommend working with your team.

If you’re struggling with how to build a culture where this type of relationship thrives, I’d recommend reading Daniel Coyle’s Culture Code. It’s one of the 2-3 books I recommend most to my clients who are in leadership roles. He’s done a tremendous job of researching why some teams thrive and others don’t. You have a lot of influence on whether or not your team embraces the type of environment where strong relationships are built.

What about you, leader? Do you have a best friend at work? And what other ways are you creating space for your direct reports to build those same types of relationships?