Lead-Across Principle #3
BE A FRIEND
We often consider ourselves to be many things to the people who work alongside us—coworkers, teammates, contributors, competitors—but we often forget to be the one thing that every person wants: a friend. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.”
No matter how driven or competitive your coworkers appear to be, they will enjoy having a friend on the job. Some people don’t look to the workplace for friendship, but they will certainly benefit from finding it there. When a job is especially tough or unpleasant, having a friend is sometimes the only thing a person has to look forward to when going to work. And when the job is good, then having a friend is icing on the cake.
TO TEAMWORK, ADD FRIENDSHIP
Why do I recommend that you work to develop friendships on the job?
FRIENDSHIP IS THE FOUNDATION OF INFLUENCE
President Abraham Lincoln said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” Good relationships make influence possible, and friendship is the most positive relationship you can develop on the job with your coworkers.
FRIENDSHIP IS THE FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS
I believe long-term success is unachievable without good people skills. Theodore Roosevelt said, “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” Without it, most achievements are not possible, and even what we do achieve can feel hollow.
FRIENDSHIP IS THE SHELTER AGAINST SUDDEN STORMS
If you’re having a bad day, who can make you feel better? A friend. When you have to face your fears, who would you rather do it with? A friend. When you fall on your face, who can help pick you up? A friend. Aristotle was right when he said, “True friends are a sure refuge.”
HOW TO BE A FRIEND
Undoubtedly, you already have friends, so you know how to develop friendships. But relationships at work can often be different, and I want to suggest a specific way that you should approach friendship within your organization. Make it your goal to be a friend, not to find a friend.
When most people approach friendships, they look for people who will reciprocate their efforts at relationship building, and if they don’t sense any kind of mutual effort, they abandon their efforts with that individual and move on. At work, if you want to lead across, you need to keep working at being a friend—even with people who don’t initially put any effort into being a friend back.
As you reach out to your coworkers, I want to encourage you to include the following steps in the approach you take:
1. LISTEN!
Author Richard Exley once said:
A true friend is one who hears and understands when you share your deepest feelings. He supports you when you are struggling; he corrects you, gently and with love, when you err; and he forgives you when you fail. A true friend prods you to personal growth, stretches you to your full potential. And most amazing of all, he celebrates your successes as if they were his own.
That entire process begins with listening.
Many people on the job just want to be left alone so that they can get their work done. If they do desire to interact with others, it’s often to jockey for position or to get others to listen to what they have to say. How rare it is when people go out of their way and make it a point to listen to others.
Ralph Nichols said, “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” If you become a consistently good listener to your coworkers, they will want to spend time with you. They will begin to seek you out. And if they develop a rapport with you, they will probably also begin asking advice from you. That is the starting point for influence with them.
2. FIND COMMON GROUND NOT RELATED TO WORK
Frank A. Clark said, “To enjoy a friend, I need more in common with him than hating the same people.” Unfortunately, for many people who work together, that’s all they seem to have in common. So what’s the solution if you don’t seem to share common ground with someone at work? Try to discover what you have in common outside of the job.
If you see everyone as a potential friend, and look for connection points inside and outside of work, you have a good chance of finding common ground. And that is where friendships are built.
3. BE AVAILABLE BEYOND BUSINESS HOURS
Just as you need to find common ground outside of work to become a friend to coworkers, you also need to make yourself available outside of business hours. True friendship means being available.
If you won’t do anything outside of work hours, then your relationship will probably never evolve beyond the confines of the work arena. The moment you take your relationship with a coworker outside of the work environment, it instantly begins to change. Think about the first time you had lunch with a coworker off-site. Even if you talked about work the entire time, didn’t it change the way you saw that person from then on? How about if you’ve ever played in a work softball league or played golf with coworkers? Didn’t you learn many things about people that you never knew before? Didn’t you gain insights into personalities that were unrevealed until then? Think about the first time you went to a coworker’s house, and consider the personal connection you felt with that person afterward.
True friendship isn’t on the clock. When a friend is in need, real friends don’t say, “It’s after five. Can you call me back tomorrow?” Obviously, you want to respect people’s privacy, and you don’t want to violate anybody’s personal boundaries. But because leadership isn’t limited to nine to five, friendship can’t be either.
4. HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR
Comic pianist Victor Borge said, “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.” I have often found that to be true. Humor can quickly bond people who might not otherwise have a lot in common.
Charlie Wetzel said that when he went to graduate school to work on his master’s degree at age twenty-four, he was a painfully serious person. He took himself—and everything else in life—way too seriously. But during his second year in school, he became a teaching assistant, and he got to know some of his fellow graduate students who were also teaching English composition classes for the University of New Orleans. One of those people was Homer Arrington.
Homer had grown up in Southern California, gone to school at Berkeley, and then done a variety of interesting jobs, including driving a cab in New York City for a couple of years. As all fourteen of the grad students would gather in their communal office, they would trade stories of their experiences in class and the troubles they were dealing with. Homer was a good student and an intellectual, but he also had a great sense of humor. When Charlie would tell a story about something that had really irritated him, Homer would see the humor in it, make jokes, and they both would end up laughing.
Though the two men initially had little in common, they quickly became friends. Now, twenty years later, Charlie credits Homer with helping him not take himself so seriously and with reawakening his sense of humor, something for which he continues to be grateful.
“Your best friend is he who brings out the best that is within you.”
—HENRY FORD
If you maintain a sense of humor—even when times are tough, the job gets rough, and your coworkers are feeling out of sorts—you will help to create a positive atmosphere and will appear approachable and accessible to your coworkers. And that certainly will help your chances of making a friend.
5. TELL THE TRUTH WHEN OTHERS DON’T
Once when Henry Ford was having lunch with a man, he asked, “Who is your best friend?” When the man responded that he wasn’t sure, Ford exclaimed, “I will tell you!” He took out a pencil and wrote his answer on the tablecloth: “Your best friend is he who brings out the best that is within you.”
That is what friends do for one another. They bring out their best. Often their best is brought out by encouragement, but sometimes the best thing you can do for friends is tell them the truth. Not everybody is willing to do that, because they don’t want to risk the relationship, or they really don’t care enough to make the effort.
An eastern proverb says, “A friend is one who warns you.” When you’re headed for trouble, a friend lets you know. When you’re blinded by your emotions, a friend tells you. When the quality of your work is hurting the organization or may hurt your career, a friend tells you the truth.
Stepping forward and telling people hard truths can be a risky thing. The irony is that in order for someone to listen to what you have to say about such things, you first need to have relational credibility with them. So it’s kind of a catch-22. If you don’t tell them, you’re not really being a friend. But in order to tell them, you must already be a friend, or they won’t accept what you have to say. The more relational currency you have deposited with them, the better the chance they will listen to what you have to say.
Charles Schwab, who started out as a stake driver and worked his way up to the job of president of Carnegie Steel (and later U.S. Steel) was said to be an incredible leader and a master motivator. He saw the value of friendship in every aspect of life, including work. Schwab said:
Be friends with everybody. When you have friends you will know there is somebody who will stand by you. You know the old saying, that if you have a single enemy you will find him everywhere. It doesn’t pay to make enemies. Lead the life that will make you kind and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live.
And you will also be surprised by the influence you will earn with your peers.
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