Work Friendships Are Mostly Amazing and Sometimes Messy

Women at Work

Harvard Business Review

Entrepreneurship, Workplace, Business/management, Business/entrepreneurship, Progress, Resources, Gender, Equality, Business/careers, Women, Hbr, Careers, Management, Business, Harvard, Human

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Having a close friend at work feels great. You have someone to laugh with, confide in, and exchange glances with during a meeting. But we often fail to anticipate how the conflicting demands of work can occasionally strain that relationship. We talk through common tensions and how to handle them, either to maintain the friendship or to ease off of it. Guests: Nancy Rothbard and Julianna Pillemer. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once your business gets to a certain size, the cracks start to emerge.
0:05.0	Things you used to do in a day take a week.
0:08.0	You deserve a customized solution, and that's Net Suite. Learn more when you download NetSuite's popular
0:15.5	KPI checklist absolutely free at NetSuite.com slash women at work. That's NetSuite
0:22.3	dot com slash women at work. That's NetSuite.com slash women at work.
0:27.0	You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
0:36.6	I'm Nicole Torres.
0:37.8	I'm Amy Gallo.
0:39.1	And I'm Amy Bernstein.
0:40.9	It's great to have colleagues who are also friends. They can make coming to work more fun and engaging and can even make a ho-hum job more tolerable.
0:49.0	It's a good feeling when we have someone to cheer us on to confide in, be straight with, cry in front of.
0:57.0	This episode will talk about the joys of work friends, but we'll also discuss the challenges, like maintaining those friendships when you become a boss
1:05.3	or trying to tone down a relationship that's just too draining.
1:09.8	I wrote about workplace friendships in an issue of our newsletter and many of you
1:13.7	emailed us about yours. We heard about colleagues who are close enough to feel like
1:17.4	family and even celebrate holidays together. People also told us about the
1:22.1	downsides like the venting that was a relief in the moment, but later made
1:26.8	them wonder if they'd shared too much information, and the twinge of jealousy when
1:32.0	someone's friend gets a promotion and they did it.
1:35.3	Some friendships that start at work end when the friends stop working at the same company.
1:40.0	But that wasn't the case for the two women we're about to hear from.
1:43.8	Tierra Turner and Kristen Ome met in their 20s at their first job.
	...

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