Friends make great co-workers

It is completely normal to spend one’s working life as part of a group selected by a hiring process on which one has only minimal influence. Imagine if your friends or family were selected on a similar basis!

My last role as an employee gave me a glimpse of other possibilities: it involved working a lot with people from different organisations, many of whom grew to be good friends. As a busy Dad, with an extremely far-flung social circle, finding projects to collaborate on turned out to be a great way to keep in touch with friends.

I take friendship fairly seriously, and I’ve been lucky enough to have found friends who feel the same way - we’ll take real risks on each other’s behalf. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ll be productive together.

“Moghrua, I get that you want to work with your friends, who wouldn’t, but what about when things don’t work out? Aren’t you worried about damaging your friendship?”

Projects do fail of course, and late deliverables can be very frustrating. Friends have a big advantage though! Emotional safety makes communication simpler and more direct - and, of course, if a working relationship isn’t working, friends can go back to a purely social relationship. If a friendship can’t survive a little hardship, perhaps it wasn’t so great in the first place - it is adversity that we find the real measure of friendship.

I’ve been lucky though - my friends are clever, driven, get-it-done low-drama, generous folk, and 9 months in, making that big career change to give me more choice on people and projects is looking like a great decision.