Do workmates help you get ahead – or hold you back? As a furious debate rages about ambition vs friendship, is it time to cancel those post-work drinks? Louisa Pritchard reports.
Waiting nervously outside the meeting room for her promotion interview, Lynne*, 29, quickly averted her eyes as the other candidate walked out. Not only was it her direct competition for the role, it was also her best friend in the office – someone she’d downed shots with and consoled in the toilets as she sobbed about her latest Tinder nightmare.
‘It was excruciating,’ she says. ‘Sally* and I had both gone for the same promotion, which would have been amazing for both our careers, and we instantly went from seeing each other socially most weekends, and messaging constantly throughout the day, to actively avoiding each other.’
As it was, neither got the promotion – it went to another colleague they barely knew. But it taught Lynne an important lesson. ‘I know I wasn’t as focused in the interview as I should have been because I was worrying what it would mean for our friendship if I was promoted over her.’
The experience made her realise her friendship had held her back from fulfilling her potential. According to an exclusive poll of 1,600 women carried out for Grazia last month by job website CV Library, she’s not the only one to reach that conclusion. More than one in 10 women said they feel having friends in their workplace has harmed their career, with 6% admitting falling out with a work friend over a promotion. Almost one in five of those surveyed said they’d stayed in a job they didn’t like because of their friends, and one in 10 said work friendships were more important than their career.
The issue of work friendships has come under the spotlight following a recent New York Times opinion piece by Adam Grant, psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote that we all need to make more friends in the office in order to create more trust with colleagues, share more information, cooperate better and generally work more effectively together.
Corinne Mills, MD of Personal Career Management, agrees. ‘Having relationships at work is vital,’ she says. ‘In some companies, they actively encourage this by organising big nights out or team-building days. The belief is that if you’re engaged not just by the task that you do, but by the people around you, and you care about them, it’s going to make you work harder and perform better.’
Margaret, 31, who works at a London PR firm, has found this to be the case. ‘I wholeheartedly believe I perform better at work because of my friendship with my colleague, Sabrina. We brainstorm, proofread, advise and commiserate together – and we’re both better for it.’
But given the lack of women in leadership roles, the ongoing fight for equal pay and the battle women face to break through the glass ceiling, are we actually putting ourselves at a disadvantage if we’re prioritising bonding with others in the office ahead of our ambition?
Penny de Valk, MD of Penna Talent Practice and an HR expert, says, ‘We’re definitely seeing a trend emerging among women who are so collaborative that they won’t throw their hat in the ring for promotion if they feel that’s going to mean them leaving their friends.’
Penny, who holds focus groups within big organisations to understand what’s stopping people pursuing leadership roles, adds, ‘If they are going for the same promotion, it could mean they aren’t as hungry for the role and could even hold back in the interview, feeling the new job would be at the cost of their friendship.’
But while you could be underperforming at work to avoid doing well at the expense of a friend, what happens if they don’t do the same? As Kate*, 28, from Manchester, found, a nightmare boss is even more damaging if they used to be someone you were close to.
She says, ‘Laura* and I met in our early twenties working for the same recruitment company. We just clicked and would go on wild nights out. When she left after six months to join another company, we kept in touch and she even came to my wedding in Italy. Three years later, when she offered me a job, I accepted. I was nervous it might affect our friendship but I trusted her. I was stunned when she started explaining everything to me as though I was a child and micro-managing me. She was the same with the whole team and I quickly clocked she was hugely unpopular. I felt unable to ask her questions, lost confidence in my own decision-making and felt sick going into the office every day. I ended up resigning with no other job to go to. The experience was so much more scarring because we’d previously been friends.’
Making close friends in the office can also make it difficult to remember you’re there to do a job, rather than have fun – something Anna*, 33, realised too late. She says, ‘I had a group of friends at work and we’d go out most nights. We all had constant hangovers in the office and in my performance review my manager said I didn’t seem 100% focused on the job. I lost out on a promotion – and a pay rise – because I had missed targets thanks to all that socialising. That made me assess where my priorities lay. Would I really be friends with these people in 10 years? Or would I rather be earning £50,000 as a manager? I chose the second option and, while I still go out drinking with them occasionally, I no longer put them before my job.’
Boundaries are crucial when it comes to working relationships: while it’s fine to chat about your OITNB obsession, it’s probably best to avoid sharing intimate details of last night’s ‘Netflix and chill’ to avoid awkwardness if one of you is promoted.
So how do you lay down the ground rules for a working relationship without coming across as boring or uptight? ‘What you need are professional relationships rather than friendships,’ says Corinne Mills. ‘They might be people whose opinion you value and who you see as a sounding board, but not someone you discuss your innermost thoughts with. They are so important for progression and success at work. When you’re looking for your next role, it can be down to that grapevine of people you know. And if they know all about your personal life that could cloud their judgement on whether to recommend you for a role.’
So maybe Adam Grant was right when he insisted we need work friendships, as long as we don’t lose sight of the real goal – our careers. This is something Lynne is now clear about. ‘I’m still with the same company, but Sally left and I haven’t heard from her since. I’ve now built lots of relationships in different departments but I make sure none of the lines are blurred – they are my colleagues and we get on really well, but they’re not my friends. The next time a promotion opportunity comes up, nothing is going to stand in my way.’ Has a friendship affected your career? Email us at feedback@graziamagazine.co.uk