How to Make Better Friends at Work

Friendships in the workplace can enrich our lives and make us better leaders and workers if we make the effort to cultivate truly healthy relationships.

- Gianpiero Petriglieri

I DON’T REMEMBER THE MOMENT THAT FRANCESCO AND I STARTED referring to our friendship as a place. But in the grind of medical school rotations nearly 30 years ago, a flower bed between a parking lot and the building that hosted the internal medicine wards became “the friendship.” That’s what our friendship felt like then: A scruffy patch of nature wedged between the workplace and the comings and goings of daily life. “Come to the friendship!” one of us would say when the other was agitated or idle. We would walk out, sit there for a while, and then get back to work a little sharper, braver, and, some would say, more obnoxious for it.

Research has long established that friendship blossoms where people with similar interests spend time together, share meaningful and intense tasks, face uncertainty, and need each other’s help.¹ Francesco’s and my workplace ticked all those boxes, and soon our friendship wasn’t confined to it. In the friendship, we jumped between reviewing a procedure we had just seen and dissecting failed romances, sharing career dreams and making plans for the weekend. It was the first of a handful of work friendships without which I would not be writing this essay, do the work I do, or be who I am. It was also the beginning of a quest to understand friendship at work and what it takes to make those friendships work.