Hello, what's up, and welcome back to another episode of the Straight Shooter
Recruiter podcast. I'm your host, Emily Durham, and if you don't know
me, my goal is to help you thrive. And you're nine to five
and beyond, and I might sound tired, it's because I just got back
from a five hour adventure. It was actually such a good day. So
it's a Monday and I'm recording this. It's actually a day off and my
friend I was going to say my friend from work, but we have very
much graduated to real life friends. My friend Sandra and I ended up doing
like a mini walking food tour. We just had a couple of different spots
that we wanted to try, so we tried this new salad place and then
we went to go get these like delicious mango tahin smoothies that were so good.
Anyways, all in we ended up walking ten kilometers. And I'm telling
you this not because I want you to be envious of my food, although
it was really really delicious. I actually felt so inspired to talk about work
friendships because I think it's something that is very divisive. A lot of people
tend to think about friendships at work as impossible, and even I have said,
a lot of the people you think are your friends at work probably aren't
and are probably like preying on your downfall in a lot of ways. But
as I say that, a bunch of my really really close friends I actually
met through work at various stages in my life. So I wanted to dedicate
today's episode to helping you navigate who is a real life friend and who is
a work friend, and how to protect yourself from the people that we're not
quite sure about yet, because yes, that shit will come up and haunt
you. And do not forget to like and subscribe to this show. It's
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if you are just thinking about how much you would love to stick to your
boss with a hat that says your future boss, or a hat that says
off the clock, or some mugs, or some sweaters and T shirts and
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dropped. We had a few items sell out. They are currently back in
stock, but I don't suspect they will be for long, so a link
for that will also be in the description. But let's get into this episode.
I want to cut the toxic stuff because a lot of people online are
automatically going to tell you that your work friends are not your friends. But
I think there's an important distinction to be made. Work friends are not friends,
they're work friends, and that's where the differentiation is so stink and important.
If you find yourself feeling really gravitated towards a particular group of people at
work, maybe you have lunch together all the time, like you have a
little group chato on your pals, that's fantastic, But before you start confiding
in them your career goals, your personal details, what you think about that
one coworker, what you really think about your boss? I want you to
ask yourself, when was the last time we hung out outside of work,
Like, really, really ask yourself that question, because if you don't hang
out outside of work fairly regularly, and if when you do hang out outside
of work, you end up talking about work ninety percent of the time,
I'm telling you those are not your friends. Those are people you are friendly
with at work. And it's not to say I want you to be catty
or closed off, but it is literally a bad business decision for you to
be confiding all of your juicy secrets to people who are not your real life
friends, because if they are your work friends, their priority is still themselves.
Your real life friends will always prioritize your relationship, your safety, your
confidentiality, all of those wonderful things. But friends that you've met at work
and are only really friends with in the context of work will typically throw you
under the bus in order for them to get ahead, or perhaps they'll do
things you don't agree with in order to not ruffle feathers. There's just so
many things that are variable, and the best way to judge whether or not
these people are your friends is by like the cadence or how often you're actually
hanging out with them. If you've got a friend where you're like, ah,
we're at work, we have a really good time. Should we take
it to the next level. Here's what personally has worked for me because a
lot of my girlfriends I met at work, Like actually half of my birthday
party this past year when I turned twenty seven last October, half of those
people I met were from work. And I never suspected that that would be
a thing that I do. So here's what I'll say. The best thing
you can do is keep it light and playful. Like I always used to
joke with the people I would get along with at work, and I'd say,
should we take it to the next level? Should we go steady?
Should we take this outside of the office? And that was my icebreaker to
try and grab a coffee with someone outside of work, or maybe grab a
drink after work. The easiest thing you can do is drop in jokes like
that or say something as simple as, oh, what are you doing after
work? Do you want to go in a walk? Or like, what
are you doing after work? Can you flower market just opened up? Just
bring up something that's of common interest and then position it after work and see
how it goes. Sometimes it takes a couple of hangouts for things not to
be awkward. And it takes a couple of hangouts to stop talking about work
like. It's not going to feel like an age long friendship or like a
lifelong friendship right away, but you do need to give it like a tester
period and a bit of a cooling off period just to see how things are
actually going to feel for you. My biggest piece of advice is take it
slow. Right because with any other friendship you would probably take it slow.
But because this is a friendship where you have met at work and it feels
like you know that person, you don't you know that person in the context
of work. You don't know them in the context of your personal life.
They are two very very very very very different things. So take it slow.
Don't tell them all about your shitty boyfriend, don't tell them all about
YadA, YadA, YadA. Just be mindful about what you open up about.
And I'm not telling you this to make you cynical. I'm telling you
this to protect you, because sometimes we just got to look out for ourselves
a little bit. If you're in like your twenties, your thirties, your
forties, and you're looking to make friends at work. I actually think that's
an amazing place for you to build out your relationships because if you work at
the same company, it's basically guaranteeing that you have some level of common interest,
whether it's like the values of your company, the products, blah blah
blah. I work in tech, so typically people tend to be like,
pretty creative, they're pretty abreast with things happening in like the fintech market,
so we have those common things to talk about. But the best thing you
can do is show up as your authentic self and most importantly, show up
as someone who is nice to be around. Like, show up with that
positive magnetic energy before you go to work tomorrow. Look at yourself in a
mirror and repeat after me. And I'm not even joking because I do this
all the time. Say you know, whatever positive affirmation sits well with you.
But I typically say something like I am magnetic, I am kind,
I am warm and wonderful. People and things always gravitate towards me. Like
just something like that, just to remind you that you are fantastic. You
can also do things like spruce up your office space because it's a great conversation
starter, people might walk by and compliment, like your plant or your funky
mug. Shout out to my mugs because they're really funny. You can also
be the kind of person who brings in office treats like cookies, whatever it
is, and kind of share it and use that as a connection point because
people love food. You can also work in areas where maybe people outside of
your teamwork, like perhaps you work a little bit on the engineering floor,
or maybe you sit in a different area at lunch. So there's a lot
of different ways you can position yourself, obviously focusing on work, but from
a social perspective that make it more easy for these conversations to kick back up.
Another thing that is so important is making people feel seen and feel heard,
because nobody is going to want to be your friend if they feel like
they're just a number. So really like lock eye contact, make people feel
appreciated, use their name, like be that friend. Basically show up as
the kind of person you would want to be around, and all of the
good things are going to find you. Making friends and your adult ears is
so hard because you have a much more defined sense of who you are,
and at least for me, I am not willing to compromise when it comes
to my friendships, like, you need to enhance my life, make me
happy, make me feel fulfilled. I want to feel excited about the people
in my life, and it's a little bit harder to do that the older
you get, because you have a much more concrete vision of what that looks
like. So you're naturally just using the pool and that's okay. Like it's
hard sometimes. When I was twenty one, I would have dozens of people
i'd be hanging out with on the weekends. Now I've got like five or
six really close friends. So it really does change the way you look at
things and the way you see things. But I don't necessarily think that is
a negative. Anyways. I really hope this mini episode was helpful. When
you're listening to this, I think I should be in Calgary or London,
England. I'm traveling quite a bit in July, so I don't really know.
If you're curious, you can check out my ig stories because I'm sure
I'll be posting That sounds like something I would do. But honestly, I
cannot thank y'all enough for loving this show. Seeing the show consistently in those
top charts means the stinkin world to me. I am so grateful for you,
so just thank you. I really really really love you, I really
appreciate you. Thank you for making the show what it is. And next
week's episode is going to be absolute fire fire, fire heat because I'm going
to be answering all of your questions, so that will be an absolute pleasure.
It's a question only episode, so I'm super excited about that. Thank
you so much for hanging out with me, and I look forward to seeing
you in my next episode next Sunday. How do I always sing up the
intro and the otro chow