Are We Friends?

“If you take out the team in teamwork, it’s just work.” Matthew Woodring Stover

In my last post I delved into the history of employment contracts that define the relationship between the legal person of the organisation and the actual people that work for it.

Today I want to explore a little the relationships between employees. Most of us spend a huge amount of our time with a relatively small number of people in an office, site, workshop, factory, or some other institution. 

As we’ve previously explored, part of us is subsumed into the collective identity of the organisation itself. Without a body of its own the legal person of the organisation has to somehow hijack, co-opt or utilise our physical bodies to fulfil its purpose. This purpose might be held and defined elsewhere, by a different group of people (the board or investors), with a very different relationship to the organisation. In this weird symbiotic relationship the organisation also gives us some sense of our own purpose and identity (“I am a manager / engineer / cleaner ….”, and “I work for ….”).

But what about our relationships with those we work with? The language around that changes, and in doing so can be seen to describe some changing dynamics in the workplace. Sometimes it can be quite possessive and hierarchical (“my boss”, ‘my department”). At other times it can be more collegiate (“my colleague”, “my team mates”).

One term that is frequently used is “member of staff”. Staff has a slightly murky etymology but seems to derive from the German stab: meaning “a group of military officers that assists a commander”. This would indicate a more subservient role. But that meaning may itself derive from the idea of the wooden staff or baton as a symbol of authority, which might indicate a higher level of status. In practice however I think “the staff” tends to be used by more senior people when talking about the rank and file. 

“Team” also has a Germanic origin and denoted a group of animals harnessed together to pull a load. The modern sense of a “group of people acting together” did not emerge from this until the 16th century.

“Colleague” on the other hand has a Latin and French derivation meaning “with, together”. These days it seems to be moving from describing someone you work with within your organisation, to someone who is in a similar line of work but in a different organisation, for instance someone you might be working in partnership with.

As Shared Assets has become less hierarchical, I tend not to use “staff” anymore but I do talk about people I work with within the organisation as “colleagues”. Increasingly though I use “team” and “team members”, although as I type this I am remembering that we still have a “Staff Handbook”!

Street art, London

Other formulations suggest other types of human dynamics that may or may not be appropriate or desirable in the workplace. 

Over recent years I’ve increasingly heard people refer to their “work wife”, “work husband” or “work spouse”. In its modern form this has been said to describe “a special, platonic friendship with a work colleague characterised by a close emotional bond, high levels of disclosure and support, and mutual trust, honesty, loyalty, and respect”. Even this has older and more dubious origins. Said to have originated with Gladstone (British Prime Minister in the late 19th century), the term “office wife” was popularised in the 1930s when it denoted a relationship of sub-ordinance or subservience, at a time when, for women, the professional role of secretary was often blurred with that of personal servant to their male bosses. 

Despite working together for twelve years I don’t think I would ever refer to Kate as my “work wife”. We did however manage to end up as “Mum and Dad” figures when Shared Assets was a team of 5 and we stumbled into an accidental family dynamic, something that can easily happen when you are operating in a small group. Recreating family dynamics in the workplace isn’t unusual, some organisations even brag about it, but it can be pretty toxic. 

We tend to just assume that we know what it means to be colleagues, but in fact it can be a confusing relationship, perhaps particularly for someone starting out in their working life. Unless you are a member of a chartered profession of some kind there often isn’t much in the way of guidance about what it means to “be professional”. 

A young colleague recently shared in a team meeting that they were struggling to understand the expectations of relationships in the workplace. “Are we friends?” they asked. 

After some thought my response was that we might be friends but that the parts of our relationship that were about friendship were likely to take place outside of work, even in a workplace that talks about “bringing you whole self to work” and creates spaces for sharing and supporting our individual wellbeing. In a wellbeing meeting I might share that I was having personal issues that were impacting on my focus or energy at work, and I might ask for support to manage that. But with the same people in the pub after work I might share the details of those personal issues with them. In the wellbeing meeting we are colleagues. In the pub the same individuals might be friends. It’s not unreasonable to find these shifts confusing. 

In the shift towards less hierarchical, more self-managing, organisations it feels like we need to work with intention to create new forms of relationships, not just with the legal person of the organisation, but between all of the corporate human bodies that inhabit it. In creating new relationships of mutual accountability and shifting leadership we might need new terms that are less rooted in relationships and histories of service, subservience or family dynamics.

If you have experience of weird or shifting workplace dynamics - or the language used to describe them - please drop us a voicenote here. We’d love to hear from you!