Surely everyone starts to ask this question sooner or later. Usually, this problem is faced by those who have already changed at least a couple of jobs. They notice that often the people with whom you were in good relations at work seem to evaporate outside of it. From this friendship comes some kind of temporary, in other words, empty. But is friendship necessary at work then at all, if after its change they immediately forget about you.

How to understand whether to make friends in a team?

To get an answer, several important factors need to be considered: your goals, the work environment, and the situation in the team, as well as the type of management that your leadership advocates.

• If your goal at work is to climb the career ladder as quickly as possible, and you will not disdain any methods for this, then no one will be sincere friends with you and somehow support you. Nobody, even the management, will have a positive attitude to unscrupulous and stubborn careerists at any job because it is not blind and sees well the methods and ways to achieve your goals. Friendship in this case is not your strong point.

• If you work at your own pace, like the vast majority of ordinary people. If at work you do not intend to become the number one star and are yourself, then people will reach out to you and accept you into the team, they will be happy to be friends with you.

Friendship in a team: “pros” and “cons“

Friendship is good for support, mutual assistance, and relative efficiency, it automatically speeds up many processes, makes work pleasant, and at times fun. In other words, your work will not be a hard labor, even if your boss is the most notorious dictator – your friends will support and help you in difficult times.

But friendship also has disadvantages, such as a one-sided game. Often many, out of friendship, shift their responsibilities to another. Surely many have come across the phrase “not in the service, but in friendship” or “help with old friendship.” This phenomenon is very often observed among bosses and their deputies, as a rule, a subordinate in the rank of “friend” performs, in addition to his own, part of the duties of others.

According to most managers, the most effective atmosphere is between neutral and friendly, when people are friendly enough to each other, but remain vigilant. Ideally, this is what you should strive for. But the question is how to be friends with a colleague in these systems and is it even necessary to be friends with someone at work? In this case, you need to have friends, otherwise you run the risk of feeling loneliness in the team or even becoming a black sheep, which they will try to “drain” if possible – and this is also not very good.