Work can be the perfect place to make friends.
Social isolation and loneliness have become wide-spread and a majority of people say they are actively looking for more friends—and in particular—close friends.
A new study of 2,000 adults by Fisherman’s Friend, analyzed by Oxford University’s Dr. Robin Dunbar, clarifies just how much time, how many interactions and how much investment is necessary to make friends and keep them. Spoiler: It’s a lot of energy, and it’s probably more than you think.
Friendship and Wellbeing
Friendships are critical for our health and wellbeing. In an interview, Dunbar said, “There has been a tsunami of medical studies over the last decade showing the single best predictor of your psychological health and welfare and your physical health and welfare is simply the number and quality of those close friendships—that inner core [of about 5 friends].”
Dunbar was made famous for his classic theory that people can maintain meaningful relationships with about 150 others. This is based on brain size, but it’s also based on the amount of time and investment it takes to maintain connections with each other. Within their 150 relationships, the average person has about 5 people who are close friends. According to Dunbar, these are “shoulder to cry on” friends—the people you can really rely on, and with whom you have the deepest relationships.
Friendship Takes Time
The Fisherman’s Friend study found it takes about 34 hours of investment to shift from a more superficial acquaintance to a true friendship. In addition, the average friendship requires about 11 interactions and each one should last about three hours—clearly longer than a cup of tea. With this investment of time, making a friend takes about five and a half months. And this is no small thing in a fast-paced, over-scheduled, time-impoverished world.
But even with the investment necessary, two thirds of people are actively looking to increase the number of people in their inner circle and 58% say they need a good number of friends to feel content. It’s no wonder people are looking for more friends. According to Dunbar, “Lockdown made people rethink a lot of their friendships. and one of the big problems [has been] friendships are very dependent of continued investment of time, so if you aren’t able to see individuals at the requisite rate, they’re just going to slide.” And Dunbar says they slide quickly with a loss of emotional closeness occurring within a couple months if the relationship isn’t maintained.
What about digital? It’s just not the same, and while the impact isn’t as bad for family members, it’s negative for friendships. “For all the wonders of the digital world, zoom isn’t the answer to intimacy. With friends there was something missing, and the physicality of being in the same room together just isn’t there,” says Dunbar.
Work offers moments to build relationships socially and also through working on tasks.
Qualities of Friendship
The Fisherman’s Friend study found certain qualities are most important for friendship. In particular, 61% of respondents believe a sense of humor is an essential ingredient of friendship and 44% say it’s about holding similar values. For 26% friendship is driven by similar interests and activities. People also say friendship is based on being trustworthy (26%) and reliable (23%).
These are characteristics of a good friend, but a best friend requires even more. That kind of friend is someone who is there for you in hard times, according to 17% of respondents and someone who has your back (13%). For 10%, the best friends are also those who can accept you at your worst.
Close Friends and Non-Negotiables
People also tend to build the strongest friendships with those they believe to be most similar to themselves. Dunbar says it takes so long to create a true friendship because you’re looking for seven pillars of friendship—similarities in the following dimensions: the way you speak (dialect), hobbies and interests, religious views, moral views, sense of humor, musical taste and career trajectory.
In addition to positive attributes of friends, there are some traits people won’t stand for in a friendship. Specifically, for 29% lying is a no-go for friendship, and for 25%, spilling secrets will break a friendship. For 25%, failing to be there when they’re needed bodes poorly for friendship.
Work and Friendship
So how do you find friends, make friends and develop relationships? Work offers a great opportunity. In fact, according to research by YouGov, making friends at work is second only to making them in high school or college. There are some good reasons for this.
- Work offers continuity. You get to see colleagues over time. Even if you change jobs relatively frequently, you likely have the opportunity to get to know people over a couple years or over many years—and this provides you with shared experiences and shared reference points. You survived that terrible boss together or tackled that big problem and got through it successfully.
- Work offers both task and relationship interactions. At work, you get to know people through working on projects together, completing tasks, following up and following through. But you also get to know colleagues socially—hearing about their new puppy or comparing notes on college parents’ weekend.
- Work provides a lens on ups and downs. When you see people regularly at work, you also get a perspective on people’s highs and lows. You see them as they’re struggling with a childcare challenge or in the midst of a really tough customer issue. Or you see them on top of the world when their offer is accepted on a new home or when they get the promotion.
- Work provides proximity. With work, you get to see each other frequently and spend time in both structured and unstructured moments. Familiarity tends to breed acceptance and seeing each other more often tends to drive greater depth of relationships.
Work is also fundamentally social. For introverts, it offers natural ways to connect—between meetings or in line for lunch—without having to go to the social mixer for the condo association. For extraverts it provides for a wide variety of people to get to know.
Being in person together helps build relationships.
The Power of Presence
In the office, the opportunity to connect face-to-face is especially powerful. According to Dunbar, in-person contact is unique. “Face to face has a very strong effect. There is something about the face-to-face environment we find much more congenial. And we think it’s partly what psychologists refer to as co-presence—that you’re actually in the same room together.”
Being face-to-face gives us non-verbal cues about friendship—things like tone of voice or phrasing of sentences—and according to Dunbar, some of these cues are tactile as well. For those with whom we’re emotionally closest (about 50 people), we don’t realize how often we pat a shoulder or touch someone’s arm. “These are a low rumble below the surface of the conversation. We don’t notice it, but those are the cues we use for learning about relationships.”
And non-verbal signals are more reliable than language. Dunbar says, “Language is slippery stuff. It’s full of metaphors and ambiguous meanings but physical gestures [and other non-verbal signals] are absolutely truth.”
Shifting Friendship
According to the Fisherman’s Friend study, the longest lasting friendships can endure an average of 29 years. But most friendships last just a couple of years with shifts over time. According to a study by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research friendships tend to turnover regularly. The size of your overall network tends to be rather consistent, but about every seven years it changes, and only 48% of the actual people in your group are the same.
Dunbar agrees that shifts are common. He says, “Relationships change over time. That inner core of 5 tends to have a slow turnover, but the next layer out which includes another 10 people, tends to have a much higher turnover. And we have this imperative to try and keep our numbers up.” Work is the perfect place to meet people and build new relationships over time.
In Sum
People need friends. They are literally lifeblood in terms of physical, cognitive and emotional wellbeing. And work is an important place to make friends and feel a sense of connection and community. Dunbar says it best, “We forget that at our peril, and businesses forget it at their peril.” With loneliness on the rise and wellbeing on the decline, the opportunity today is significant—to reinvent the experience of work so it’s a venue for meaning, community and friendship.