You're Surrounded By A Goldmine Of Relationships At Work That You Aren't Building
Guest Post from Kathy Wu Brady: Start valuing and investing in your work relationships to grow your impact, career, and long-term happiness.
The nature of work has changed dramatically in the last half century. From people working at the same company for most of their career to average stints ranging from 1-3 years.
From in-the-office every day to fully-remote to hybrid and return-to-office chaos in the last few years.
From infrequent restructurings and downsizing to annual and sometimes quarterly cuts that are more predictable than when you’ll have your next performance review.
All of this has led to a distrust of companies and of colleagues. Competition feels rampant, and fear often drives employee behaviors towards secrecy and poor communication.
And yet, one fact remains true throughout all of this change:
You will spend more time working than on any other single activity in your life.
Here’s the math:
168 hours in a week - 49 hours of sleep = 119 hours per week awake
Accounting for a modest amount of time cooking, cleaning, eating, working out, commuting, laundry, showering, and other basics each week (not including caregiving), let’s say 28 hours, then you’re only left with 91 hours awake per week
40 hours of work per week is almost 50% of that time
But who works only 40 hours?!?!
Most of us spend way more time at work than we do with our loved ones or friends. This doesn’t just last for a few years - it lasts for decades.
Most people work for at least 40 years before they retire - that’s a conservative estimate.
Some more math:
40 hours of work per week x 50 weeks x 40 years = 80,000 hours
That’s more than 9 years of your life!
(50 hours of work per week would mean 100,000 hours!?!?)
All of this time spent in the workplace doesn’t just mean years of slogging and striving to earn your paycheck.
It also means the opportunity to meet dozens if not hundreds of people. These people can have an incredible impact on you and your experience.
They matter in your learning and development, they matter in your ability to hit your goals, and they matter in your career growth.
Perhaps most importantly, they matter in your happiness.
A generous colleague can rapidly accelerate your learning and growth
When I joined NBC to manage the operations of their stealth video syndication unit (what would become hulu), I had zero experience in media, zero experience in video, and zero experience directly managing a team.
Yet, I had less than 2 months to build a 24x7 team to ingest and quality check thousands of pieces of content into a barely functioning video streaming database. It was slightly organized chaos.
I hired my boss’s girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, and a variety of other “connections” to fill our gaps quickly.
But even before I could hire anyone, I needed to understand what it meant to ingest and transcode video.
On my second day on the job, I was fortunate that when I asked for a primer on digitizing video, my colleague, Pranav, a senior engineer, who had his fair share of urgent tasks, spent 4 hours that night, whiteboarding the process to help me learn.
He patiently explained every step and answered all of my questions, some of which I know must have been inane.
In about 4 hours, I learned all of the in’s and out’s that then became the foundation for several months of rapid growth. This critical knowledge ultimately led to me being offered a position on the hulu launch management team.
None of that would have happened if I hadn’t asked for help, and if Pranav hadn’t been so generous.
Your performance will be amplified (or nullified) by your work relationships
Throughout my career, the people I worked with either made it much easier (and more fun) to outperform my goals and stand out or made it 10x harder for me to hit goals and increased career risk.
The product leader and analyst who identified the critical lever that would increase revenue by 30% once we knew to focus on it. They found it and shared it with me, allowing me and my division to exceed our goals for several years as a result.
The technology leader who brainstormed new product ideas with me based on the customer feedback I gathered and together, we pitched the ideas successfully to the partners of our firm and launched the next generation of our product that would double the size of the business.
The business development leader who ignored me and my recommendations, leading to poorly structured partnerships that created operational nightmares and lots of late nights scrambling.
Choosing who you work with isn’t always in your control, but if you find that you aren’t able to achieve a positive working relationship, you should do everything you can to either remove them or yourself from the role.
Neither of you will win if you can’t work well together.
Building strong relationships at work can have a lasting positive impact
A global study by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) found that:
“Interpersonal [work] relationships have a sizeable and significant positive effect on the job satisfaction of the average employee. [Relationships] rank first out of…12 domains of workplace quality in terms of power to explain variation in job satisfaction.”
I was fortunate to build friendships in every organization I joined. Sometimes the relationships were deep and lasting, and other times, they were more fleeting, but all of them were meaningful.
These relationships were what kept me going when the work was difficult.
They were the people who helped me solve problems when I was blocked, cheered me on when I had a win, and commiserated with me when I felt down.
I stayed in each job at least 6 months to 2 years longer than the role was satisfying because of these friendships.
And I have never viewed that as a negative.
The people at work mattered more to me than the job itself.
Creating meaningful work relationships isn’t hard, but you need to do the work
Here is a snapshot of some of the ways you can build valuable, long-term relationships at work:
1. Who you include matters
Think of all of the people you interact with - not just people in your organization, but vendors, partners, and customers - they are all relations that matter, and many may matter even more in the future.
Don’t limit yourself to only senior leaders. The people who are junior today will become senior one day.
Those relationships are often just as important and may be even more important given how long our careers span.
2. Understand what they do and why
It’s much easier to show appreciation and to build connections when you understand why someone’s role exists. This has 3 benefits:
You learn more about how the company functions which can help you navigate operational and strategic situations more deftly
You get more context about their work and what is easy, what is hard, and how you and others can help them
You are better equipped to ask them for help because you understand who and how they impact, influence, and collaborate
3. Ask them about their career journey
Everyone has a story and everyone’s story has the potential to inspire, inform, or influence your own.
Learning about what made someone take a job or make a pivot helps you better understand how to make good choices in your own career.
You can look at their LinkedIn, but a conversation helps add color while giving you a chance to connect more personally.
4. Learn about them as humans, what matters to them, and why
People don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou
Learning about someone as a whole person gives you a window beyond the façade of titles and functions.
And everyone ultimately just wants to feel seen. It can be as simple as asking about their weekend or be as deep as asking them about what inspires them most.
Take the time to do this - you won’t build a relationship in one conversation, so layer these learnings in over time.
And then reference what you learned in the future - their son’s love of skiing or their passion for pottery.
Over time, you’re deeper understanding will create the foundation for a lasting friendship.
5. Brainstorm how you can support each other
The best leaders know that success comes from people growing together and complementing each other.
Take the time to talk about your skills and talents and find out what the other person brings to the table.
Too often we make assumptions about how someone wants to work together — don’t make assumptions.
Talk it out.
Share where you want to grow and have them do the same. When opportunities arise to collaborate, run it by them and find ways they can shine, and so can you.
6. Stay in touch even after you leave
We tell ourselves so many stories about why reaching out to someone after some time has passed is awkward, too mercenary, or straight up annoying.
Most of these are lies that our inner judge tells us to protect us. But really it’s just keeping us small and disconnected.
Most former colleagues I have reconnected with never thought twice about me reaching out. They were simply happy I took the time to think of them.
And those that were annoyed, I never heard from, and that’s OK.
When you hear that inner voice telling you to avoid reaching out, just remind yourself that most of the time, most people are simply trying to survive their life and that they aren’t thinking about you - for better or for worse.
When you reach out, it’s a gift and they will appreciate it.
Do your future self a favor, invest in these valuable relationships now
All of my C-level roles were a result of work relationships I nurtured. Nearly 80% of my clients are all a result of past work relationships.
No matter if you are climbing the corporate ladder, starting your own business, or even if you are seeking to retire, investing in your work relationships is one of the highest returns on investment you can make.
Set aside time this coming week and get started.
About the Author
Kathy Wu Brady is an executive coach and advisor, offering both group and 1:1 coaching. She is a 2x CEO and 2x COO and the author of the Practice & Play newsletter where she shares weekly mini-guides to help you level up your leadership, your mindset and your career.
P.S. If this piece inspired you to build more connections and relationships, Kathy’s next group coaching offering starts on March 7th 2025 - Network Like a Pro: 4-Week Intensive. You can learn more here.
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