Friends and Collaborators: How an Afternoon at a Pub in Ireland Taught me the Difference

Work friendships have been getting a lot of attention this Fall, and deservedly so.  Although developing and maintaining those relationships is becoming more challenging, the evidence is pretty clear: people who have friends at work are more satisfied and perform better at their jobs.  But there’s another important relationship worth understanding as we grow in our careers and need to respond to challenges.  That’s our relationships with collaborators, the people we engage to make the big changes.  Good storytelling is designed to fast-track both types of relationships by highlighting common ground, but just what that common ground is makes all the difference.  While friends have a shared history, collaborators have a shared vision for the future. 

The difference between these relationships as well as the value of each came into focus for me when I was at the National University of Ireland, Galway.  When I started my graduate program in theater, I was in a foreign country with no friends but finding the people who caught my references to The Simpsons gave me a place to start.  I don’t remember exactly how the friendships with my classmates Cormac and Paul began, but I know that sharing a sense of humor with them helped me acclimate to a new situation pretty fast. 

Friendships are great for helping employees and particularly new hires get up to speed and feel comfortable and confident in their work environment.  And while it doesn’t take much to seed a friendship (it turns out human beings want to make friends), learning more personal similarities in our backgrounds and our values make those relationships even stronger.  When I teach storytelling workshops the stated goal is to learn skills to be better communicators, but the immediate value of the workshop is the relationships that participants build with each other through crafting and sharing stories with the group. 

Friends make you feel safe because, as long as you’re being honest, the past proves your character.  Your relationship is based on history–what you’ve both already done.   In the case of my friends Paul and Cormac, the fact that I had watched a certain collection of TV shows and movies were evidence that I both valued humor and shared a sense of humor with them.  I had already done the work to prove I shared their value and could relax around them.

But as you advance in your career to managerial positions you need to be able to motivate people to change, sometimes quickly.  Often a workforce that’s happy with the way things are sees a major change as a threat to that happiness or comfort.  Friendships are great at helping people feel stable and comfortable, but when change becomes necessary it’s time to nurture collaborators.  To do that requires a focus on the future. 

Towards the end of my graduate program, I was in a pub with Paul and Cormac engaged in an animated conversation about our hopes for post-graduation.  In the middle of the conversation Paul set down an empty glass and stepped outside for a few minutes for what I assumed was a smoke break.  When he returned, he informed us that he had been on the phone with a bar down the street.  He had reserved the stage in their basement for a week of lunchtime performances in two months and told me I had better start writing a play for us to perform.  Suddenly I realized that we weren’t just friends anymore, we were collaborators.  Without really being aware of it we had switched over from comparing the movies, TV shows and plays that we loved and hated (our shared past) and had begun talking about our dreams for the future.  As it turned out, the three of us wanted many of the same things.  The stories we were telling each other about wanting to put something on a stage–any stage–formed a vision of a future that we were now inspired to act on. 

For me and my friends this switch happened organically, but at work it’s possible to speed things up by intentionally building a story that emphasizes a shared goal.  Obviously, this is easier when a company both lives its values and hires people who share those values.  The challenge is that, while friendships focus on values that have already been proven, collaborative relationships focus on proving your shared values moving forward.  You need to act to prove yourself to collaborators, which can be scary because there’s the potential for failure.  This is why stories that build collaborative relationships require you to both identify shared values and clearly map out how the proposed changes will lead to a future where those values are realized.  If you can do that, change doesn’t just become possible, it becomes exciting. 

That excitement is what led Paul, Cormac and myself to begin producing plays as Catastrophe (a theater company we named in the spirit of inviting bad luck with the hopes of avoiding it).  We performed many plays together, and because we all valued putting bizarre, comedic plays on stage, we did whatever it took to make that happen.  We handed out flyers wearing borrowed costumes, performed in parking garages, filled the trunk of Paul’s Fiat with rocks, and persuaded busking bagpipers to hold their fire until our play was over.  If friends help you relax, collaborators energize you to be brave and accomplish big things.   

Collaborators are essential when you’re taking on big, dynamic challenges but there’s another perk of building collaborative relationships: those collaborators often become your close friends later on.  Eventually Paul, Cormac and I began focusing on different values and objectives–our stories diverged.  I moved back to the states to be closer to my family and focus on writing and they found different goals to pursue, but because of our shared adventure making scrappy theater in Ireland, we have a strong base for a friendship that’s lasted many years despite a literal ocean between us.  Our collaboration inspired us to overcome obstacles and build something new, but it also gave us each the opportunity to prove our character in a way that quoting movies over a few pints at the end of the day never could. 

If you’re interested in talking about ways that your storytelling can develop both work friends and collaborators, drop me a line at josh@sharedstoryconsulting.com