Are Strong Employee Friendships Profitable?
On a cold winter morning in 2018, I stumble up to a house on a hill. My shoes shuffled through the icy Maryland snow. I was about to interview Michael MacCoby, father of leadership studies at Harvard and Oxford. He’s a legend in the space — superstar professor, founder of an academic discipline, popular writer, consultant to public company executives and business leader across five decades.
We nestled between a colorful cave of papers and books in his home’s basement office. Tucked close, I asked him the question I’d been gnawing on all morning …
What is the future of Leadership Studies?
His prediction shocked me. He said our whole orientation around leadership will change. No more lone narratives of Gates, Musk, Sandberg.
The future of leadership studies will be focused on teams — dynamic duos, trios, or quartets– that actually drive organizations. It’s the story of Jobs-Ives-Cook, Gates-Allen, and Sandberg-Moskovitz-Zuckerberg. Leadership Studies will focus on the making of a conglomerate, the forming of complementary skills and perspectives that blend in beautiful alchemy. We may begin to see our own success in deeper interdependence.
A question remains. How much should companies prioritize office relationships?
Emerging research suggests the answer is a lot. Disconnection harms productivity and the bottom line. Research points to the deleterious affect of loneliness on decision making, stamina, psychological safety, amongst other factors. Lonely people tend to be more depressed and anxious. Creating ties between teammates during the work week can improve people’s lives and productivity.
Others even claim employers should support employees’ home relationships. Just listen to Bob Chapman (runs a $2.5B company) talk about measuring the divorce rate of his employees:
Research on office friendships is inconclusive. A couple studies found higher employee performance associated with more office friendships, yet at the cost of more emotional exhaustion.
But our work relationships clearly matter.
So, how do leaders move beyond cliche ice breakers and cheesy retreats? Products are coming. OrgAnalytix uses AI to model inclusion across the organization. Others like People First and Starling Trust Sciences are mapping where trust is strong and broken between teammates. I predict these technologies won’t take hold. It’s very difficult to change behavior through an app. There will always be a line item with a clearer payoff.
There’s one industry where connection is a life or death priority: Health.
NEXT POST: How Healthcare Can End Loneliness
