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Key points
- Career well-being is seen as important in a person's life.
- People have more influence of others than they may realize.
- Innovation in the workplace may come from others around us.
Common mistake #1: Underestimating oneself.
The area is personal influence.
Vanessa Bohns, author of You Have More Influence Than You Think (2021) and a professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, proposes that people don’t give themselves enough credit in the personal influence department. Their initial mistake, in her mind, is generally underestimating how much attention others give them.
The influence doesn’t have to be in grand pronouncements. She wrote, “just by being present—by ‘coming to the table,’ so to speak—you can have a big impact on other people, even if you never say a word."
Her point led me to wonder about the creative influence of friendships at work, a place where many Americans spend substantial time.
Career well-being is critical to overall satisfaction. Rath and Harter (2010) pointed out that this type of well-being may, in fact, be one of the top priorities to think about when sustaining good health over time.
Yet it goes further when friendships are added to the mix. The question of whether a person has a "best friend" at work is one that some managers would find “irrelevant or absurd” (Waldinger & Schulz, 2023). They added that, when it comes to job searching, the possibility of work relationships isn’t on the list of commonly asked questions.
But according to Rath and Harter (2010), having a best friend at work predicted work outcome more than merely having a friend or good friend. Those with best friends at work have higher overall well-being and produce a higher caliber of work. They are also seven times more likely to feel engaged in their roles.
One investigation of workplace friendship and creativity found promising results. In a study of Omani service sector employees, Durrah (2023) found a positive link between friendship prevalence and innovative behavior, leading to a conclusion of adopting practices that “enhance interpersonal relationships, make true friendships, remove any difficulties in its path, and pave the way for a psychologically safe environment to ensure the innovative behavior of employees."
Bohns saw something similar. “Managers are always seeking formal ways to boost innovation in the workplace, when so often innovation comes out of a casual conversation with a friend off the clock,” she wrote me in an email.
Clifton (2022) likened it to musicians jamming for the sheer enjoyment of it. In sharing a common goal, great things can be achieved by workers. The feeling that musicians get from the jam session is something that people want to feel in the workplace, or, as described by Clifton, satisfaction in creating things and having fun at the same time.
That next creative idea by your friend at work? Maybe you’ll have more influence on it than you think.
References
Bohns, V. (2021). You have more influence than you think: How we underestimate our power of persuasion, and why it matters. W.W. Norton & Company.
Clifton, J. (2022, October 7). The power of work friends. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/10/the-power-of-work-friends
Durrah, O. (2023). Do we need friendship in the workplace? The effect on innovative behavior and mediating role of psychological safety. Current Psychology, 42, 28597–28610. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03949-4
Rath, T., & Harter, J. (2010). Well being: The five essential elements. Gallup Press.
Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The good life: Lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness. Simon & Schuster.
