The Importance of Friendship in Your Work

Having friendships in our lives is so important. You may or may not have been feeling lonely. If you have, you are not alone.

RootsofLoneliness.com provides a wide variety of statistics and data sorted by a variety of demographics. Here is just a very small amount of data according to their site:

Statistics for Generation X (1965-1980)

• Loneliness isn’t unknown to those in Gen X either: 30% of them say they sometimes feel lonely.

• Even worse, 22% of Gen X’ers say they have no close friends.

Statistics for Millennials (1981-1996)

• Loneliness is a well-known feeling to millennials: 73% say they are lonely.

• Other reports show that 30% of millennials are always or often lonely.

Statistics for Generation Z (1997-2012)

• Some reports show that 73% of Gen Z’ers feel lonely sometimes or always.

• In America, 61% of Gen Z’ers feel lonely.

These numbers are quite eye-opening and sad. So many people are feeling alone. I recently heard someone talking about making friends as adults. Many of us assume that everyone already has their core friends and there isn’t room for you there. Clearly, by these statistics, most of adults are making that assumption and are lonely. It seems safe to say there is, in most cases, space for you to connect and possibly have a friendship.

In life, you may have different types of friends. There may be childhood friends, neighbor friends, family friends, colleague or work friends, church or club friends, close friends, etc… Your friendships may last a long time or may just be for a season.

When speaking about the workspace, it is not necessary that you have friendships at work. Perhaps you are an employee, and you don’t feel accepted or connected with your co-workers. Or perhaps you work alone and therefore you don’t have colleagues. You aren’t necessarily at work to make friends. However, if you can connect with other professionals that are supportive in the industry it can certainly benefit you both.

Your personal friends may not quite understand your work topics of conversation. While they can still be supportive, that support may only go so far. You can have a deeper understanding and level of support through an industry friend. Once you have developed a relationship with these colleagues, determining they are trustworthy and aligned with you and your values, you can approach them for topics of concern, contemplate ideas, share wins, celebrate each other, and more.

With some of the colleague friendships I have developed over the years, we have leaned on each other through life circumstances to help cover our clients, trusting neither side would be permanently taking the clients. We have referred clients to each other that were either not a good fit for ourselves or for the clients looking for services we didn’t offer. We have helped each other through moments of difficult clients or situations that only another professional would truly understand. These are just a few of the ways we have been able to support each other.

At B.A.B.E., we believe in community over competition. There will always be more than enough for everyone. We encourage you to reach out and connect with other professionals local to you. Make the first move to see if you can create new friendships.

Happily, we will always be a support to you as well. In honor of International Friendship Day, we thank you for being a part of our community. We want nothing more than for you to be happy and to succeed. Feel free to reach out any time to let us know how we can support you more. 🩵