The Many Benefits of Strong Peer Relationships
Ideally everyone in your plant works together like best friends. You have fun and you laugh, and you achieve great results together. Having strong friendships with peers provides a really good work experience and it is beneficial for your employer too. Peer friendships are safe zones for open and honest conversations, and this includes brainstorming, collaboration, fun, laughter and even occasional venting. You see, in a peer-to-peer friendship, no one has positional power. These work-based friendships really help drive results because the friendship strips away all politics, posturing and unnecessary obstacles so you can quickly get things resolved and move on. Additionally, doing fun activities with peers outside of work is a great way to strengthen those friendships.
In addition to friendships, you may have rather neutral workplace relationships, maybe you call these people - colleagues, associates or coworkers. I’m sure you have many peers whereas you have this rather neutral-type relationship. You don’t consider them friends and you don’t consider them adversaries either.
The people you consider your coworkers are probably very competent at their jobs. You like them as people however you know that not everyone at work needs to be your best friend. And that’s okay, but you do want to develop strong working relationships with your coworkers because it will make your work more effective and enjoyable. The stronger the relationships, the better the results, and this is the case in any team environment - work or sports.
As you have opportunities to talk to your coworkers, try to find some shared interests or discuss things that may just interest them. Maybe they have a picture on their desk of their family, or a motorcycle or a lake house. Whatever it is, it gives you the opportunity to get to know them a little bit. Ask them about things that seem to interest them and you are well on your way to a stronger relationship.
Now to demonstrate why it is important to get to know your peers, let me run through an example. Let’s say one of your employees goofed-up and made a costly error. Quality Assurance personnel caught the error and they informed their supervisor and the QA Supervisor informed you about it. The error is going to cost the company $8000. You have a solid informal relationship with the QA Supervisor. So when the QA Supervisor comes to you about this quality issue, your informal relationship helps in the communication because there is an established level of trust and mutual respect.
However, a few days later when the Finance Supervisor, someone you barely know, calls and asks you about the $8000 cost variance, you put up a wall and don’t fully explain the situation because you haven’t yet established a relationship of trust with them. You see in this example, that by not having an informal relationship, it got in the way of doing effective business. Having some level of informal relationship helps when issues arise. So in this example, if you had a good relationship with the Finance Supervisor, you wouldn't be talking to the "Finance Supervisor" anymore, you would just be talking to your teammate Bob about the cost variance issue. So to effectively communicate with peers, it is always a good idea to get to know a little bit about them as a person, and for you to share a little bit about yourself too. When you see a colleague beyond just their title and more as a real live person, then communication becomes much more effective.
When it comes to peer relationships, make friends and build relationships. You will have a more enjoyable and productive work experience and your company will benefit by experiencing improved results too!
NOTE: Discrimination and harassment are judged by the perception of the receiver of the event. There are no clearly defined lines when it comes to these things. To avoid company and personal lawsuits it is always best to avoid dating coworkers and having close friendships with your employees. Talk to HR to learn more about your company's position on these topics.
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