How much have you thought about friendship? Probably a lot actually.
Yet how often have you thought about it as it relates to the ways in which friendships influence and sustain all the other areas of your life?
I just finished Vital Friends by Tom Rath, which offers a lot of insights and recommendations about how to improve the overall quality of life through the development of the quality of your relationships. The premise of the book is that much of leadership development or management studies either swings to the extremes of individualism (self-development) or macro-sociology (groups). Rath argues that the greatest influence on your life as a whole may be in the area of one on one relationships. I think there’s a balance of perspective needed between self, relationship, and group insights, but I agree that one on one relationships often gets neglected given its significance in life and the workplace.
The focus really is on relationship quality and how it affects personal quality of life, marriage, general social life, and the workplace. Rath offers some great research on the ways in which quality one on one relationships in one’s life dramatically impacts all of those areas. But the key insight is that research shows dramatic quality of life increases when you have at least 4 vital friends in your workplace.
Half of the book is an exploration of some research that narrowed down different categories of types of friends that offer different things through friendships. The purpose being to help people assess their own capacity as a friend as well as identify who in our lives gives to us in different meaningful ways. The types of friends are described as: Builder, Champion, Collaborator, Companion, Connector, Energizer, Mind Opener, and Navigator. They are helpful labels that do describe the value that different people give to others at different times, but not very rigid or narrow in their essence. We can function in different ways with different people at different times – but we likely have a bent. I probably function most in my friendships as a Collaborator, Mind Opener, and Navigator.
There’s some good content that could serve in your role as a coach or developer of people as well as just for self-leadership in the area of relationships and friends. I agree with the heart of the book in that we need to help develop people in the area of relationships because that is what life is built around – and not just equip people in terms of self-mastery.
For people in my organization familiar with the 4-R leadership model, this is a good resource as it relates to part of the first “R” – the relationships of a leader.
