Hello, what's up, and welcome back to another episode of the Straight Shooter Recruiter podcast. I'm your host, Emily Durham, and if you don't know me, my goal is to help you thrive. And you're nine to five and beyond, and I might sound tired, it's because I just got back from a five hour adventure. It was actually such a good day. So it's a Monday and I'm recording this. It's actually a day off and my friend I was going to say my friend from work, but we have very
much graduated to real life friends. My friend Sandra and I ended up doing like a mini walking food tour. We just had a couple of different spots that we wanted to try, so we tried this new salad place and then we went to go get these like delicious mango tahin smoothies that were so good. Anyways, all in we ended up walking ten kilometers. And I'm telling you this not because I want you to be envious of my food, although
it was really really delicious. I actually felt so inspired to talk about work friendships because I think it's something that is very divisive. A lot of people tend to think about friendships at work as impossible, and even I have said, a lot of the people you think are your friends at work probably aren't and are probably like preying on your downfall in a lot of ways. But as I say that, a bunch of my really really close friends I actually
met through work at various stages in my life. So I wanted to dedicate today's episode to helping you navigate who is a real life friend and who is a work friend, and how to protect yourself from the people that we're not quite sure about yet, because yes, that shit will come up and haunt you. And do not forget to like and subscribe to this show. It's available on all platforms, so I appreciate it wherever you choose to do it.
And one of the best ways you can support this show, and something that means so much to me, is when you share on your social media that you are listening. Because I love seeing y'all do that, and a couple of other housekeeping things. If you have questions you want me to answer in this show, make sure you are clicking the link in the description for
this episode where you can submit your question via a Google form. Plus, if you are just thinking about how much you would love to stick to your boss with a hat that says your future boss, or a hat that says off the clock, or some mugs, or some sweaters and T shirts and long sleeves. I have a super super sweet merch line that has just recently dropped. We had a few items sell out. They are currently back in stock, but I don't suspect they will be for long, so a link
for that will also be in the description. But let's get into this episode. I want to cut the toxic stuff because a lot of people online are automatically going to tell you that your work friends are not your friends. But I think there's an important distinction to be made. Work friends are not friends, they're work friends, and that's where the differentiation is so stink and important.
If you find yourself feeling really gravitated towards a particular group of people at work, maybe you have lunch together all the time, like you have a little group chato on your pals, that's fantastic, But before you start confiding in them your career goals, your personal details, what you think about that
one coworker, what you really think about your boss? I want you to ask yourself, when was the last time we hung out outside of work, Like, really, really ask yourself that question, because if you don't hang out outside of work fairly regularly, and if when you do hang out outside of work, you end up talking about work ninety percent of the time, I'm telling you those are not your friends. Those are people you are friendly
with at work. And it's not to say I want you to be catty or closed off, but it is literally a bad business decision for you to be confiding all of your juicy secrets to people who are not your real life friends, because if they are your work friends, their priority is still themselves. Your real life friends will always prioritize your relationship, your safety, your
confidentiality, all of those wonderful things. But friends that you've met at work and are only really friends with in the context of work will typically throw you under the bus in order for them to get ahead, or perhaps they'll do things you don't agree with in order to not ruffle feathers. There's just so many things that are variable, and the best way to judge whether or not these people are your friends is by like the cadence or how often you're actually
hanging out with them. If you've got a friend where you're like, ah, we're at work, we have a really good time. Should we take it to the next level. Here's what personally has worked for me because a lot of my girlfriends I met at work, Like actually half of my birthday party this past year when I turned twenty seven last October, half of those people I met were from work. And I never suspected that that would be a thing that I do. So here's what I'll say. The best thing
you can do is keep it light and playful. Like I always used to joke with the people I would get along with at work, and I'd say, should we take it to the next level? Should we go steady? Should we take this outside of the office? And that was my icebreaker to try and grab a coffee with someone outside of work, or maybe grab a drink after work. The easiest thing you can do is drop in jokes like that or say something as simple as, oh, what are you doing after
work? Do you want to go in a walk? Or like, what are you doing after work? Can you flower market just opened up? Just bring up something that's of common interest and then position it after work and see how it goes. Sometimes it takes a couple of hangouts for things not to be awkward. And it takes a couple of hangouts to stop talking about work
like. It's not going to feel like an age long friendship or like a lifelong friendship right away, but you do need to give it like a tester period and a bit of a cooling off period just to see how things are actually going to feel for you. My biggest piece of advice is take it slow. Right because with any other friendship you would probably take it slow.
But because this is a friendship where you have met at work and it feels like you know that person, you don't you know that person in the context of work. You don't know them in the context of your personal life. They are two very very very very very different things. So take it slow. Don't tell them all about your shitty boyfriend, don't tell them all about YadA, YadA, YadA. Just be mindful about what you open up about.
And I'm not telling you this to make you cynical. I'm telling you this to protect you, because sometimes we just got to look out for ourselves a little bit. If you're in like your twenties, your thirties, your
forties, and you're looking to make friends at work. I actually think that's an amazing place for you to build out your relationships because if you work at the same company, it's basically guaranteeing that you have some level of common interest, whether it's like the values of your company, the products, blah blah blah. I work in tech, so typically people tend to be like, pretty creative, they're pretty abreast with things happening in like the fintech market,
so we have those common things to talk about. But the best thing you can do is show up as your authentic self and most importantly, show up as someone who is nice to be around. Like, show up with that positive magnetic energy before you go to work tomorrow. Look at yourself in a mirror and repeat after me. And I'm not even joking because I do this all the time. Say you know, whatever positive affirmation sits well with you. But I typically say something like I am magnetic, I am kind,
I am warm and wonderful. People and things always gravitate towards me. Like just something like that, just to remind you that you are fantastic. You can also do things like spruce up your office space because it's a great conversation starter, people might walk by and compliment, like your plant or your funky
mug. Shout out to my mugs because they're really funny. You can also be the kind of person who brings in office treats like cookies, whatever it is, and kind of share it and use that as a connection point because people love food. You can also work in areas where maybe people outside of your teamwork, like perhaps you work a little bit on the engineering floor,
or maybe you sit in a different area at lunch. So there's a lot of different ways you can position yourself, obviously focusing on work, but from a social perspective that make it more easy for these conversations to kick back up. Another thing that is so important is making people feel seen and feel heard, because nobody is going to want to be your friend if they feel like they're just a number. So really like lock eye contact, make people feel
appreciated, use their name, like be that friend. Basically show up as the kind of person you would want to be around, and all of the good things are going to find you. Making friends and your adult ears is so hard because you have a much more defined sense of who you are, and at least for me, I am not willing to compromise when it comes to my friendships, like, you need to enhance my life, make me
happy, make me feel fulfilled. I want to feel excited about the people in my life, and it's a little bit harder to do that the older you get, because you have a much more concrete vision of what that looks like. So you're naturally just using the pool and that's okay. Like it's hard sometimes. When I was twenty one, I would have dozens of people i'd be hanging out with on the weekends. Now I've got like five or six really close friends. So it really does change the way you look at
things and the way you see things. But I don't necessarily think that is a negative. Anyways. I really hope this mini episode was helpful. When you're listening to this, I think I should be in Calgary or London, England. I'm traveling quite a bit in July, so I don't really know. If you're curious, you can check out my ig stories because I'm sure I'll be posting That sounds like something I would do. But honestly, I
cannot thank y'all enough for loving this show. Seeing the show consistently in those top charts means the stinkin world to me. I am so grateful for you, so just thank you. I really really really love you, I really appreciate you. Thank you for making the show what it is. And next week's episode is going to be absolute fire fire, fire heat because I'm going to be answering all of your questions, so that will be an absolute pleasure.
It's a question only episode, so I'm super excited about that. Thank you so much for hanging out with me, and I look forward to seeing you in my next episode next Sunday. How do I always sing up the intro and the otro chow