worst career advice I gotšµ some tea #46
Spoiler: it was don't make friends at work!
Itās July but I am already starting to get a bit nostalgic about summer.
Summer has not really summer-ed too much in London. It feels more like a light-weight yoga class you know cannot count as a workout but still makes you feel good, and less like a hard-core cardio class whose memory will leave you fully satisfied when you dig into your sweat treat later.
Still as per my summer traditions, I have made a few trips out to SoHo cladded in my linen (albeit not without my jacket) and captured the highly competitive seats out on the street to sip sparkling drinks.
Being in the area makes me miss my old gig.
No wait. Let me get this right, it makes me miss my old work besties.
Everytime I pass the corner pub of my old job, I canāt help but play a mashed-up slide show of the all the times we stood outside after work talking random shiz. I have been regularly texting with a few of them lately, and it just made me realizeā¦
One of the worst career advice I have gotten isā¦.donāt make friends at work.š
I have found some of my closest girlfriends at work. Also, I would have been pretty screwed stuck along in a foreign country during the pandemic IF I didnāt have work friends.
Like it or not, but people we work closest with sometimes can gauge our mood and spot burnout signals sooner than friends and family. Great colleagues help create safe space for you to show up, to rant, and at times shield you from yourself.
Read all the career advice columns, and you will always find a flavour of find people you like to work with.
So if I were to reframe that advice I would say
Donāt try to be best friends with everyone at work. šāāļø
I have people-pleasing tendencies that were in an overdrive early in my career. I invested a lot of energy in 1:1 relationships.
There are a couple of things that go wrong with this strategy
It takes a lot of your emotional energy. As humans, we have limited emotional friend energy, and if you want to care for a larger group, you borrow from your other bucket.
It makes it harder to have the difficult conversations - which are part & parcel of any job.
It gives people the liberty of intruding in your personal life, making it harder to separate work-life and have any semblance of balance.
If you are best friends with everyone, you are best friends with no one. (Sorry, I donāt make the rules.)
But then what if I really want people in my team to like me and know that I care about them?
Still possible.
Being myself has helped me.
I am usually the first person to leave a dinner/party because I like to be home early. Everyone on my team knows it - and I have bonded with fellow homebodies teammates on this.
I like to constantly check-in on people around me. I am the same with fam and friends - and so I make no exceptions at work. I love sharing how my day to day is going with my team, and treat all things they tell me with utmost care.
ā¦where I differentiate is I am now comfortable intentionally taking a step back if I find myself spending an overhead of emotional energy that I didnāt intentionally sign up for.
Taking your time building these relationships at work also help. There is no need to hurry into sharing all your life and details.
Building that shared work trauma first is usually a safer route.
Just kidding. Not.
What have your experiences been with work besties/ friends at work? Would your recommend?šµ
š Reading
Currently making my way, very slowly, through this book - it feels like the writing smells of an old library. Itās a slow paced meandering set of observations on running a bookshop and loving reading and writing. I had no idea a book could do this!
I also really enjoyed finding and reading through
- esp her piece on I Regret Whatās In My Camera Roll. ās writing on The gifts of 40 is the most solid piece of gold I have in my treasury. ās How I Tamed My Envy seems right out of my drafts, now I am envious!
šŗ Watching
I started watching Being Karl Lagerfeld on Disney+ and have enjoyed 70s Paris. If you are into fashion, and biopic-y stories, you will like it!
š§ Listening
Stumbled upon this podcast on TradWives, Pop Culture, and Feminism on Money with Katie. Listen just hear it out and DM me if you relate.
Talk next week,
Chhavi x
love this and thanks for the mention ā„ļø