Let's have more fun at work (part 2 of 2)
Some more excerpts from Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously) by Bree Groff
Last week, I started sharing excerpts from this excellent book – Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously) by Bree Groff. Check out part 1 of 2 here.
In the second half of the book, here’s what stood out to me, along with some reflections:
There’s a lot of debate about whether your coworkers can really be your friends. I suppose it depends on your definition of friend. I don’t expect my colleagues to know me like my closest life-long friends, but I also don’t think that means they’re not my friends. I like them. I care about them. I know at least some things about their lives. I’d help them if they needed me. I want to spend time with them. And I do spend time with them—quite a lot sometimes. That’s friendship enough for me!
I have spent a lot of time grappling with this question. In every single place I’ve worked, I’ve ended up making friends. Often, they become friends not just at work but also outside of work. When I was working at a startup, I became really close friends with a few of my coworkers. After leaving, I wondered if that was too much friendship for work and thought I’d give it a different approach at my next job.
I knew that it would be impossible for me to work alongside people that I didn’t at least know something about. Just as Bree writes, I also do want to enjoy spending time with them. Thus far in my current role, I have indeed made friends that fit the definition above. The contrast between my first few weeks (when everyone was a relative stranger) and now really brings this into light: It makes a significant difference in how I feel about my day to day. I’m a lot more motivated and excited to go to work when I know the people with whom I work.
So although you can follow all kinds of advice about how to pick a career or job (e.g., pick the work you love, pick the job you’re most skilled at, pick a job with growth opportunities, pick the highest-paying job), my advice is this: figure out who you like hanging around, and then go work with them.
Because you should like the people you spend your days with.
Now, while solid advice, I’m also unsure how actionable it is. Everyone I’ve met in an interview has seemed pretty nice… Instead, I’ve always been a strong proponent of researching the culture of a given workplace before joining. However, this sort of research can be quite nebulous—it’s largely based on other people’s anecdotes. At the end of the day, it’s highly subjective.
The one thing that I’ve found to be somewhat more reliable is asking friends and friends of friends about their experiences. I trust that if someone I respect and enjoy collaborating with has gone to a given workplace and enjoys it, then I’m likelier to also enjoy the culture there.
If the work you have people doing is inherently fun and the team genuinely enjoys spending time with each other, you don’t have to mandate shit.
When I worked in startup land, we grappled with this debate a lot. We understood the fundamental tenet but there were many not-so-fun tasks that had to be done in order to grow the business. We instead approached the problem by trying to make sure each person had a portion of their time that was spent on fun tasks to balance out the other stuff. We were able to make it fun-ish at least some of the time, and I’d like to believe that helped positively shape the team experience.
On this topic though—something that Bree didn’t cover in this chapter is the side effects of having a very close team. For us, as the team grew closer and started to care deeply for one another, it introduced a host of different challenges. For one, it made a lot of debates and arguments deeply personal. It also made it harder for leadership to make tough decisions because everyone felt like they should have an equally-weighted say in the decision, even when that did not make sense.
I’ve noticed the absence of this dynamic now that I work in a much larger company. It’s not to say that people aren’t kind and friendly with one another, but rather that the level of closeness isn’t uniformly deep across the company. As a result, when contentious decisions are made or specific individuals have a bone to pick about how something works, the frustrations are aired and sometimes addressed… But not in a way that creates disruption for the entire team, as was the case at the startup. It’s an interesting contrast and maybe a lot of it stems from the size/stage of the company. For those who’ve experienced both types of workplaces, I’m curious if you’ve also seen similar trends. (Drop me a note in the comments!)
If you know you will occasionally have to eat into your people’s non-business hours, then you’d better give some business hours back.
This piece of advice resonated deeply. The best managers I’ve had thus far in my career have always done this. I’ve always tried to pass this on when managing teams as well. That said, I also know there are many otherwise-great managers who struggle to do this despite their best intentions. And they might just be the majority of managers you’ll encounter out there. I believe that in order to thrive at work, you need to draw this boundary for yourself at appropriate moments. If no one else is setting the boundary for you, you should take it upon yourself to do so!
The best strategy is to always believe your people are good. Good and misunderstood maybe. Good and in the wrong role. Good and overwhelmed. Good and feeling insecure. Good and lost. Good and without the right skills. It just takes an honest, loving conversation to figure out which it is. Once you know, you can do one of two things:
1. Repair the rift
2. Fire them, with loveSometimes you might help them find a better fit in a role elsewhere in the organization. Other times, it’s just not going to work, and that’s okay. […] But if you know in your bones it’s just not going to work, then gather the most generous severance you can and cut the person loose to find a role that’s better for them. You owe it to that person, and to the rest of the team who has likely been picking up that person’s slack.
As I wrote last week, sometimes I read passages that are just incredibly eloquent at capturing sentiments I’ve had before. I don’t have anything to add here—simply wanted to highlight it.
Outside of the ER, most urgency is made up—by us. We decide to do quarterly business reviews, to set internal deadlines, and to promise 24-hour turnarounds on who knows what. Sure, sometimes these things are helpful forcing functions, but more often we make ourselves crazy with them, and the amount of actually brilliant work we do suffers because of it.
This concept was quite similar to the one two quotes above, about drawing boundaries for yourself. Again, it resonated deeply. Draw these boundaries for yourself—define what is or isn’t reasonable. And as a responsible employee, carve out time for deep, brilliant, thoughtful work alongside the day-to-day craziness of keeping a business running.
“In hard times, urging people to stay positive doesn’t boost their resilience. It denies their reality.” […] Dr. Becky Kennedy shares the phrase “two things are true” to describe how you can validate the feelings of those around you, while not denying the simple facts of the situation. That can sound like this:
“We can be proud of what we accomplished this week and never want to repeat that intensity ever again.”
I really liked the two quotes shared here as they encapsulated a lot of my past frustrations with leaders and myself when in a leadership role. This feels like a good rule of thumb to keep handy for tough situations, and it’s as much a reminder for myself as a PSA for everyone else here.
Finally, I wanted to close the newsletter with two quotes that sum up so much of what the book conveyed to me. Firstly:
The trouble with work is that it can be greedy. Sometimes you may work too much because that’s what the job requires. Other times it might be because you find it fun and even addicting. But either way, there’s a cost, and it can’t be avoided.
When you overwork, you underlive.
And secondly:
Purpose is a tool, and just like any tool, it can be used for good or for evil. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell if purpose is helping you find meaning, or if it’s stabbing you in your sleep. The truth is I don’t have a good litmus test to help you tell good purpose from stabby purpose. I, myself, just listen to my bones.