Work friendships are so important, and you may not fully realize it until years later. How could they not be, when you spend nine or ten hours a day with people, day after day and year after year? They become something like family.
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You may have lunch together or occasionally meet for drinks after work. You may share bosses, coworkers, or projects, or you may not. You might come from different departments and find one another through a cross-team initiative or simply discover a connection that grows into something special.
No matter the circumstances, you come to care for one another. And if you are lucky, those friendships endure even after one or more of you leave the company.
Today, I am met a small group of former Johnson & Johnson colleagues for lunch, people I have not worked with in years, yet still consider close friends. Our connection has outlived projects, reorganizations, and even my own departure from the company in 2008. That continuity is what has made me think more deeply about what makes work friendships endure.
As I reflect on these friendships, both the ones gathering today and one that has lasted more than three decades, I’m reminded of what truly makes relationships endure. It isn’t proximity, titles, or shared projects. It’s mutual respect, the kind that makes you genuinely value one another as people. It’s emotional safety, that feeling that you can be yourself without being judged and it’s repeated choice — the willingness to keep showing up for one another, even when life, careers, and geography pull you in different directions.
Jobs end. Companies change. People move or even retire. Still, the right friendships don’t disappear, they evolve. And in that evolution, there is something deeply meaningful and profoundly human.
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