Leadership and Life Essentials: Everyone Needs Their Person - The Hidden Power of Relationships at Work

Have you ever experienced this? Someone on your team hands you their resignation.

Two weeks notice.

Very polite.

You ask, "What happened?" They say, "Eh, everything's fine." They just found something new.

Their exit interview says the same thing, "Good team, good work, eh, no complaints." And frankly, you're a bit shocked.

If everything was fine, why are they leaving? Sometimes the answer comes down to who they had at work or who they didn't.

So think back.

Who did that person talk to? Who did they eat lunch with? Who would they have gone to on a hard day? If you can't answer that, you might have found the reason.

Through my work in education, I know that a great indicator of student success and engagement is whether they feel there's one adult in the building who genuinely cares about them, someone they can talk to.

And they just need one person.

It might be their homeroom teacher, the librarian, the coach, a caretaker who says good morning to them by name every day.

When a student has that person, they show up differently.

They ask for help sooner, they're more likely to come to school on the hard days, and when something's wrong, someone notices.

Adults aren't so different.

We just get better at hiding it.

Gallup has been asking employees for years whether they had a best friend at work.

Only about thirty percent say yes.

But those who do are seven times as likely to be engaged in their jobs.

Those who don't have about a one in twelve chance of being engaged.

One in twelve.

Picture a team of twelve people, and only one of them is really showing up.

I'll be honest, when I first heard about the question, I got stuck on the word best.

I'm not sure I've ever had a best friend at work.

Good friends, yeah.

People I like and trusted, yeah.