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“It’s just work.”

I cringe recalling how many times I said that to my friends—or myself—during my first decade in the workforce. It was always a well-intended piece of advice, aimed at getting the other person (or me) to care less, detach a bit from what was bothering them, or walk away from a conflict before things got really heated.

But what I eventually learned is that work is rarely “just work.” For better or worse, it’s where we form our identities, feed our egos (or take hits to them), derive self-worth, seek community, and ideally, find meaning and fulfillment. And we do all of that alongside our colleagues.

When our relationships with people at work are strong, they are a source of energy, support, joy, and growth. But when they fracture, they cause us anguish, frustration, and even grief. Unhealthy dynamics with colleagues undermine our sense of trust and safety and our ability to do our jobs. They can even make us question our talents, competence, and sanity.

Take this story, shared by a friend about her father, who has since passed away. He was a scientist who loved his job at a pharmaceutical lab. He was devoted to his family and, as an introvert, valued his time alone. After work and on the weekends, he’d spend hours tinkering, mostly with old clocks, in his garage workshop. He told his kids that he cared about his work deeply, but he wasn’t there to make friends. “Keep your head down and focus on what you’re meant to do” was his advice.

Then, twelve years before he retired, he got a new boss who was incredibly passive-aggressive and drove him up a wall. Their relationship became a huge source of stress for him. At night, he’d come home frustrated by his interactions with this manager, eaten up by things she said and did, and worried about whether he’d reacted appropriately. My friend said that her father’s preoccupation with his boss colored the last decade of his career, and the resulting stress probably took years off his life.

Could this man have been friends with his manager rather than constantly at odds? I doubt it. Remember, he was an introvert who wasn’t interested in making friends. But his experience is a good reminder that we have no choice: we do have relationships at work, and they impact our happiness and our performance. That’s why it’s important that we tend to not only the relationships that energize us and make it fun to go to work, but the ones that push our buttons—or worse.

Work Relationships Loom Large in Our Lives

The irony is that in the early part of my career, while I was trying very hard to tell myself that my relationships with coworkers weren’t that important, I was also meeting up with colleagues outside work, going to their houses for dinner parties, and forming what would become decades-long friendships.

Like my friend’s father, the scientist, I couldn’t avoid becoming entangled with my coworkers, and neither can you. Why is that exactly? For one, because we work a lot. Most employed adults spend more hours, either virtually or in person, with coworkers than with family or nonwork friends.

In the United States, the average workweek has gotten longer over the past few decades, and we’re working more weeks per year (an average of 46.8 weeks in 2015, up from 43 in 1980). These increases add up to an additional month of work in a year.1 We even work when we’re not supposed to. Data from the 2018 American Time Use survey shows that 30 percent of full-time employees report working on weekends and holidays.2 Companies that study email traffic confirm that while people send fewer emails on holidays than on workdays, they’re still sending a lot.3

Technology has compounded the problem, making it not only possible but often standard procedure to work anytime of day, wherever we are. Soon after I got my first smartphone, I was emailing my boss while walking my dog, and I was convinced I’d achieved multitasking nirvana. It no longer mattered if I was at my desk in my home office or at the dog park or at a coffee shop down the street. I could work from anywhere. Of course, by now (and thanks to a global pandemic), we’re all familiar with the downsides of this phenomenon: chiefly, that we’re always “on.”

This constant availability means we’re thinking about our jobs and the people associated with them, including peers, direct reports, clients, bosses, and senior leaders, more of the time. We might be anxious about our friends and colleagues who are at risk of losing their jobs in a reorganization, for instance, or about the fact that a pessimistic coworker is trying to torpedo our new initiative, or whether a client is going to come through with a contract. These are big, consuming concerns, and when we shut off our computers at 5:00 p.m. (or 6:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. or later), we typically don’t put these worries away.

Over the past several decades, work-related stress has increased dramatically. Emily Heaphy, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies work relationships, told me, “There has been an increase in economic insecurity that makes people nervous and anxious about their work, so they are more attentive to it than people have been in the past.”4

When you’re struggling with a difficult coworker, it’s tempting to write off the importance of relationships at work, to think, or even hope, that you can avoid them. But you can’t. Professional connections make or break your experience on the job. And success in almost every role depends on getting along with others. The research on this is clear: if you want to thrive at work—perform your best, be engaged and productive, and think creatively and expansively—pay attention to your relationships.

The Case for Having Friends at Work

Am I advocating for making friends at work? In a book about dealing with difficult colleagues? Hear me out. It’s not because I think your insecure manager or your passive-aggressive peer is going to become your BFF. But if you, like the younger me, don’t believe that work is an appropriate place to make friends, I hope the research will convince you otherwise.

As Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, says in his book, Together, friendships are fundamentally connected to professional success and “it’s in our relationships that we find the emotional sustenance and power we need to thrive.”5

Social connections are a predictor of cognitive functioning, resilience, and engagement. We know that teams of friends perform better, that people with supportive coworkers report less stress, that being close with colleagues increases information- and idea-sharing, self-confidence, and learning, and that workers in mundane jobs are just as likely to feel satisfied and fulfilled as those with inspiring jobs if they invest in social connections.6

When you’re working virtually, relationships may feel more expendable. If I’m sitting with my laptop at my kitchen table, does it matter if I feel connected to my colleagues? But research shows that connections to colleagues are just as critical in remote work environments. A survey of over twelve thousand people in the United States, Germany, and India, during the coronavirus shutdowns, found that respondents who were working at home during the pandemic reported that they were less productive on things like working in teams and interacting with clients—tasks that required collaboration with others. And there was a link between that productivity loss and work relationships. Of those who reported feeling less connected to their colleagues while working remotely, 80 percent said they were also less productive.7

Here are just a few of my other favorite findings about the benefits of friendship at work:

• Gallup, one of the leading researchers of workplace culture, has been asking about friendship in its studies for decades and has long been reporting a relationship between having a “best friend at work” and employee engagement. Its recent data shows that just 30 percent of employees reported having a “best friend” at work. But those who did were seven times more likely to “be engaged in their jobs, be better at engaging customers, produce higher quality work, have higher well-being.” Also, they “are less likely to get injured on the job.” In contrast, those who said they don’t have a best friend in the workplace had just a one-in-twelve chance of being engaged.8
• Friendships are often good for your career, too. A research team at Rutgers University found that groups of colleagues who thought of one another as friends got higher scores on their performance reviews.9
• Having friends at work can also guard against burnout and make you more resilient. A group of researchers asked students wearing heavy backpacks at the base of a hill to guess how steep it was. Participants who were with a friend gave lower estimates than those who were alone.10 One of the researchers explained in Virginia Magazine: “What we are finding is that things that we have always thought of as having metaphorical value, like friendship, actually affect our physiology. Social support changes how we perceive the world and how our bodies work.”11 In other words, we’re better able to deal with stress and setbacks when we have positive relationships at work.

This last finding resonates deeply with me. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, my colleague Gretchen sent me a candle. I’ll admit that I never really understood why people bothered with scented candles—do I really want my house to smell like a pine tree? But Gretchen was a fan, and I was touched. And I started lighting it every day before I sat down to work. I quickly came around. It was less about the candle itself and more about the ritual of lighting it and remembering that Gretchen has my back. Through the past few years, whenever I’ve struggled to stay focused, productive, and optimistic, my friends and family have, of course, been a source of comfort. But it’s often my work friends who have helped me get through a tough day because we have a shared understanding of the challenges we’re up against.

Of course, all of the benefits I’ve described—increased productivity and creativity, greater resilience, less stress, better performance reviews—are only realized if your relationships with your coworkers are positive and not corrosive. Challenging work relationships can have grave consequences for your performance and well-being.

The Consequences of Unhealthy Relationships

Research backs up what we know firsthand: that unhealthy relationships cause damage, sometimes more than we realize.

Negative relationships hinder performance and hurt creativity

Christine Porath, author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace, has been studying the phenomenon of incivility at work for decades. Over the past twenty years, 98 percent of the people she’s surveyed have experienced rude behavior at work and 99 percent have witnessed it.12

Her research shows the impact of this uncivil behavior is intense and far-reaching, particularly on our performance. Of those who were on the receiving end of mistreatment, Porath found (across seventeen industries):

• Forty-eight percent intentionally decreased their work effort
• Forty-seven percent intentionally decreased the time spent at work
• Thirty-eight percent intentionally decreased the quality of their work
• Sixty-six percent said that their performance declined
• Seventy-eight percent said that their commitment to the organization declined
• Twenty-five percent admitted to taking their frustration out on customers
• Twelve percent said that they left their job because of uncivil treatment13

Completing tasks, staying focused, and producing quality work are much harder when we are struggling with a rude or negative colleague. One experiment done with teams of doctors and nurses in newborn intensive care units in Israel showed just how costly being insulted can be. In the study, some teams were told by a visiting expert that he didn’t respect the quality of the work they were doing. In the wake of this criticism, the teams who were berated made diagnoses that were 20 percent less accurate, and the procedures they conducted were 15 percent less effective.14

Being treated rudely also dampens creative thinking, because it results in “cognitive disruption.”15 In other words, working with a colleague who is mean to you—either by being passive-aggressive, or taking credit for your work, or making unkind comments—inhibits your ability to think clearly.

Our health suffers, too

It may not be particularly surprising that negative relationships cause stress, but stress often has serious consequences for our health. (Unfortunately, that awareness hasn’t spurred many of us, including myself, to get a handle on it.) For example, scientists have established a direct connection between working with someone difficult and heart disease. A group of Swedish scientists followed three thousand workers over three years and asked them questions about the competence of their managers. The less competent they perceived their managers to be, the greater the risk of experiencing heart issues. And the risk of serious heart problems increased, the longer participants worked at the company.16

In another study, researchers looked at the impact of our relationships on the time it takes to recover from a wound. Working with forty-two married couples, they made small incisions on participants’ arms and then measured the rate at which the incisions healed. The wounds inflicted on the couples who reported having animosity in their relationships took twice as long to heal, showing that the stress caused by negative interactions hinders the body’s ability to repair itself.17 Working with a difficult colleague can make you sick and make it harder to bounce back from illness or injury.

Negative relationships are bad for our colleagues and organizations

When you and a colleague don’t get along, there are ripple effects. The people in your orbit are subject to what I call the “emotional shrapnel” of your dynamic. This includes the coworkers who directly witness the animosity, of course, but also your friends and family who may offer a sympathetic ear and absorb your stress. When my husband worked for an immature, micromanaging boss, my mood and productivity took a hit even though I never met her in person.

University of Michigan professor Jane Dutton talks about this phenomenon in her book, Energize Your Workplace. She writes, Incivility rarely stays contained. It spirals and spreads within the work organization’s boundaries at the same time that it spreads and spirals into people’s lives outside work…. In one study of the experiences of more than twelve thousand people who encountered incivility in the workplace, virtually every target of incivility described telling someone else about the experience. When news of incivility spreads it increases people’s expectations that these behaviors are normal, further increasing their occurrence.”18

The stakes for organizations are clearly high. One rude person, or one dynamic that is marked by incivility, can hurt the entire team—and perhaps even those who only see or hear about the tense interactions. And if employees are distracted, stressed, struggling to focus, making mistakes, and mentally and physically unhealthy, work outcomes suffer. This is true for organizations of all sizes. Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman studied ten thousand founders for his book The Founder’s Dilemma and observed that 65 percent of startups fail as a result of conflict between the founders.19 Porath’s research at an engineering firm found that those who perceived their coworkers as difficult were twice as likely to quit. And the flight risk was greatest among top talent.20

Negative relationships have stronger effects than positive ones

Part of the reason that it’s so important to make an effort to improve our negative relationships is that they have a disproportionate impact on our experience at work, because of all the factors I just outlined. Porath found that deenergizing relationships have a four to seven times greater impact on our well-being than energizing, positive relationships.21

However, a relationship doesn’t have to be toxic or even mostly negative to have deleterious effects. When I think about the difficult people I’ve worked with, many of the ones that stand out in my mind are those who weren’t difficult all the time. For instance, I had a colleague who I’ll call Tara. We were never friends exactly, but we enjoyed chatting at the beginning of meetings, and at social gatherings, she and I often exchanged stories about our children, who were the same age. I found her funny, personable, and good at her job—most of the time. When I got up the nerve to ask another coworker whether he also found her difficult to read at times, he perfectly articulated what I was experiencing: “You just never know which Tara you’re going to get. ‘Good Tara’ is really nice and seems to have your back. But ‘Bad Tara’ is grumpy and focused on her career and has no qualms about throwing you under the bus.”

Most of our work relationships don’t fall into neat categories of “good” or “bad,” even if that’s how our brains want to sort them. These ambivalent relationships—the ones that feel occasionally positive or mostly neutral, but sometimes veer into alarming territory—are often just as problematic as the unambiguously negative ones. Some research has shown that these relationships are in fact more physiologically harmful.22

Of course, having a frenemy is better than having an enemy, and these ambivalent relationships can have upsides too: sometimes they motivate us to work harder on the relationship (whereas we might take a purely positive relationship for granted), and we’re more likely to try seeing things from the other person’s perspective as we struggle to understand them.23

• • •

None of our relationships are fixed. We might assume that the positive ones will always stay that way and the negative ones are doomed to be torturous forever. But that mindset can lead us to neglect our work friendships, and completely dismiss the more complicated ones. If you think about the people you’ve had connections with over your career, I’m guessing they didn’t remain the same over time; they were likely malleable. After all, good relationships can sour, and some of the toughest ones can be transformed, as long as you put in the time and effort.

That said, we could all be smarter about the ways in which we direct our energy. I know I’ve wasted hours (more than I care to add up) mulling over an exchange with a difficult coworker, rethinking an email I sent or received, even waking up in the middle of the night and rehearsing conversations I wish I could redo (and “stick it to you” things I wish I could say). In the next chapter, I’ll talk about what’s happening in your brain when you’re stuck in a negative dynamic with a coworker, why it takes up so much psychological space, and how to cultivate understanding and self-awareness so you can respond in a productive way.