Summary: <p>Friendship at work can be a special kind of torture.</p> <p>We spend most of our waking hours with our coworkers, so right off the bat, we have a <em>lot</em> in common with them. But the intensity of a work friendship can sometimes fluctuate between two opposites: we love them or we hate them.</p> <p><a href="http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/faculty/directory/organizational-behavior/shimul-melwani">Shimul Melwani</a> experienced this kind of tortured love-hate relationship at work, and she chose to find the silver lining: the proof is in her <a href="https://hbr.org/" target="_blank">Harvard Business Review</a> article, "<a href="https://hbr.org/2015/01/research-love-hate-relationships-at-work-might-be-good-for-you" target="_blank">Love-Hate Relationships at Work Might Be Good For You</a>."</p> <p>Melwani tells <em>Money Talking </em>host Charlie Herman the workplace seems perfectly designed for these kinds of relationships. </p> <p>"We're expected to cooperate with our team members," Melwani said, "but then we're also expected to compete with them for resources and promotions and time with our leader and money."</p> <p>She added, however, that love-hate friendships might actually improve your work in the office more than purely positive or purely negative relationships ever could. Having a friend at work can be distracting, and if you have a someone you just despise, you can dismiss them completely. A love-hate friendship keeps you both empathetic and a little angry, so it can motivate you to work harder to understand what is going on and perhaps find a way to get along better.</p> <p>The key is to minimize the damage your inevitable frenemy can cause to your psyche. As Melwani puts it:</p> <ol> Focus on the love. If you have to pick one side of this relationship to fixate on, keep your attention on the good parts. Enjoy the positive aspects of having a partner in crime as much as you can. Have some self-compassion. Understand where your negative feelings come from. If you feel competitive and resentful toward someone you also respect and like, the consequence is often to feel guilty. Give yourself a break. This kind of thing is normal. Teams, by default, reward people for acting cooperatively and then also expect people to individually shine: this is fundamentally confusing and it's okay to feel conflicted. </ol> <p>Melwani said most of all, it's important to find a balance.</p> <p>"Just having lots of different kinds of relationships [at work] is really what's going to help you," Melwani said. You can have that best friend at work that keeps you sane and satisfied, a frenemy or two to push you to do better, and maybe even a straight-up enemy, to keep things interesting.</p>
