This book stands on the shoulders of some amazing researchers who have long been studying relationships, business, culture, and health in their respective fields. I do my best to footnote every study I quote in the back of this book and am in deep gratitude for their curiosity in asking big questions, their bravery for pursuing the answers, and their wisdom in their reporting. (The biggest of thanks for Kiran Adcock for compiling all those citations!)
While my expertise runs deep in friendship research and application, having written two other books on the subject, my foray into the world of business will forever be indebted to the visionary leaders who started inviting me to speak to their organizations, facilitate their team off-site meetings, and consult their managers. As promised, your names and organizations do not show up in this book, but your wisdom is loud and clear, and your stories and examples are everywhere. And even more of you took your teams through my Healthy Team Relationship Assessment, which not only gave you an accessible report on the health of the relationships within your team, but that collective data continues to reveal so much about the trends, tendencies, and needs we all face in our organizational culture.
Additionally, I facilitated my own Friendships in the Workplace Survey via social media, in which 550 respondents answered almost thirty questions about their opinions and experiences of relationships at work. These responses were invaluable, not only for the snapshot they provide of what many of us are feeling (which I’ll be showing in graphs throughout this book), but the results ended up reshaping part of my book outline when I saw the incredible prevalence of some questions and fears. Additionally, their open-ended comments and stories are woven throughout this book (with fictitious names) as they give significance to what is otherwise just a statistic. If you were one who took the time to fill out that survey, thank you; my trusty calculator and I poured over your answers every which way, with wholehearted earnestness, like a kid on Christmas morning.
Speaking of stories, I am grateful to a private Facebook group of volunteers, who generously shared illustrations, triggered ideas, and acted as a focus group for me throughout my writing process. Huge thanks, also, to those of you who agreed to phone interviews with me so I could add details to your stories, updates to the data, and tips for those in similar situations. In most cases I changed your names, and in some I changed some details, but you’ll undoubtedly recognize your contribution.
And in informal, but never less important, ways, I share stories throughout this book that have long stayed with me from conversations with friends, coaching clients, and off-site meetings with employees.
All that to say, that while writing a book is often solitary work, the finished product was very much a community effort. (Not that any of us who value relationships are the least bit surprised!)