Vital Friends

"Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships." U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, in an essay just before his death.

I recently finished reading a book called Vital Friends, written by Tom Rath. Based on analysis of numerous Gallup polls, it tries to dissect the purpose of our closest friendships and the benefits of having a few of these close friends. The book made various good points that I'll summarize here for discussion.

Note that these survey results often use the term "best friend" because they explicitely tried to make a distinction between the vague term of "friend" and other really close friendships. Many of these concepts apply to having a best friend, or "vital friend" as the book is entitled. Casual or sporatic friendships are not nearly as beneficial.

The book defines a vital friend as (a) "someone who measurably improves your life" and (b) "a person at work or in your personal life that you can't afford to live without."

"During our teenage years, we spend nearly one-third of our time with our friends. For the rest of our lives, the average time spent with friends is less than 10%."

You are who you eat with: "If your best friend has a healthy diet, you are five times as likely to have a healthy diet yourself." Like momma always said, be careful of the company that you keep.

What drives marital satisfaction? "The quality of a couple's friendship" is five times as important as "physical intimacy."

"Without a best friend at work, the chances of being engaged in your job are 1 in 12." Vital friendships in the workplace are crucial in allowing us to enjoy work, to be motivated and to improve productivity. Actually, the book lists a variety of benefits revealed in the surveys, from having less accidents and a safer workplace to engaging customers better and having fun.

"Only 18% of people work for organizations that provide opportunities to develop friendships on the job." I know that this is a particular strength at AV-Base Systems, my former company. I think that there was a difference between the job satisfaction of those with a close friend at work and others that did not have that kind of person.

"Just 1 in 4 employees had someone help them make new friends when they started their last job."

"Having areas to congregate at work can double the chances of having a best friend at work."

"You are three times as likely to have a close-knit workgroup if the physical environment makes it easy to socialize. Only one third of the people we studied report working in such an environment."

"Only 30% of people find it easy to describe what each friend contributes to their life."

"83% of people bring different strengths to the relationship than their best friend does."

There are two main conclusions: We should not expect every friendship to provide everything that we need, and our friend will probably not give us the same thing that we give to them. In other words, don't try to force a friend (or a spouse) to be something that they're not. Appreciate them for what they do give to you and develop a network of friends that can help support different aspects of our lives. One friend cannot do it all.

In my next post, I will summarize what this book says about the eight different roles that our vital friends can provide. (Remember, I read this book so that you don't have to. Heh.)