So who are your business buddies?

Yes, business buddies.....the people who you can discuss work with and are genuinely interested in what you are trying to achieve.

In order to feel good about or get on well at work, it is important to share your challenges, ideas, hopes and fears. After all, most personal and workplace improvements come from analysing what’s working and what’s not.?

You may think that you already have a strong network of support ......but do they actually give you what you need??

Family and friends are usually the go-to people, but talking to people at home, is not always the best route to deciding what course of action to take when things needs to change in the office. These are the reasons why.....

Family: No matter how good you believe your communication is, family members will always?have other topics they would rather discuss. They would rather not talk about work, because if you do, evening conversations can spiral into moaning, gossip or blame. They want you to come home happy and content, so that they don’t need to worry about you or your stability as a household.?

Equally, the time spent talking about work has to be balanced. You may lay out all your concerns from the day, but in turn you should be prepared to give the same attention to them, which can be really difficult if you are stressed or struggling to make a decision. Your mind may easily switch off, which may make you look disinterested.?

Your partner?may listen to a point, but in most cases they are probably just waiting to speak. They will have important transactional questions that they would rather get the answer to such as ‘what should we have for tea tonight?’ Or ‘Did you renew the car insurance?’??

It doesn’t mean that they don’t care, it just means that work life balance should apply to conversational time as well as the physical commitment of being ‘at work’.?

Friends: Similarly, friends are associated with you because they love who you are socially. They want to be with you in downtime to relax or let their hair down, or just have a really good time. Downloading your niggles about work to them can be draining. No matter what they say, they want to be able to discuss anything related to life in general, not work.

They want to be free of responsibility in that time and helping you with a work problem may lead to them to quickly?telling you what to do without full context. This can mean that you walk away more confused or disillusioned or worse, with a feeling that they don’t really care, when they do.

So finding people who are objectively supportive can be very hard to do. After all, who can you really trust and why would someone really want to listen to and help you??

The answer??If you want to discuss things that are happening at work, find other people who want to do the same. Trust me, they are out there. Find people who share similar experiences, interests, challenges or goals. That's when meaningful conversations really start to take shape, That's when you feel as though you are being heard and that’s when you feel most inspired to do things differently.?

Find people who?

• understand the responsibilities of your role as they have similar things to do?
• face the same day to day challenges
• have the same people issues
• want to learn and get on in life
• are willing to share ideas that really trigger yours
• will listen without judgement
• keep what you say?as confidential

..and importantly, remembers what you said the last time you saw them and is genuinely interested in how you got on.

Peer to peer support can be totally underestimated, but look at the benefit of all of the above. If you are ready to do those things for someone else, experience has shown me that they will be willing to do the same for you.

If they are from a different organisation, even better! They will listen openly without having pre-determined insights, opinions or points of view so rarely interject to tell you that you are wrong.

So, in summary, choose your discussions about work carefully. Never underestimate the power of pushing yourself to build up a network of business buddies, they may just be your secret sauce to your workplace and homelife success and they will all certainly be grateful for all the ways that you help them.?