In previous blog posts, I have written about how important elements like good leadership, good corporate culture and corporate values are as means to retain people in a workplace - but when discussing with Janice Kobelsky in continuation of my post about the tower that did not lean, it dawned on me that to my experience, one factor is even more significant. Good colleagues. Well, it does not have to be much more than just a single good colleague.
Now I have never been cast in such a way (or rather, my eyesight is not sufficiently good) allow me to spend time on any kind of military service, so I can not comment on the relationships that are formed among brothers in arms - but on a slightly less serious level, among people who remain my very close friends, I count a handful of excellent people who are all former colleagues of a quite exceptional nature.
They are the kind of people that I have always been able to get along with, without any of us having any kind of hidden agendas; where we have never been in doubt that no matter how dire straits we would end up in, we could trust that we would always have each other's back - this even went so far that when some of these people became former colleagues, they told me about their considerations long before they left their position.
Such people are rare. But there is no doubt that when you meet them you should stick to them. Also long after you are no longer colleagues - because they are not only unusually good colleagues; they also have the potential to form unusually good, lifelong friendships.
(Translated from Til den gode kollegas pris, originally published February 14th, 2018)