There is a particular warmth that fills the room when you are among old friends.
The ease. The openness. The permission to say the thing you actually mean.
It is a rare and precious thing.
Which is exactly why you should not mistake it for what happens at work.
Your colleagues are not your friends. They may become friends over time. A few might. But the relationship begins somewhere else entirely. Ever noticed once you are no longer colleagues, how those ‘work friendships’ disappear?
The professional peer relationship asks something different of us. Boundaries. Context. A measure of discretion that friendship does not require.
This is not cynicism. It is clarity.
When the founder confuses a colleague for a confidant, things unravel. Trust is misplaced. Vulnerability becomes liability. The openness that feels so natural becomes the thing that erodes authority or blurs accountability.
Create the right relationships at work. Warm, respectful, genuinely caring ones. But understand what they are.
Reserve the other thing for people who have earned it in a different way.
The pleasure of old friends is precisely because it is rare. Protect it by knowing where it belongs.
