Peer relationships have power many of us don’t realize. They can make, or break, our workplace experience, and can even strongly influence our everyday moods. Co-workers can find professional peers a benefit to their everyday work, but not all are considered a close friendship.

McCornack (2009) describes professional peer relationships as “people holding positions of organization status and power similar to our own” (p. 413). In America, most workplaces are structured like a hierarchy, and with that comes different levels of control, influence, and importance. We tend to communicate with our peers that are at that same level on the hierarchy as ourselves. Yet, at that level, there remains four degrees of peer relationships based on closeness. We find most of our support and happiness from these relationships, so whatever degree of closeness they fall under is important.

The first are the informal peers, who are the simplest, but probably most common relationships co-workers have in the workplace. They all have equal status, but communication is usually about work and nothing else. It doesn’t have the trust and intimacy that friendships do, and partners only when doing an assignment together, not necessarily by choice.

A collegial peer is the second type, and this is the co-worker who we consider a friend. Not quite a best friend, but someone who has similar interests and likeable qualities.

The third is a special peer, who are highly infrequent in the workplace. These are the best friends we make, our equal status co-workers with much of our emotional support. Special peers can make work more bearable with their comforting presence or can be a close friend outside of the workplace.

Common nowadays is a fourth example of the workplace peer relationship, the virtual peer. These occur through technology, such as emails, IM, and networking sites. These are few and far between because literally, there is a distance too far or limitations for face-to-face communication between the co-workers since they are working by use of computers.

The three factors that create the flow of these relationships are the some of the same factors we take into consideration with our family and friend relationships. One of these is openness. Honesty and disclosure go a long way in developing peer workplace relationships, and how much of both you give is a signal of how close the two of you will get. Another aspect is assurances, maybe not of love like in families, but of appreciation and thankfulness for their support, hard work, or understanding. The last factor that significantly separates the first two peer relationships is choice. We can choose who we want to hang out with or chat with in the coffee lounge, but we can’t choose who we work with on assignments or need to converse with for something work related.

Right now, I’m working at a place called Trumpet in the Land, in New Philadelphia, Ohio, where I’m performing in three shows for the entire summer. Honestly, I knew the people were going to make or break my experience here, not the actual work. So on day one, I came in with an open mind, bright smile, shutting out all of my timid tendencies, and tried to meet as many people as I could. Now, a week and a half later, it’s amazing how my other co-workers have fallen right into the top three categories of professional peer relationships, and I feel more comfortable now, knowing kind of where each relationship falls! It helps with boundaries, who to tell things to, who NOT to, and who I should seek for comfort and avoid on a trying day.