What exactly is a friend? Is it someone who stands beside you through the good and bad times? Is it someone who tells other people how wonderful you are? Is it someone who expands your thinking to consider possibilities you didn’t know existed? According to Tom Rath, author of Vital Friends, each of these answers is correct—but there’s more to a friend than commonly thought.
I was a bit skeptical about the book at first; after all, how many books have already been written on friendship? However, I am pleased to report that Rath and his team of researchers at The Gallup Organization have uncovered findings that demand a closer look.
Rath’s team learned that one of the most important places to have a good friend is one’s place of employment. Yet in many workplaces, friendships are developed due to negative factors—a mutual dislike of the boss or of company rules. This leads to constant complaining and bellyaching. However, when friendships are positive, they become a powerful ally—both for the friends as well as the company itself. In fact, individuals who have developed a “best friendship” at work were found to be seven times more likely to be highly productive during their time there.
In Vital Friends, Rath makes it clear that the word “friend” has lost some of its meaning and has become somewhat ambiguous. To remedy this problem, he introduces the term “vital friend” and defines it as “someone who measurably improves your life” and “whom you can’t afford to live without” (p. 76). Drawing upon the massive database of research found at Gallup, Rath reveals eight roles a person’s vital friends can play (builder, collaborator, connector, mind-opener, champion, companion, energizer, and navigator). At that point, the safe route would have been to tell a little about each of the roles, provide a few examples, offer some suggestions for application, and conclude the book. And Vital Friends does just that.
However, Rath goes one step further, providing a website (www.vitalfriends.com) that enables you as a reader to learn what roles your vital friends play in your life. This is done through a 65-question survey that, once completed for each friend, lists the top three roles they play in your life (to reap this benefit, you have to purchase the book, since it contains a unique ID code to access the website). Armed with this information, you can then spend time with each individual vital friend and discover how they can help you more in their most effective roles.
It is important to note that a vital friendship is not all about us. Instead, it’s a mutual relationship to which both people contribute, drawing on each other’s specific strengths. However, it is a mistake, as Rath notes, to expect one person to meet every need in our life (p. 36). God made every person unique, so we should not expect what works for one person to work for another. Instead, it’s important to gather a group of people who utilize their vital roles to help us become the best we can be. Through reading Vital Friends and using the website, we can learn to more effectively sharpen our vital friends, as they in turn sharpen us. We can’t afford to live without them!
