Energizing Social Interactions at Work: An Exploration of Relationships That Generate Employee and Organizational Thriving

A company’s greatest asset is its people. In our increasingly service-based economies, social relationships and swift coordination among employees are the means by which a lot of work gets done. Thus, whether organizations -and their employees- flourish or languish largely depends on the quality of the social connections they nurture. The quality of the workplace connections can be defined as life giving (high quality) or life depleting (low quality). Positive social interactions facilitate organizational learning, cooperation, effectiveness, and employee loyalty, among many other desirable outcomes. High-quality connections are brief, mutually beneficial, and dynamic dyadic interaction, which have the power to energize people with vital resources to do their work well. Positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship –the science of how people and organizations flourish- provide us with tools that can help bring about high-quality connections. This paper defines positive relationships at work, with a particular focus on high-quality connections, examines the benefits of high-quality relationships and connections, and provides a framework for building high-quality connections. The paper shows that high-quality connections are a pathway to building individual and organizational flourishing.