"Rick and I were good friends, but not close friends. Close friends share meals and have phone calls, sometimes late ones. They help each other solve personal problems. Rick and I did none of that. We were contemporaries. Born a year apart. Graduated from college a year apart. Married a year apart, in unions that would last more than a half century."
"If you want to get to know a person, try riding in a golf cart with them for four hours in the Florida sun. Now try doing that 100 times. When it came to coaching writers, Don Fry and I wrote a book. But I also drew many lessons from Rick's coaching style, lessons that I apply now to my writing, my teaching and my everyday life."
A colleague's death prompted reflection on an unconventional friendship built through workplace proximity rather than personal closeness. The two professionals, born and married a year apart, shared a workspace at the Poynter Institute and developed a meaningful connection through golf outings and professional collaboration. Over decades of interaction, particularly through golf coaching and writing instruction, valuable lessons emerged about approaching work and life. The friendship demonstrates how sustained professional proximity and shared activities create opportunities for genuine connection and mutual learning, even without the traditional markers of close friendship like frequent meals or personal problem-solving.
#professional-relationships #mentorship-and-learning #workplace-friendship #life-lessons #writing-and-coaching
Read at Poynter
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]