Camaraderie is a rarely used French word in business circles within France. At school, it means friendship. At work, it means solidarity between union members.
It is never used to describe relationships in business. And one might think it has no place there, but on the contrary, the definition I have of this word can be applied to the corporate context.
I was very surprised the first time I heard my American partner Marty talking about camaraderie in a business context.
The meaning of Camaraderie
I looked for a dictionary definition. It’s a feeling of friendliness towards and bond with people with whom one works or share an experience.
I asked Marty to describe the significance of camaraderie for Americans. I was astonished when he used another French word to explain the definition of camaraderie, or comradeship, among a group of people: “Esprit de corps”.
This phrase is not commonly used in the US and generally refers to morale or feeling of solidarity in athletic or military circles (like comradeship), although it’s fairly close to camaraderie. In the US, camaraderie is a very common word used to describe the relationship among people who spend time together that produces alignment of interests and purpose.
Our observations
We have both observed that on two sides of the Atlantic, employees have faced major dislocation from their workplaces, colleagues, managers, clients, business friends, suppliers, team members and common activities.
Spontaneous activities are now all relegated to planned Zoom/Team meetings, arranged phone calls, text messages and emails.
In addition, new hires have not had an opportunity to get to know other people within their organization with whom they typically would interact. Technology has changed and many employees have not had the opportunity to be informed, trained or use the new ones.
Of course, all of these pressures are incremental to their personal feelings of isolation, sickness or death among friends and family, fears about getting sick, worries about getting the best vaccination and the limits on travel or even going out to a restaurant.
Camaraderie in the company has inevitably been impacted. Today, countries are beginning to reopen their borders with more or less pronounced constraints, but the absence of team spirit or at least the loss of it is no less present.
Camaraderie, a solution to our losses ?
As it is time to shift to a post pandemic world, a big challenge for leaders is to rebuild the backbone connecting all employees and renew camaraderie or esprit de corps (depending on one’s use of those words) so that organizations can restore their focus on healing the losses of the past 15 months.
The call to generate bonding and alignment is now stronger than it has ever been to restart our inner engines.
In an effort to improve corporate camaraderie and team spirit, we have created a special program called “Camaraderie Spark“. To learn more, visit care.extens-consulting.com or contact us directly by email!
Emmanuel RICHARD
CEO of Extens Consulting
Marty KATZ
Marketing Consultant
specialized in Brand Messaging
To schedule meeting to discuss how Camaraderie can impact your productivity, contact Emmanuel and Marty:
