Work Friendships

In this episode of "The Executive Realm," Dr. D and Dr. K explore the transformative impact of friendships in the workplace. Friendships at work can dramatically enhance our professional lives, blending personal bonds with professional interactions. These relationships bring numerous benefits, from boosting morale and fostering collaboration to enhancing overall job satisfaction, higher productivity, and increased profitability. 

We also delve into the potential risks and challenges. Failed friendships can lead to workplace tension and conflict, while friendships between leaders and employees introduce complex dynamics of favoritism and blurred boundaries.

Join us as we navigate the delicate balance of maintaining professional integrity while fostering meaningful connections. Can we harness the power of workplace friendships without falling into the pitfalls?

Transcript

Dr. D.: 0:05

Hello Welcome to the realm. I'm dr d, and I bring the strategy.

Dr. K: 0:09

I'm Dr K, I bring the psychology. We are business psychologists and your guides to the executive realm, where we bring strategy and psychology together,

Dr. D.: 0:18

so you can bring your best to your C suite, your teams and your customers. Today, we're talking about work friends. Friendships at work can dramatically transform and influence our professional experience. These relationships bring a host of benefits. They boost morale, foster collaboration and enhance job satisfaction. In fact, a Gallup study found that employees with close friends at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. This surge in engagement ignites higher productivity, elevates customer service and reduces turnover. But what are the risks? Failed friendships can lead to tension and conflict, undermining team cohesion and morale. With friendships between leaders and employees, these dynamics become even more complex. Friendships with leaders can build trust and loyalty, but they can also risk favoritism, blurred boundaries and difficult power dynamics. So let's get to work. Dr K, can we have workplace friendships while maintaining professional integrity?

Dr. K: 1:11

I think it is possible. There has to be open, honest communication when that gets taken out, or that gets blurred, or that gets misconstrued or not enough information or accurate or trustful information is out there, I think then the professional part, the integrity part, as well as the friendship part, can be completely blown out of the water, and that can cause

Dr. D.: 1:37

multiple problems. That is a challenge, because you have this one persona at work. It's really close to the real you, but you have to be a little bit protective of how people interpret you. There's a lot of politics. You can't overshare necessarily. You don't necessarily talk about things at work that you talk about with your best friend, but if you have a best friend at work, that blurs the line a little bit. But before we get into the challenges and complications, why don't we talk about the benefits of having friends at work? Absolutely,

Dr. K: 2:05

first off, always, the job depends on what kind of friendships, when you know that your person's going to be there, or someone that you can laugh with, or the person that you go take a lunch break with, whatever it might be, whatever the dynamics are, that does increase that moment when you're at work, when you're not feeling it, but then you're like, Oh my God, but I got my lunch break with my friend. I can laugh. I can do this. I do believe benefits are extremely important, and sometimes with working with people, I think they forget that they have those friendships at work, and they focus on all the negative parts that they don't have, and that gets in the way you can have

Dr. D.: 2:44

conversations with friends that you don't work with and complain about work or talk about what your projects are going on, but you can't really connect with them over that because it's not a shared experience. But when you have friends at work, you're sharing those experiences. You have a level of camaraderie and connection around a set of circumstances that take up a good portion of your life, there's a deeper understanding, or have a common understanding, of people that they work with, or the culture or the dynamics of an organization. And studies have shown that mental health and well being is actually improved, because when you have somebody at work that you can really connect with a real friend. It reduces stress and it increases your overall well being, not to mention when you have that friendship, that shorthand, you can really increase collaboration and teamwork. When you are working with people that you really like and you are genuine friends with, it makes it easier to communicate. It makes it easier to trust that would translate to better collaboration and sharing knowledge and selfishly, for an organization, having friends at work makes it more difficult to leave an organization. If you're emotionally committed to the job, that's one thing. You can go work somewhere else. But if you're really emotionally committed to the people, and you have that high sense of loyalty because your friends are at work and they're not going anywhere, those strong social connections cause you to really second guess whether or not you're gonna make that leap and go somewhere else. So that has a really favorable benefit on turnover. Absolutely,

Dr. K: 4:13

I've worked with many people that are sad when someone leaves and it changes the dynamics at work, or when they've decided to move on for whatever reasons they have, they're sad that they're leaving work. Let's be real. We've been developed into being social creatures. When you're working hard and you're in the flow, and that's all that you have at work, having that break, knowing that you have the support, feeling that someone understands what you're going through, definitely can help manage whatever negative feelings someone might have, or help manage any low points that they might be having or any loneliness that they might feel within their job if they feel they're the only ones that are doing it. But then they have a friend that they can talk to, and then the friend can say, Yeah, you are. Working really hard. They're feeling validated. But here I am with this, and we're doing this together. We're collaborating. It's always beneficial to have someone that can one validate, but also, you know, to show you what's really happening, they have that objective viewpoint. Organizations

Dr. D.: 5:15

are changing a lot. There are new people coming in, there are people leaving. There are organizational changes. There are structural changes. There are very good things that happen, like winning a big client, or there are some stressful things that happen, like changing your software platform. All of those things create apprehension in people, and having close friends at work allows shared processing. Those people that are close will think through the challenge or the opportunity or the excitement, and it'll actually deepen that friendship, but it also helps somebody process out loud with somebody else,

Dr. K: 5:49

sometimes, when we're isolated within yourself, that tends to take control and can lead to a negative place. So having that friendship or that teamwork, where you can collaborate and understand, again, that you're not alone or that someone else feels the same way. That it can add to profitability. It can keep retention high so friendships, they can be very beneficial again. It also can have its risks.

Dr. D.: 6:16

There are downsides of having friends at work, if one friend starts to develop a negative perspective, or a negative outlook on an organization or a situation that can very quickly spread between friends in that camaraderie. It can poison people who wouldn't be otherwise bothered by something, but it can be negatively reinforced by one person going, Wow, I really hate this person, and then that can create an in group and out group bias. All of a sudden, a little group of friends who work together are not working to collaborate and solve a problem. They're sticking together against whatever that problem is, reinforcing negative thoughts and reinforcing negative behaviors towards a person or a situation or an organizational change. Yeah.

Dr. K: 7:03

And it also can be that one person or a few people, could be bothered by something that someone else isn't bothered or isn't privy to, and that person could be negatively influenced without even knowing that they're being negatively influenced. And it might not be that we're having the mean girls group come in, and they're like, Okay, we're gonna make sure this person's on our side. But when we hear things over and over, we start going, Oh my gosh. Do I feel that way? Do I need to look at that? And then we start looking, and we can always find something to support what we're looking for, whether or not it's actual evidence to support what we're looking for, we can always because we can read into it. We can have a perspective that just forms around what we need it to form around. That's where people need to be autonomous in their own thinking. Take in what you're hearing, look, do your own reconnaissance, and look to see is okay? Is this something that's happening? How much is it, to the degree that someone is saying it's happening, the intensity, the frequency, or is that because they have a negative perception, or they have a fearful perception or an anxious perception? And also we need to take into consideration was their work life balance? Okay? Do they have so much negativity going on outside of work, that something negative inside is now manifesting bigger, because they've got so much going on. And that's where, again, that autonomy of your own thoughts and emotions, what are you experiencing personally? What are you perceiving? What are you seeing? And take that into consideration you really want to take in what's happening to you. Yeah, you

Dr. D.: 8:44

have to maintain your own internal sense of balance. Those friends can really influence you in a negative way, but they can also influence you in a positive way. If you experienced something like sexual harassment or witnessed something unethical, or having a close friend that you can confide in and talk to might actually give you the encouragement to speak up, raise your hand, talk to somebody as well. Those friendships really are a double edged sword. They can help give you the courage and the insight and the perspective to take action where you might feel restricted or unsure, because that person understands the dynamic and the culture a little bit better, but they can also influence you in a negative way. Is this influencing me in a professional way? Am I still maintaining my own of autonomy? So I guess we're talking about the boundaries at this point of friendships at work. How can somebody maintain that spirit of individuality and independence while still having a very close friend or a very close group of friends at work, and still feel like you're an individual contributor to the success and the purpose of the organization, but also value the friendships around you that you have at work if

Dr. K: 9:57

you are working with, let's say, a. Of Nancy. Sometimes we're friends with negative Nancy's might be that you say, hey, you know, and I know you got some struggles, but it's not something that I can hear all day long, because I've got something that I've got to get done, and I want to, I want to be present for what you're trying to say. So you might put the boundary of you get 30 minutes a day to tell me what's going on, and then we've got to continue working, or whatever it might be, boundaries are a big component of being able to remain autonomous, but also remaining autonomous, also protecting oneself. And the hard part is, is that other people look at boundaries as trying to hurt them, and they're not. They're just there to protect us for whatever reason. It also might be that you put your head down and do your work. If there's a big project that you're working on, or something that's important, you just kind of got to go and do it. Think about the boundary and communication of the boundary. People can't read our minds as much as we think they can. At times they can't. No one can read our minds, and we need to communicate what we need for that person. Hey, I'm really busy. Let's chitchat about it on our break or at lunch or happy hour after work, whatever it might be. But right now, I can't do that. So boundaries, communication and also understanding, where is the level of our friendship. There are times where you have friendships outside of work, and then you work together. There are times that you start working together, you build a friendship at work, and then it builds outside of work, and understanding that those can be at times need to be two very different types of friendships. Friendships at work, you're going to talk about what needs to get done, and hey, you're not doing your part, or hey, I need more from this. And then the time outside of work, you might chit chat a little bit about work, or whatever it might be, but then it's talking about stuff outside of work, so you need to better under and be really honest with yourself. What is our level of friendship? I've had a ton of work besties. We didn't hang out much outside of work, and I knew that, and that was wonderful. We had a great time at work, someone I could complain with or do this, or they could do the same with me, and we would talk about our lives, but we didn't hang out as much for whatever reasons, but they were still a friendship. So I recognized who was what. Then there were the people that were work and outside, and you had to learn to separate them, and when you separate them, you also have to learn to not bring it with you from one to the other. You have an outside argument. You don't bring it to work. You have an in work argument. You don't take it outside of work. And that can be understanding your level of friendship and understanding the importance of keeping those separate. Those are the big things that can help you to foster friendships that can remain positive in many different ways. I

Dr. D.: 12:45

love those boundaries and things that you suggest there about keeping the conversations as work friends about work at work, and keeping the conversations about outside of work, outside of work. That's a really healthy way to deal with it. You sparked something with me around that conversation about quote, unquote, negative Nancy, that negative person, it's really important to maintain those boundaries around that, because one people outside might look at your relationship and know that you're close friends and hear negative Nancy being down on everything and having very negative perspective, and might group you into that perception, even if you don't feel the same way, you might be perceived in in the same way as your friend and their motivations your friend may also gone unchecked, may also try to speak for you and speak for their friends and say a lot of us are feeling this way, even when it might only be that one person feeling That way, where they feel empowered to speak up, even though it's only their perspective. One of the other challenges is that when you are friends with a negative person, sometimes, as you said, Dr, K, you've got to say, Hey, don't bring me into this. You're bringing me down. It's affecting me and my work. I just need you to get 30 minutes a day. That suggestion was very good, but there's also a responsibility of friendship to say, hey, negative person, you're really negative a lot, and that's negatively affecting the people around you. Maybe you should change that behavior, because it's not doing you any good and it's not doing the people around you any good. Why don't we try to find some constructive ways as your friend to deal with that? Or have you talked to so and so or have you taken this action rather than just complaining about it? The responsibility of a friend is to do the right thing by that other person as well. And just saying, hey, I'll only listen to you for 30 minutes, doesn't necessarily help that friend get through whatever it is that they're going through, especially if they're persistently negative about their situation or the work or people around them. Part of being a friend is to encourage them to take action. Have those conversations, try to solve the problem, take action, to

Dr. K: 14:47

pull out the Nancy's but the negative Nancy, it can be difficult to deal with, but you want to remember, if your friends ask about it, it might be that they're burnt out, just ask. And if you are starting. To feel some of the things that this person is negative about. You can also ask yourself, Okay, what's going on with me? Is this really my feeling, or am I being influenced? Am I getting burnt out? Am I frustrated with my position? Am I not What part are you playing in the negative that you are starting to think when I have moments where I feel like I might be getting burnt out, I realized some of my burnout is a level of either being stuck or bored. So that's when I take a CE class, or might read a little bit more up on psychology to be like, Oh, what's out there? What's interesting to reignite is when you do something for an extended period of time, you can get bored or burnt out or frustrated, or when you feel you've done everything that you can, if you're working with someone that's negative, or you're being influenced with the negativity, it's like, Huh? What can I learn more? And maybe you help that person. Maybe they don't recognize what's going on with them. The

Dr. D.: 15:55

other challenge is that we all have friends, but just because we have friends, we don't really know everything about that other person. Somebody might be having some mental health struggles, or might have some deep, unresolved conflict or something going on in their personal lives that they're not comfortable with sharing, even with their close friends or family. They might not even recognize the challenge themselves. They may have some mental condition that's yet undiagnosed. They might not even know that they're dealing with something. You can't necessarily understand what's going on in another person's head. You have to be very careful about how you allow other people to influence you positively or negatively. You have to be responsible for your own agency. And you bring up the question of if that person's going through something or always negative. The question that I try to ask myself is, I'm starting to feel negative. What can I do about it? Am I feeling negative because I'm being influenced by some outside person or behavior? Is there something that I'm doing that I could be doing differently if there's a situation, can I exit myself from that situation, or can I take some action to try to resolve that situation. Am I having all the conversations that I have if I considered all my options even to put out on the table, and am I making the right decisions to try to get out of this negative headspace at work or at home or anywhere? And sometimes it's easier to just be negative about something. It's harder to take action and actually step up and have a conversation with a person that you don't like, or do something that's really, really difficult, but you know it needs to get done, or it's going to catch up with you at some point, and it's easy to be influenced by other people who are having their own situations that might be piling up on them, and being influenced by that and allowing it to affect your mood or your view or perspective on your situation, that

Dr. K: 17:45

teamwork, that support, that validation. And something to remember is that we tend to It started when we were young, and I don't think it's something that will ever stop. I don't always see it as a bad thing, but we do tend to click off. If you've got stuff in common with people you tend to click off. You know, the people that played sports in high school tended to hang out because they played the sports and did all the practices and everything the dancers or the cheerleaders or people that were National Honor Society, because you had common things that part's not always a negative. It's when you are let clicked off with another team, within with other team members, and you don't allow if there's a new team member coming in, you don't allow them in, you don't make them feel comfortable. That's not going to help your team. That's not going to help the individual friendships. You need to give a chance for the friendship slash team to develop at work. And that's a huge component of remembering, when you have someone new coming in, what do we do with that? Do we bring them in as our bestie, or do we see what they've got? You know, maybe you just have a work friendship with them because they're amazing and they know what they're doing. This

Dr. D.: 18:53

gets to the behavioral science, the psychology concept of in groups versus out groups. When you have close friends at work, it's sometimes you've developed that level of trust and shorthand communication. It's very difficult to allow other people to come in. It's very difficult for other people to catch up, develop that same level of connection, communication and camaraderie. And so if you're really close friends with a group of people at work, a new person comes in, and they might feel like an outsider, and it's very difficult for them to feel like an insider, especially if the group of friends all look and have similar demographics and have lived a very similar cultural background, it can feel like to somebody of a different cultural background that there might be something else going on, even if that's not the intention. So these, these are some real challenges in an organization. The other topic to talk about of challenges in an organization is not all friendships last. Sometimes things happen that cause friendships to fail slowly or fail spectacularly. When you really dislike somebody because a friendship has failed and you still have to work with them, there are a lot. Of consequences to that

Dr. K: 20:01

as well. First of all, it just becomes so confusing, it becomes convoluted, and you get caught between a rock and a hard place. This is person that friendship loved, and you work together, and maybe it was awesome, and then all of a sudden they get your promotion. Guys were kind of just side by side. Maybe you thought that you were working harder, or maybe you've been there longer, whatever it might be, and that person gets the promotion or gets a raise before you, or whatever it might be, and it's hard to what you want to do is you just want to blame the immediate which is the person that just which is the friend, instead of, hey, what's going on? Why did my boss Look at this. What was going on? What did they see that I didn't see? And that can be difficult. Why did I get overlooked? And egos come into play, disappointment, anger, frustration, and maybe even the expectation that we might have had, all that goes, you know, out the window, and we become so frustrated that we can't see the person, our friend, we can't see them the way that we saw them before.

Dr. D.: 21:05

When friendships fail, and they can fail for all kinds of reasons, I think that's a really good work example, a complicated work example, when your friend becomes the boss, and we'll talk about that in just a second. When a friendship ends, you go through a grieving process. You are sad and angry sometimes, or it might be anger first and then sadness. There's complicated emotions that happen. And if you have to sit in the next office or the next cubicle or at the next workstation from that person and see them every day, that makes the work environment really, really challenging for everybody involved, not just the people that are experiencing the fallout of of whatever the consequences are, all the people around them. It certainly destroys team unity, that friendship goes from being a real positive to the team to being a real negative in the team. You have to live through that, or you have to leave through that. There's really very few options until you get to the point where neutrality is met, and that usually takes when there's real hurt. That takes a long time before two people become neutral towards each other, rather than having very strong negative emotions. Which opens the door we are talking just generically about friends at work. It gets even more complicated when the friendship is between a boss and an employee or a senior leader in an organization and someone who is in a less senior position in an organization. It becomes very, very challenging. Is

Dr. K: 22:34

a friendship between a senior level position with someone lower management, whatever position they are below them, is it appropriate? Was the friendship developed? I'm a new person at this place, and all of a sudden, me and my boss just found out that we had some things in common, and we would talk about it, and then it developed into talking about more things. Or was it we were at the same level and then they got promoted? When a someone is friends with their boss. How does that look to other people? What benefits does someone get? And we all can be honest, we've seen it's not easy to be the boss and then to treat every single person at whatever level they are, exactly the same, especially when you know you're going to go to someone's house over the weekend for a barbecue, the problems that can arise are you picked for the better roles, for the better projects, just because you're friends with the boss? Are you the bot, the boss's pet? And then, how does that affect your relationships with your team at the same level as you a big, huge negative feedback loop that potentially can easily be it could take its time and blow up, or it could blow up immediately. So that friendships with Boss component can be very, very tricky. I know I've been friends with managers. We weren't friends really outside of work, but at work, they were always like, you're the one that I can trust. And often would come to me. I don't know what others felt about that. No one ever said anything, but I don't know if that ever affected that.

Dr. D.: 24:01

I know in my leadership journey, I always worked very hard to keep up what I would call a professional distance. I've had a few friends at work, but that has been very infrequent, oftentimes where people think I'm being way too standoffish with people, because I was probably being overly cautious about maintaining that professional distance between my team. In my calculation, I've worked with many really, really wonderful people as peers, as subordinate and as a leader, people that I would genuinely want to be good, close friends with, and I was always very, very careful, because I always viewed it in this way. One, what happens if I have to make a tough leadership decision? Is that relationship going to affect me? And it could affect me in two ways. One, if I am giving something to somebody that is my friend, even though the logic makes sense, will it be perceived that I'm displaying favoritism if I don't include that person in a project or. Something that's very beneficial. Am I holding them back? And am I making that decision because we're friends, and I don't want to be perceived as giving this person some something you not only have to think about the effects and the feelings of that person, but you can never really be sure of your own motivation, and you can never be sure of the perception that it sets in the people that are witnessing that relationship from the outside, you're almost damned if you do, damned if you don't. It doesn't really matter what your attention intention is. There is somebody who could be offended, and there is somebody who's going to think favoritism, and there is somebody who is going to think you're treating that person unfairly because of the relationship. And it becomes even more difficult when the situation that you brought up Dr Kate, where somebody is part of a team, and even if all the relationships are great and there's perfect harmony, a person gets promoted to a leadership role over that team, because that's where most mobility happens, happens up within an organization. Let's just assume everybody's really happy about that decision, not like the circumstance that we were talking about earlier, where there was hurt feelings, but everybody's really happy about that decision, but still, that person has to make tough choices, and that they have to make really, a really difficult shift in their relationship with the people around them and the people that they're friends with and the people that they're not friends with, and manage all those perceptions. It's very risky for that person, and it's very risky for the people around them, because all of a sudden, your role has to change. Sometimes there are decisions, corporate decisions that you have to enact on that could cause your relationship to blow up after the fact. And there's always going to be that perception that because friendships are involved, that it's influencing your decision, and it changes your interpersonal dynamic with the people. You go from being a peer to being somebody in authority. And is it really fair to say, hey, we were all friends before, but I can't be friends any longer. No, it just means that what you brought up before, Dr K about setting boundaries, you have to set very clear boundaries and say, I have to internalize. What does this mean for me now I can't be friends in the same way at work. We can still be friends outside of work, but when we're outside of work, we are not talking about work. Hey, friends, don't pitch me on the things that you want in the organization outside of work, because I'm going to say, do that in the office. So we're not doing this outside of work. I don't want to be influenced. That's very important to me. And your friends should appreciate and understand

Dr. K: 27:18

hope that they would. It doesn't mean they always would be an open and honest and saying, I am at this level now, I am in this role, be honest. It did change how our dynamics at work are going to be if there's a dynamic outside of work. No, it doesn't change the dynamic outside of work, but it does change the dynamic at work. I'm going to continue to hear what you have to say, whatever it might be, but my being able to water cooler, chit chat, I can't really go to lunch with you anymore, and outside of work, I want our friendship still, you say it, it comes out a little bit more professional. I'm very, you know, a little bit more like, Hey, I still want to be friends, but it's however you are, however the dynamic of your friendship is as well as what you are most comfortable with in your communication with someone. But the biggest thing, and I know I've said this over and over, communication, transparency and honesty in any relationship, is the best cliche, but is the best policy, because you don't want someone to read into something that's not there, and then that could hurt their, hurt your friendship, that could hurt your not just your friendship, but that could hurt the work environment. And if you are work colleagues, then you have to be aware of that. Yeah,

Dr. D.: 28:34

I think here's my opinion. My opinion is it's okay to be friends with people at work, but you have to have very, very clear boundaries, you have to have open communication about that and be very transparent about how that relationship is going to work. I would suggest creating a living document, a document where you and your friend or friends document those rules that you're going to live by as a leader or as friends within an organization, setting those clear boundaries, like work stays at work, friend outside stuff stays outside. We're going to keep those very separate document those things, so that when you're tempted, or your friends are tempted to bring outside stuff to work, or vice versa, you can go, Hey, we have a little friendship doctrine, don't we? Let's save this for the weekend, or let's save that for the office. And as you learn things new about your friendship, add it to the document, because then if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I'm really concerned, because I'm worried your friend is getting a lot of favor, seems to be getting preferential treatment on things, or you seem to be gravitating towards those ideas more when we're in a meeting, you can reflect and say, Man, maybe, maybe I am. I really need to think about this. But let me open up the our friendship agreement here, our work friendship agreement, and see if I've done anything that might need to change, or if there's any. Thing that I hadn't considered that we need to add to this friendship doctrine, and I think that would be a really practical way if you're going to engage in friendship at work, sometimes you can't help it. You're just surrounded by people you like. And for long enough you become friends, you have to have something that you can rely on and remind yourself on. And if you're a leader, be held accountable to to make sure that you're not violating any professional boundaries or any professional perceptions.

Dr. K: 30:25

Maybe, if you're just friends with people and you're on the same level, that's a little bit different. But when someone is at a higher level, whatever that might be, where they have to say something about your your work productivity, or they have to bring you into the office because there's been their job, then it's important to be like, Hey, I know that we're friends. I have moved up. I'm gonna have to say these things. It's not always personal. Something against your character, but if you're not doing what your job is requiring, what you know that your job has reached. Know that if your boss friend comes to you and says, Listen, you've been clocking out early, you have to remind yourself, this isn't about me as a human. This is about what I'm doing at work. And that's not easy, yeah. And

Dr. D.: 31:13

you also have to maintain yeah 100% and you also have to maintain confidences, you know, things about other people, and you can't share that, and that is another really core and important part of that. I'm not going to share with you everything. I can't share with you anything. I can't give you insider information. Now that I'm the boss and you as my good friend are not going to pressure me into doing that or ask me to do anything to tell you about other people's salaries or other people's performance, or inside baseball going on in the C suite, or whatever that might be. It's really important that that that confidence is also maintained, because it's important for that professional's reputation as a leader as well, and a good friend wouldn't want

Dr. K: 31:57

their whether it's personal or works later, absolutely so

Dr. D.: 32:00

in closing. Dr K, our friendships at work, our friendships at work, worth it

Dr. K: 32:05

with boundaries and communication, absolutely. I do think they are worth it, because you just we spend most of our time at work. So yes, I do think they are important. I

Dr. D.: 32:14

agree 100% I love the way you said that, yes, with boundaries. Well, thank you for that, Dr K, and to all of you joining us on this journey to the realm, and

Dr. K: 32:24

I'm Dr K, and we are looking forward to your next visit to the executive realm. .