Weak-tie Friendships

In 1973, Mark Granovetter, a sociology professor at Stanford University, published a paper entitled The Strength of Weak Ties. 

Until then scholars had assumed that an individual's well-being depended mainly on the quality of relationships with close friends and family. Granovetter showed that quantity matters, too. 

Indeed, close friends are important, but research shows that building networks of casual acquaintances can boost happiness, knowledge and a sense of belonging. 

Granovetter surveyed 282 Boston-based workers and found that most of them got their jobs through someone they knew. But only a minority got the job through a close friend; 84% got their job through those weak-tie relationships-casual contacts whom they saw only occasionally.

But are some social ties better than others?

Which is more important: your husband or your Facebook friends? 

Well, according to many scholars we need both, for weak ties can make us strong, and sometimes strong ties can make us weak. 

Our social networks do allow us these weak ties. As Granovetter said it earlier, the majority of job help is from weak ties. This is primarily due to the simple fact that we have many more weak ties than we do strong ties. Therefore, our weak-ties have been proven to be much more useful.

Indeed, every employee should be building weak-ties at work. Close relationships give us pleasure, but distant ones can prove more useful in our careers.

Expanding our social connections are very important even if we work in large organizations. It is important to make an effort to get to know people from different departments and areas and establish relationships with them. One day we may leverage this network of weak-ties to obtain access to new information and new opportunities. 

Granovetter, who showed that weak-ties were more useful than stronger ties, insisted that having a network of diverse weak-ties is highly beneficial to finding opportunities to re-enter the labour market. 

Weak-ties thus not only provide information but also create important bridges through which information can move rapidly and widely in a network. 

Indeed, in being confined to our homes because of the coronavirus, we are missing our normal social support from friends and family, and our freedom to control our day-to-day lives. 

People in Spain have been filmed acting out with music, creating duos across apartment buildings. 

Music creates a sense of belonging and participation. When I was teaching at the French School, I was part of the teachers' school choir. Singing in the choir group was an antidote to the growing sense of alienation and isolation that we can feel when we start teaching in a new school. 

I did not know all the teachers who were part of the choir, but music is a social balm and it enhances community connections. I have found out that having weak connections is very valuable. These weak connections were with people I would genuinely like to stay in touch with, but I don't regularly have a specific reason to contact them. 

While we were all waiting for the choir teacher to arrive, my fellow choir members and I would exchange brief chats, smiles, and jokes. My fellow choir members were not close friends, but the Tuesday choir rehearsals made me feel energised and happy. 

I really miss my weak ties! In lockdown, we shrink our network of important weak-tie relationships.