Build community with "The Friend Test"
A practical exercise to identify your important relationships and build the habit of being a good friend.
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The Friend Test is a simple exercise that helps us to identify our important friendships and presents some practical steps to build the habit of being a good friend.
After moving to Austin in late 2020, I sat in the sauna, alone with my thoughts and was feeling into the contraction in my belly. As I listened to it more closely, it spoke loudly.
“You’re lonely.”
I was surprised to hear these words. This was one of the first extended periods of time that I could remember feeling lonely since childhood.
I had just left behind an incredible group of friends in New York and felt that I was starting over in many ways in Austin. I knew people in town but didn’t have the type of depth and consistency that I longed for.
So, I took my own medicine and did “The Friend Test,” an exercise that I have long prescribed to coaching clients and friends alike who want to deepen their community and close friendships.
It has been three years since I decided to re-commit to the intentional practice of friendship and I’m grateful that I did. The activities below helped me to re-cultivate one of the most vibrant communities of friends’ that I’ve ever experienced as an adult.
I believe anyone can do this with some intentionality and courageous action. That’s why I wanted to share The Friend Test and make it available for anyone who seeks to deepen their community
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So, I have a question for you…Who are your closest friends? Can you name them all in your head? Have you been a good friend to those people?
As we get busy, friendships are often one of the first things to get neglected, I think this is especially true with men. Anytime I am working with a client who has a desire to deepen their sense of community, I will walk them through an exercise I created called, “The Friend Test.”
The Friend Test
Step 1 - Make a list of all of the friends that you are grateful for and want to cultivate a deeper friendship with. These are not just your close friends, but the people that you want to be closer to. So long as they are energy bringing, add them to your list.
If it is a “legacy friend” that you no longer want to build a friendship with, leave them off your list. To help you evaluate who you want on your list, you can use my V.A.S.T. framework.
To me, I think that great friendships (and all relationships) are built around four core qualities “V.A.S.T.”
Vulnerability - Both people feel like they can be themselves.
Appreciation - Both parties respect one another and freely exchange appreciation.
Support - You feel supported and are called to support them.
Trust - You trust them to do what they say they will and not take advantage of you.
When these qualities are present, the relationship is typically energy bringing vs energy draining, and those are the types of relationships you want to invest in. The more you put in, the more energy you usually get out of it.
Not all of these qualities need to be present at the same time for meaningful connection, but they certainly help.
Add people to your list who are V.A.S.T.
Most of us are familiar with CRM’s at work, “customer relationship management tools,” that help us to keep track of important relationships. Without them, we would completely forget about most of our contacts. I have always wondered why we don't extend the same sort of intentionality towards our personal friendships.
Step 2 - Once you have created your list, rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 for how deeply you are showing up for each friend. 0 = not at all, 10 = fully.
These ratings make it easier to evaluate our performance and how we’re showing up. Once we know how we are doing, we can use this information to bring these relationships back into alignment.
Be honest with yourself and take a moment to consider how you feel after looking at your list, based on your own set of values, how are you doing as a friend?
Step 3 - If you rated yourself a 9 or 10, great job 👍. If not, it’s action time. Reach out to the people that you rated less than a 9. Here are some ideas to get started.
Share appreciation
If you have never fully appreciated this person and told them why you appreciate them, this is one of the simplest things you can do to reaffirm the connection and move it forward in the direction you want.
Even if you have shared before and it’s been a while, do it again.
If you feel the appreciation will feel “out of the blue” and weird, use the note below as a template.
Hey xxx,
I was doing this exercise called “the friendship test” and it challenged me to create a list of all the friends that I was grateful for and excited to deepen my relationship with.
After that, the exercise encouraged us to reach out to the people in our list.
You were on my list and I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you for x, y and z and I’m here for you if you ever need anything.”
If you are still worried that this might feel weird, just ask yourself how you’d feel if you received a note like that from a friend. My guess is pretty dang good.
One of my life mottos is “if you have anything nice to say, say it all.” Sharing appreciation freely and frequently is one of the simplest things we can do to cultivate more connection and community in our lives. Set aside some time and put the appreciation you have into the world where it can do some good.
Set up a 1-on-1
There is a difference between being connected and feeling connected.
In my podcast interview with renowned techno-sociologist Sherry Turkle, she famously called this phenomenon “being alone, together.”
Intimacy is the feeling of being connected. It happens when we feel we deeply know someone, and they deeply know us. It requires presence, vulnerability, and safety.
When I look back at my life, I’ll never forget the simple decision that forever transformed how I built community and meaningful connections.
When I first moved to New York, I had an active social schedule and spent a lot of time out on the town, partying and hanging out with fun people.While I love being with people, I am typically more energized by my solo-alone-creative time. I would often leave these events feeling drained. While they were fun, they often lacked the depth that truly nourished me.
I would naturally spend time at parties locked in with a single person or a couple of people. It was usually more generative for me.
So, one day I said…“Why don’t I just skip the party and go straight for that?”
I looked at my “friend list” and started inviting the guys to man-dates at the Russian Turkish Bath in NYC. A grimey and wonderful sauna/steam complex in the East Village. Sometimes we’d get ramen afterwards.
Our conversations while sitting in the steam room naturally went deep. These relaxed outings were, in every sense, the opposite of the noisy, shout-in-each-other's ear, cacophony of most bars, networking events, and parties.
I noticed something immediately... These hangs filled my “social cup” and also left me feeling energized and full. I felt deeply connected to the men I spent time with, even if we didn’t spend time with each other for months afterwards. My relationships with these men naturally became closer, more intimate, and more supportive than before.
It is very possible to love being with people and not be energized by large social gatherings, if you fall in this category that I call “uni-verts”, take matters into your own hands.
Invite the important people in your list to join you for a 1-on-1.
Go for a hike, hit the sauna, hang out in a park, or go to a museum. Bonus points for doing something novel; unique experiences help us to connect more quickly.
Often, we hesitate to make these requests of other people because we’re afraid we might get rejected or they'll tell us they’re too busy.
Remember this, we have to be willing to risk the relationship we have to build the oke we want. We all have needs and desires and the connection happens when we share them honestly and openly.
If someone is unavailable for a deeper 1-on-1 hang, that’s a great thing to know. While it may hurt, it lets you know how committed they are to your relationship. It will free up your bandwidth and give you clarity about where you want to invest your energy.
Life is too short to waste time on folks that don’t share our interest in connecting. Risk the relationship to keep it.
And remember this, most people crave depth. They are just waiting for someone to invite them into it. Be the community catalyst people are waiting for.
Schedule a recurring call
Stephen Covey said, “Don’t prioritize your schedule, schedule your priorities.”
This is why I highly recommend scheduling check ins with your closest friends; especially those that you live far away from. Clear agreements like this are one of the easiest ways to hold ourselves accountable for living with integrity and a focus on relational health.
Use this template copy to make it easy…
“Hey!
I was wondering if you’d be up for a (quarterly) check in. I really value our friendship and want to make sure we keep in touch with some level of consistency. Let me know if that’s something that you’re up for and all good if it’s not in flow for you.
Either way; just know I appreciate you and am excited to keep depending.”
It could be a weekly, monthly or quarterly, but putting something on the calendar will let you set it and forget it without falling into neglect.
If we want to be happy, healthy and live longer, the smartest investment we can make is into a strong community connection.
That’s not hyperbole, it was the clear message from the longest running study ever conducted on adult development. Harvard university tracked 700 adults over 70 years, and that was the main finding.
Of all the things I’ll be remembered for one day, “a good friend” is near the top of the list.
We will never regret the investment we make into being a good friend.
That we can trust.