Whether you engage with them individually or as a group, trusted peers can help you navigate career challenges. Photo: Impact 360.
May Busch says very few lucky people climb the promotion ladder unaided. While sponsors and mentors are invaluable, the power of trusted peers is often overlooked.
Have you ever wondered why some of your colleagues seem to get all the lucky breaks? Or why they seem to effortlessly come up with great ideas that catch the attention of management?
Perhaps they seem to have fewer career issues than you, or handle them more easily. However, the odds are it’s because they have a secret weapon – one you could have too.
While the importance of having a sponsor and mentors is widely understood, most people underestimate or even overlook the power of another part of their network – trusted peers. These are people at a similar stage in their careers to you and they’re going through similar challenges so they understand your situation.
You can turn to them in a confidential setting to talk about what’s really going on and enlist their help. Whether you engage with them individually or as a group, trusted peers can help you navigate career challenges.
These can include handling difficult colleagues, negotiating for resources, pressure-testing new ideas, recovering from a setback, or preparing for difficult conversations.
There were several times in my corporate days when I had to call on my trusted peers to help me through challenges.
Like Gail and Melissa, who were in the same unit as me but on different teams. They helped me craft a strategy for dealing with a senior colleague who was spreading rumours that questioned my integrity. The strategy worked so well that not only did the rumours stop, he even called to apologise.
If you don’t have such a group yet, take heart. Now is a great time to start building one. The key is your ability to trust each other, with each person having enough knowledge and experience to be able to help.
The main factors I consider include:
Proximity: It’s rare to feel comfortable speaking completely freely about career challenges with a colleague in your immediate team. In contrast, external peers can offer advice without bias because whatever you do or don’t do has absolutely no implications for them in their careers.
In practical terms, this means focusing on colleagues internal to your organisation but outside your unit, or people outside of your organisation altogether.
You can even have the best of both worlds by having an external group of peers who already know you (like former classmates working for other employers). Or you can choose people who are at similar stages in their careers and help them get to know you and each other.
Diversity: Having a range of experiences and industries represented in your group of trusted peers can help bring new perspectives and broaden your thinking.
There are significant benefits to having trusted peers who are external to your organisation. They’re more likely to see things with a fresh set of eyes and come up with novel strategies and perspectives for the issue or decision you’ve been debating.
Quality: This refers to their character as well as their substance. Consider the breadth and depth of their experiences, how they communicate, and the quality of their judgment.
Trust your instincts and don’t take chances on someone you get a bad feeling about, as it’s easy to add but hard to remove someone.
Trust takes time to build but only a fleeting moment to destroy. That’s why it’s important to take things slowly at the start of building your group of trusted peers and err on the side of caution when you’re not sure.
Even having one or two trusted peers can make all the difference when it comes to accelerating your career. Whether that’s coming up with innovative ideas that help you be seen as strategic, working out how to get difficult stakeholders onside, or reaffirming that you’re not the only one with the challenges you face. So don’t let past experiences stop you from creating your group of trusted peers.
You might already have such a group, in which case congratulations. All you need to do is activate them and think about whether you’re adding the most value you can to each other. However, if you’re like most people, you don’t have such a group, in which case it’s time to make a start, even if it’s just finding one or two people you can call on when you need a sounding board.
Having a peer you can trust may be just what you need to get that next promotion and excel in the new role once you’re in it.
May Busch’s mission is to help leaders and their organisations achieve their full potential. She works with smart entrepreneurs and top managements to build their businesses. She can be contacted at [email protected]. This article first appeared on May’s blogsite.
