The fundamental importance of a trusted peer network

By Jane Ide, ACEVO’s chief executive.

A narrated version of this blog is available at the bottom of the page

As a leader, I wouldn’t be able to do the job I do without a network of peers that I can connect with regularly and with whom I have well-tested, trusting relationships.  These people are the ones who have seen me at my best and at my worst, they have celebrated my successes and supported me through my biggest challenges. They have been my sounding board, cheerleaders, and go-to tribe when I’ve needed them. They are the people I can talk to when I can’t talk to my chair, my colleagues, and sometimes even my own family about the things in my work that I’m grappling with or frustrated by or anxious about.

And I have in turn been part of their network, being all of those things for them.  Connectedness and peer support is never a one-way street.

It has always been thus; as human beings we are hard-wired to be social animals, and our tribes have always been important to us.  But I suspect that the experience of the pandemic – when for a while the opportunity to connect with others in a meaningful way was ripped away from us and then had to be translated to interactions through screens, behind barriers, across distances – has really highlighted just how much those personal connections really matter to us, and the impact that can arise when we can’t access them.

So why do these connected networks make such a difference?

Support and insight

At the most basic level, our peers can offer fresh perspectives, advice and insights that enrich our decision-making processes. One of the challenges of being a CEO is that you are, pretty much by definition, the only person in your organisation that does the job you do and therefore sees the world the way you see it. The role of the people around you, particularly your senior team and your board, is precisely to provide a different perspective on decision making to yours.

It is striking how often I hear from those who are in a co-CEO role how much they value having a direct peer alongside them that they share the decision-making process with, but job-sharing CEOs are still very much in the minority. 

For the rest of us, engaging with peers who share similar experiences and challenges allows us to road-test our thinking with people who get the nuances and challenges within a particular situation from the unique perspective of a CEO, in a way that others don’t.

Honesty and authenticity

Even in the most open and welcoming environment, the leader of an organisation cannot be fully vulnerable or honest about the challenges that they face.  Just as human beings are hardwired to be socially connected, we are also hardwired to be influenced by the behaviours and responses of the leader of our pack.  Any expression of anxiety, concern, anger, or hurt from a leader in front of their team has resonance far more amplified than it might be when expressed by less senior colleagues. 

And as leaders, so often it falls to us to absorb those responses from others, falling on those small (and sometimes large) grenades to protect the rest of the team or our organisation from the shrapnel that might otherwise fly around and create damage.

But we can’t suppress our own negative feelings or absorb others’, ad infinitum without causing ourselves harm, and eventually, that harm will leak out in other ways to the detriment of our leadership, our relationships, our organisation and ultimately those we are here to serve and support.

Connectedness with our peers gives us a safe space to be vulnerable. Our peers don’t have the vested interest our colleagues or boards have in seeing us ‘act successful’, so they can hear our worst fears or failures without negative impact.  And in my experience, a trusted network of experienced fellow CEOs will also, helpfully and with love and compassion, tell you honestly when actually you might be getting things wrong, and help you to do better.

Learning and forgiveness

We all want to be the best we can possibly be in our roles; I suspect one of the identifiable traits of leadership is the drive to continuously improve and we apply that to ourselves every bit as much as to our organisations and our teams. No matter how many leadership development programmes you might attend (even the ones we offer at ACEVO!), there is no training course that teaches you to be an effective CEO. We learn on the job; but learning from our peers about how they do things, the processes they apply and (especially) the mistakes they’ve made along the way can be a hugely valuable shortcut to developing our skills and our knowledge.

And in an environment where, in my experience, our sector leaders are far more likely to believe that they are not achieving enough than to be arrogant in their success it is our peer networks where we find forgiveness, generosity, and the reality check that, actually, we are doing OK.

And we all need some of that in our lives.