peer group – Page 11

Lead As Part of the Group, Not Apart From It!

This is Part III of a (somewhat accidental) series involving why peer groups work, how they work (the conditions necessary for their success), and at least one perspective about how they could be led – that would be this post!

In Part I, I offered an illustration of a reinforcing loop involving a process of learning, sharing, applying and achieving to show why peer groups work so well, not only when it comes to embedding what we learn, but also with giving us the courage to implement new strategies and actually benefit from them. Part II simply suggested that this process doesn’t happen unless you have the right people in the room, a safe/confidential environment, a process for interacting that brings value, a culture of peer-to-peer accountability, and good servant leadership.

In the book, The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth & Success, we don’t take a position on whether a group should be led by a professional facilitator, a member on a rotating basis, or anything that may fall in between. What we do suggest is that no matter who is in charge, the responsibilities are the same: to be sure the conditions or factors outlined in Part II are present, and that the group leader should maximize all the assets in the room to drive the reinforcing loop we described. The high performing groups we studied have this in common.

If you think of it visually, we didn’t see an all powerful leader who stands apart from the group, engaging in dyads with the members, each looking to the leader for guidance and support. Instead, we pictured a more participatory environment with the leader as a part of the group, using a triad model we picked up from a terrific book called Tribal Leadership and through conversations with one of its coauthors, Dave Logan.

With each entity accepting their role as “having the back” of the relationship and being accountable to one another, it allows everyone to extract the most value possible from the experience and ultimately serve everyone’s purpose for being there.

This “series” may have been a happy accident, but I hope it was an informative one. Please share your thoughts and experiences on any aspect of this in the comments section. Thank you!

How Peer Groups For Business Leaders Work

Last week, I offered a framework, or a reinforcing loop if you will, that illustrated why peer groups for business leaders are so effective. This week, I’d like to share the five factors, or five conditions, that are necessary for a group to drive that reinforcing loop. Turns out, you can’t just throw a bunch of people in a room, cross your fingers, and trust that group members will spontaneously engage in the process of learning, sharing, applying and achieving. Because of this, we need to look at the five essential conditions that create the ideal environment for success. They involve:

Select the right peers/have all the right people in the room. Whether you want to lead a company or run a marathon, it’s essential that you involve people who want to do that (or have done that), and who are committed to helping each other achieve their individual goals within a particular domain, whether it’s business, running, etc.
Create a safe/confidential environment. Business leaders need to trust that they are in a safe place. This involves working with peers who treat each other respectfully and their being assured that what happens in the room stays in the room. It’s a place for learning rather than judging, and where confidentiality is sacrosanct. In this environment, group members can let their guards down and have real conversations. How many opportunities do you have to do that?
Foster valuable interaction. While creating emotional safety is necessary, it’s not enough. Intellectually, group members must believe they are engaging in a structured process that helps them solves problems and evaluate opportunities alike. They tend to get to the heart of the matter, instead of wasting time dealing with symptoms and other extraneous issues, and they do so in a way that produces actionable outcomes.
Be accountable. This involves creating a culture of accountability, where group members hold one another accountable for doing what they say they will do (DWTSTWD) to achieve their goals. This accountability doesn’t come from a place of calling people out; it comes from a place of members believing in each other and truly caring about their respective success.
Utilize a smart guide. Leadership, servant leadership specifically, drives higher group performance. Whether the group leader is a professional facilitator or a member leading the group on a rotating basis, the responsibilities are essentially the same. Smart guides need to be stewards of conditions 1-4, and like any great coach, maximize the assets in the room and help the group realize its full potential.

The conditions for group success described here are covered in detail in The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth & Success – Part II, The Five Factors for Peer Advantage. Turns out, each of these five conditions are evident (in a slightly different form) in high-performing organizational teams as well. As a CEO or business owner, one of the many ROIs you get when you join a group is that you can take what you learn from working with your peers and bring that peer-to-peer experience back into your organization. It’s what Kouzes and Posner call, “modeling the way!” The Year of the Peer is the perfect time to find a group that’s right for you and give it a try.

Next week, I’ll look at the role of the smart guide in greater detail and share what we learned about leading high performing peer groups and great teams.

Why Peer Groups for Business Leaders Work

One of my all-time favorite poems is all ignorance toboggans into know by e.e. cummings. In it, he warns us of the dangers of doing what I’m about to do now – offer a simple, singular answer to a complex question. He would most definitely accuse me of striving to achieve ignorance today, with the understanding that I will slide back into knowledge tomorrow (or the day after). To that I’ll plead guilty, and since today is today, and because we all like to boil things down to concepts that are easy for us to grasp, let me take you down the mountain.

In my view, the reinforcing loop depicted above is a big reason that peer groups for business leaders work so well. I’ll start with this comparison: think about any book club worth its salt. Each member reads the book and brings his/her unique perspective on the content to the group. After an hour or two, there isn’t one member who doesn’t understand the narrative and its context more deeply and more broadly than before the conversation began. By examining the book through everyone’s mental models, we become exposed to ideas and perspectives we would never have considered on our own.

We learn best when we learn together. Business leaders who share concepts and ideas with one another also help generate deeper understanding. Better yet, they give each other the courage to act – to actually apply what they learn. It’s one thing to become enamored with an idea, it’s quite another to implement it. Once they try it, and as they work to perfect the new initiative, they begin to achieve the positive results they imagined. The group celebrates member wins together, which only inspires everyone to learn more and continue the cycle.

I’m sure there are a number of you who will help me climb back up the slope to knowledge again by sharing your perspective on what you believe to be the secret to the success of peer groups for business leaders. Since it’s likely there is no one dynamic that deserves 100% of the credit, I hope you will. Where I believe we can agree is that business leaders can help each other in ways they won’t find anywhere else.

Now that I’ve offered my thoughts on why these groups work so well, next week, I’ll take another trip down the mountain and share the how – the 5 conditions necessary for making this reinforcing loop come to life.