Sometimes leaders don’t need advice

Three times this week, I found myself having some version of the same conversation.

The circumstances were completely different.

One was with a CEO just a few weeks into his new role.

“I’m still figuring out how I want to lead this company.”

Another was with a senior leader deciding her next career move.

“I want something different, but I don’t know what that is yet.”

And another was with a leader debating how to leverage AI in her team’s workflow.

“Everyone is talking about using AI. I feel like I’m behind, and I’m still figuring out what that actually means for my team.”

At some point, I realized none of them really needed me to give them an answer.

Their thoughts were still half-formed. They needed someone to think out loud with.

The higher you go, the fewer people you have to talk things through with.

As you become more established in your career, you know more people. Your network gets bigger. More people want your time.

But the number of people you can comfortably say, “I have no idea what I’m doing here” to gets smaller.

Because as a leader:

• You’re the person other people come to for advice.
• You’re the person expected to make the decision.
• You’re the person who is supposed to have the answer.

But like everyone else, sometimes you don’t have the answer.

And it’s not that you need someone to give it to you.

You need peers who will listen, challenge an assumption, or share what happened when they faced something similar.

And maybe you just need someone to say, “I hear you. I’ve been there too.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of peers as I build Full Moon Forum.

When I started Full Moon Forum a few months ago, I wanted women founders, executives, and innovators to have more opportunities to build real relationships with one another.

I had been to enough networking events where we all walked around with our professional identities beaming like a beacon above our heads.

What do you do?
What are you working on?
Who are you looking to meet?

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. I’ve met some great people that way.

But I wanted to see what would happen if we created something different.

What if we put a group of accomplished women in a room and took away the need to pitch, perform, or prove why they belonged there?

What if the point wasn’t to collect contacts, but to get to know one another?

So we tried it.

And one of my favorite things to watch is what happens when someone asks a real question.

The conversation changes.
Someone else leans in.
Another person says, “Wait. I’m dealing with that too.”
And then they start talking about it.

Building Full Moon Forum has made me realize that I’ve probably underestimated the importance of peers in my own career.

I’ve always been good at building a network.

That’s not the same thing.

A network can be enormous.

The number of people you trust with an unfinished thought is usually pretty small.

And those relationships don’t just appear because you’ve reached a certain point in your career.

In fact, I think the opposite happens.

The higher you go, the more deliberately you have to build the peer relationships you need.

Where do you get to be a peer?

Not the boss.
Not the expert.
Not the person who is supposed to know what happens next.

Just another smart person trying to figure something out.

Who are those people for you?

And if you can’t immediately think of them, maybe that’s worth paying attention to.

Your network is who you know. Your peers are who you can think out loud with.

Who do you trust with an unfinished thought?

If this made you realize you could use more of those people in your life, that’s part of why I created Full Moon Forum: a place for women founders, executives, and innovators to build the kind of peer relationships that are hard to find as your career grows.

[Learn about Full Moon Forum →]