Leaders who achieve a high level of success are often disappointed that their accomplishments don’t produce more satisfaction.
For many people, success isn’t what they thought it would be. It fails to bring the lasting happiness and personal fulfillment they expected and counted on.
Over time, more success becomes stale, empty, and uninspiring. The momentary pleasure and satisfaction of reaching yet another milestone seem commonplace and unexceptional.
In many cases, the anticlimax of reaching a high level of success after years of hard work feels underwhelming to the point of disillusionment.
Highly successful people, to the bewilderment of those around them, often appear lost and rudderless.
They naturally ask themselves, “What comes next?”
Because they are driven to achieve, they hop back on the hamster wheel, put their heads down, and set their sights on loftier goals and more success, all the while knowing it is unlikely to change the hollow feeling that follows them from accomplishment to accomplishment.
Without an obvious alternative, they don’t know what else to do. So, they play the game of “I’ll be happy when…” and then stake out new ground to cover.
But some highly successful people take another path.
They don’t push away success or lower their sights regarding achievement. While they are reaching, and driving, and succeeding, they are on the hunt for fresh ideas, new ways of doing things, insights that change their way of thinking, and theories that challenge the status quo.
They make the pursuit of new ideas the main show, and the success they achieve directly or indirectly becomes the sideshow.
They seek to be excited, inspired, and enthralled by a new idea that is worth thinking about, exploring, and perhaps acting on. Regardless of where the idea comes from.
They aren’t looking for the one big idea that will change everything, but a continual rash of ideas that gives them goosebumps. More importantly, they seek and find people they respect and enjoy who are equally committed to ideas and are willing to invest their time exploring and talking through whatever excites anyone in their circle.
No wonder peer groups of like-minded leaders, writers, composers, scientists, and educators have historically been so popular in society.
Successful people get together with others like themselves, not only for the connection, camaraderie, and problem sharing, but mostly for the idea generation. The fellowship is secondary to the ideas that might leap out from the conversation.
Today, established leaders have a host of options to find peers who want to exchange ideas and maintain an ongoing conversation.
Companies like Vistage, Hampton, Next Monday, Tiger 21, YPO, Matcha, G100, Founders Coach, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and Admired Leadership facilitate the creation of powerful conversations for committed leaders. They provide a much-needed outlet for leaders to focus on ideas rather than on the success they have achieved.
But leaders in any industry and at every level of success don’t necessarily need a paid facilitator to find an idea circle, any more than they need a date-matching service to find a relationship. All they have to do is look for others committed to ideas (just like they are) and then form a peer group or circle.
Successful people everywhere, especially those disillusioned by their hard-earned outcomes, need something else to chase. In addition to their closest relationships, searching for ideas is the answer, and the conversation around them is where lasting fulfillment comes from.
Peer groups help make success tolerable.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
