Smart leaders open doors that many other leaders don’t even realize exist.
Once a leader takes on a leadership role, they gain something beyond the responsibilities of the position and the authority, influence, and station that come with it.
They also gain access to a network of peers outside the organization who are excited to engage and learn from them.
Here’s a hidden fact: The title, authority, and influence any leader enjoys make them interesting to other leaders.
Those with similar responsibilities share many of the same problems and issues. They navigate similar challenges and must figure out how to motivate, energize, and push the team forward, just like other leaders.
So, they welcome the chance to learn from what others have experienced and how they have approached it. They will eagerly pick up the phone when a leader in a similar position calls them.
For example, a VP of marketing at a tech startup can connect with a VP of marketing at nearly any other company or enterprise of similar size. The same is true for nearly every role and station leaders occupy.
This goes for CEOs and is just as true for front-line supervisors. Leaders holding similar roles at different organizations share common challenges, pressures, and perspectives that create an immediate foundation for connection.
Your title, authority, and influence make you interesting to anyone who holds a similar position in another enterprise. Yet most leaders never think to expand their learning network to include peers in organizations across the landscape.
They miss the opportunity to build relationships and learn from scores of leaders outside their organization who would welcome the connection and conversation.
These external relationships offer something no one in your internal network can match: a fresh perspective, different approaches, and insights from entirely different contexts.
The best leaders are deliberate about building external networks of experts to learn from. They reach out to peers at other companies and organizations just to compare notes. They treat these learning relationships as part of the job, not a nice-to-do when time permits.
Your leadership role is a passport to conversations that weren’t available to you before. Every time you achieve a new leadership role, an entirely new set of learning relationships opens up.
It’s time to take full advantage of this unique opportunity and build an external network of peers. The door is wide open. All you have to do is walk through it.
