Why Executives Need a Peer Advisory Group

You have more advisors than ever. Your leadership team, your board, your lawyer, your spouse, a few trusted friends. And yet the biggest decisions still land on your desk with no one who fully understands them. That gap is exactly why a peer advisory group for executives exists.

It isn't that the people around you don't care. They do. But almost everyone close to your work has a stake in the outcome, and almost everyone outside it only hears your version of the story. They advise on the part you tell them.

Leaders in our groups often say the same thing early on: they hadn't realized how much they'd been carrying alone. This month on Rooted we're writing about self-awareness in an age of isolation. A peer group is one of the most practical answers we know.

What a peer advisory group for executives actually is

A peer advisory group is a small, confidential room of leaders at a similar level who meet regularly to work on real issues together. Not a networking event. Not a book club. Think of it as a personal board of directors, a peer advisory and an accountability group in one.

The value comes from three things that are hard to find anywhere else:

• No agenda but yours. Members are non-competing and have nothing to gain from your decision except your success.

• The whole story. Confidentiality means you can say what you can't say at the office or at home.

• People who live it. Your peers carry the same weight you do, so you skip the long explanations.

Why executives need a peer advisory group more than ever

The higher you rise, the less honest feedback reaches you. People filter what they tell the boss. Some of it is politics, and some of it is simple kindness. Either way, what reaches you gets cleaner and less useful at the same time.

At the same time, the decisions get heavier. Succession. A sale. A key hire that isn't working. A season at home that's pulling on your attention. Those are the moments a leader most needs perspective, and the moments a leader is most likely to keep things to themselves.

A good peer group breaks that pattern. It gives you a place where someone will say, plainly and kindly, "I don't think that's the real problem."

What to look for in a peer group

Not every group delivers that kind of honesty. If you're considering one, ask a few direct questions:

1. How big is the room? In a large group, you may get a few minutes of airtime a month. Our Peer Growth Groups open with four to six members and never grow past eight, so each session two leaders get a full hour of the room's attention.

2. How are members chosen? Fit matters more than credentials. Look for a group that matches members on shared values and needs, with deliberately different perspectives. One wrong seat changes the whole room.

3. Are members trained to help? Good intentions aren't enough. The best groups teach members how to ask hard questions, get to the root of an issue and hold each other to what they said they'd do.

4. Does it respect your calendar? If it takes a full day every month, you won't keep showing up. Ours meet for two hours, once a month.

Peer groups, self-awareness and the Bloom Development Approach

October's focus in the Bloom Development Approach (BDA) is Self, the area we tie to emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is hard to build alone. You can't read your own blind spots, and the people who report to you are rarely in a position to point them out.

A peer group works like a mirror you can trust. When five or six leaders you respect notice the same pattern in how you handle conflict, or how quickly you jump to solutions, it lands differently than a comment from a direct report. That's emotional intelligence growing in real time, which is why every Bloom group member also meets one-on-one with a Bloom coach each quarter to work on what the room surfaces.

If you'd like a clear, assessment-grounded starting point first, Taproot pairs your Hogan assessment with a 30-minute understanding meeting, a 60-minute debrief and a written Bloom report across all five BDA areas. Our earlier post on staying self-aware in an age of isolation goes deeper on why that baseline matters.

Where to start: finding a peer advisory group for executives

Start with an honest question: who do you take your hardest decisions to today, and do they hear the whole story?

If the answer is "no one, really," that's worth paying attention to. Membership in our Peer Growth Groups is by invitation only, and every candidate goes through a five-step process so the room is right for you and you're right for the room. The first step is simply a conversation. Book a free discovery call and we'll talk through whether a peer group, one-on-one coaching or both makes sense for where you are.

You don't have to carry the biggest calls alone.

— Meredith Wailes and Vince Calcagno, Co-Founders, Bloom Coaching