The More Senior You Get, the Fewer People Can Help You

Eight years ago, I began getting together for dinner with six other professionals.

We were a group of business leaders who had met at a large industry event, and decided it might be nice to spend time getting to know each other in a smaller, more intimate setting.

We didn't know each other very well at first, and we all had different professional backgrounds. But we shared a desire to advance our careers and a willingness to be open with one another. And we thought it would be fun.

With each dinner we had together, and each WhatsApp chat we had in between them, we became more comfortable with one another.

As our mutual respect and trust for one another grew, our conversation topics became more consequential, more deliberate, and more important for our professional growth.

One member of the group decided she didn't have the time to continue meeting as regularly as the rest of us wanted to meet. And there was nothing wrong with that.

But the rest of us continued. And the six of us continued to serve as a valuable professional resource for one another.

When it comes to building our careers, most of us follow the same formula: work hard, keep learning, build a strong network, and find a good mentor or two if possible.

Those things matter, and I'm not dismissing any of them.

But there's a specific kind of support that almost nobody talks about, and almost nobody deliberately builds: a trusted group of peers who know you well enough to tell you the truth, and who are different enough from you to see things you can't.

Research backs this up. The American Society of Training and Development found that you have a 65% higher chance of achieving a goal when you're accountable to someone else.

And that's just accountability to a single person. A curated peer group, where multiple perspectives converge on the same problem, would compound that benefit considerably.

That's not motivational-poster math. That's a structural advantage.

The problem with your current sounding board

Here's the thing most professionals won't say out loud: the people closest to you are often the least equipped to help you think clearly.

Your manager has a duty to your employer, and what's best for your employer may not always align with your best interests.

Your colleagues work in the same ecosystem and will often be your primary competition for favourable assignments, promotions, and pay hikes.

Your mentors will often come from a similar background as yourself, and thus will often confirm what you already believe.

And your friends and family love you, which makes them genuinely terrible at delivering hard truths you need to hear.

What you need is a group of people who are invested in your success but have no stake in your decision. People who bring a completely different lens because they come from a completely different world.

"What am I not doing that I should be doing to advance my career?" isn't a question you can expect your favourite AI tool to answer effectively.

It's the kind of question that only gets answered well in a room of trusted professionals without a direct stake in the outcome of your decision: a strong peer advisory network.

Eight years of real decisions

My group has been through a lot together.

We've debated how to handle a direct report who simply won't listen, the kind of frustrating, ambiguous people problem that has no clean answer.

We've helped each other figure out whether to take new jobs, knowing that the person across the table from us has nothing to gain or lose either way.

We've talked through how to get on more panels and stages, which is less about talent and more about strategy than most people realize.

We've helped each other decide whether or not they should start a business.

None of those conversations would have gone the same way with a single mentor or a colleague. The value was in the diversity of thoughts and opinions shared by the collective. And the outcome was almost always better than any of us would have landed on alone.

That's the thing about having people from completely different experiences in the room. They don't have the blind spots you have. They ask the obvious question you stopped asking years ago because it didn't seem relevant to your world. And they do it without any agenda except helping you think more clearly.

The loneliness no one talks about

There's a specific kind of professional isolation that tends to develop as careers progress.

You get more senior. The stakes get higher. The decisions get harder. And the number of people you can actually talk to about those decisions gets smaller.

Many leaders find themselves making decisions in an echo chamber, lacking genuine feedback, diverse perspectives, or space for real questioning. And this isn't just a CEO problem. It starts long before the C-suite. It starts the moment your responsibilities outgrow your available support structures.

Most professionals hit that moment and simply adapt. They get more decisive because they have to be. They stop asking for help because they've outgrown the people around them.

That's not strength. That's a different kind of stuck.

The professionals who navigate this well, the ones who keep getting better over time, tend to have one thing in common: they've found a way to stay in genuine conversation with people who can challenge them.

Peer Advisory Networks aren't about networking

The word "network" gets thrown around a lot, and it means almost nothing anymore.

Networking is transactional. You collect contacts. You swap business cards or LinkedIn connections. You check in periodically to maintain the relationship. And then, when you need something, you activate it.

That's different from a Peer Advisory Network.

A Peer Advisory Network is closer to what McKinsey called "harnessing the power of peer networks" in their research on how the best leaders operate. Not a collection of contacts you manage, but a small group of people who know you well, think differently from you, and are genuinely invested in helping you figure things out.

The distinction matters. You can have a thousand connections and still make your most important career decisions completely alone.

Find your Orbit

I've tried to capture some of what I have gained from my "Group of Six" over the past eight years into something I can offer to others.

Orbit is a curated peer advisory cohort program for ambitious, experienced professionals.

Five weeks. Six to eight members per cohort, deliberately chosen across functions and industries. Weekly facilitated conversations, plus a group channel between sessions for the questions that can't wait. And one dedicated one-on-one with me, so the work doesn't stay theoretical.

The curation is the product. I'm not just filling seats; I'm building the right table. The kind of table I would have wanted in those early years, before I stumbled into one by luck.

If you're making big career decisions and doing it without a trusted, cross-functional group of peers around you, you should think about whether that's actually the best way to work.

I don't think it is. Because eight years of evidence would suggest otherwise.

When you're ready to find your orbit, visit YourOrbit.co.