Who are you spending your time with?
If you’re a sales leader or anyone in a leadership position, you are undoubtedly spending a lot of time with people you’re leading or influencing in one way or another.
Challenge you have is who is influencing you?
Leaders must have a “safe house” of others they can reach out to and share their thoughts and ideas with. Leaders need to have 2-3 other leaders they can connect with and be able to share in confidence issues they’re dealing with.
At the same time, this “safe house” group of 2-3 others can serve an even bigger role and that is in helping to keep each other focused and motivated.
Leaders are not immune to having down days. The challenge is they can’t allow those they’re leading to see they’re having a down day. Nothing can take the wind out of a sail faster than having the person at the top of the organization not fully engaged.
This is where having a peer group is worth far more than most people realize.
The ability to reach out and contact a peer in a safe and trusting manner can help get a leader back on track quickly.
While a peer group can certainly benefit a person in what they receive from others, it is even more powerful in what each person gives with regard to insight and wisdom. Collectively, this benefit compounds tremendously.
Over the years, I’ve found with those I view as my peers many times I learn as much by helping others think through a problem as the person who raised the initial problem.
View your peer group as both an investment and an insurance policy.
The investment part is the added knowledge and insight you’ll gain to allow you to be a stronger leader. The insurance portion is the realization you have a group of people you can call on to help you work through problems as they arise.
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
