Who Is in Your Inner Circle?
Think about the last hard decision you faced. A key hire you weren’t sure about. A partner who stopped pulling their weight. A health scare, a teenager in trouble, a marriage under strain.
Who did you call?
For most of us, the answer is scattered. We have an accountant for taxes, an attorney for contracts, a spouse for the kitchen table worries, and a golf buddy for everything else. Each one sees a slice of our life. Almost no one sees the whole picture.
Advice Is Everywhere. Understanding Is Rare.
Take a moment and map it out. Who do you go to for business strategy? For money? For family decisions? For your health, your faith, your sense of purpose? Now ask a harder question. Which of those people would you trust with the thing you haven’t told anyone?
Most advisors are paid to have an answer, and many friends are eager to offer one. Their intentions are good, but advice usually reflects the adviser’s life, not yours. What leaders need more is a room where they can think out loud, be fully honest, and leave clearer than they came in.
The Power of a Safe Space
That is what a well-run peer group or forum provides. Members commit to confidentiality, to showing up, and to one simple discipline. Share experience, not advice. Instead of “Here’s what you should do,” you hear “Here’s what happened when I faced something similar.”
The difference is profound. Advice invites defense. Experience invites reflection. When eight or ten people around a table offer a piece of their own story, you leave with a range of possibilities and the freedom to choose your own path. No judgment. No agenda. Just people who have been there, listening closely.
Over time, that table becomes a place where you can bring your authentic self. The business owner, the parent, the spouse, and the person who doesn’t always have it figured out.
It’s us versus the issue vs me facing the issue alone!
An idea from 1727
None of this is new. In 1727, a 21 year old printer named Ben Franklin gathered a dozen tradesmen and thinkers in Philadelphia into a club he called the Junto. They met every Friday evening to discuss business, ideas, and how they could help one another. Members were expected to speak with sincerity and to avoid arguing just to win.
The Junto’s influence was outsized. It helped give rise to America’s first subscription library, a volunteer fire company, and eventually the American Philosophical Society. Nearly three centuries later, Franklin’s model is alive and expanding through executive peer groups and CEO forums that bring leaders together every month.
Who Is in Your Tribe?
Ask yourself honestly. Who is in your inner circle? Not your network or your contacts, but the handful of people who know the full story and still show up for you.
If that list is short, or empty, you’re not alone. Many leaders find their circles don’t work because the people in them are too close to the outcome, too dependent on their success, or too quick to fix instead of listening. Others simply never made the time. And the higher you rise, the fewer people will tell you the truth.
The answer isn’t to try harder with the relationships you already have. It’s to build one on purpose. Look for a peer group with a trained facilitator, clear ground rules, and members committed to confidentiality and consistent attendance.
Franklin knew it in 1727, and it’s still true today. None of us should go alone on our journey.