Peer Relationships: The Most Underrated Investment for a New Leader

Here are several benefits from investing in positive relationships with other members of your team:

✅ Conflict with peers makes your superior’s job hard.

✅ Conflict with peers slows down progress towards your teams goals (and everyone else’s).

✅ When your team’s goals are hindered by conflict between you and your peers, you lose more respect from your team than you would if it were a top-down decision that changed your team’s goals.

✅ If one of your peers is selected to become your team’s manager, you’ll already have a great relationship with your boss.

✅ If you are selected to become your team’s manager, you’ll already have a great relationship with your whole team.

✅ If someone from the outside becomes your team’s manager, they’ll more likely hear good things about you from your peers.

✅ If your peers are leaders, too, then your relationship with them becomes a model of good relationships between your team members and their team members.

The second most underrated investment is great relationships with the peers of your superior — as long as those relationships don’t come at your superior’s expense. Here’s why those relationships are worth the investment:

✅ Good relationships with them reflects well on your superior, which improves their opinion of you.

✅ When you get promoted, you’ll already have a great relationship with your peers (see the first best investment you can make.)

✅ It broadens your understanding of the organization, helping you make and defend better decisions.

✅ It gives you opportunities for connections with a wider network of potential mentors and partners, while improving your visibility for potential promotion.

So, spend time to get to know your peers. Learn what’s important to them. Find ways to genuinely serve them. You’ll find it worth the investment.