Who is on your personal board?

When you face a difficult decision, who challenges your thinking, advocates for you and reminds you what you’re capable of?

Who do you need around you to develop and progress as a leader? Who offers you different perspectives, experience and support?

You may need a personal board.

This isn’t a formal group. You don’t need to hold meetings, and the people involved may not even know they have a place on it.

It simply means becoming more intentional about who you turn to, what each person offers and what may be missing.

Why does your leadership network matter?

As you become more senior, the people around you may become less willing to challenge you openly. Some may offer encouragement but avoid difficult feedback. Others may give helpful advice but have limited influence within your organisation or sector.

No single person needs to provide everything.

A strong personal board gives you both confidence and pushback - people who steady you and people who unsettle you productively. It includes people who help you recognise opportunities, question your assumptions, navigate your environment and keep developing.

Who might you need on your personal board?

Your personal board might include six to eight people. You won’t necessarily need every role, but these can help you identify the support and challenge available to you.

• The cheerleader, offers honest feedback with kindness and reminds you of your strengths when your confidence dips

• The sponsor, advocates for you, creates opportunities and speaks positively about you when you aren’t in the room

• The mentor, shares relevant experience and helps you learn from what they have already encountered

• The critical friend, asks thoughtful questions, tests your reasoning and helps you reflect more deeply

• The constructive critic, questions your ideas or plans and brings valuable insight when you remain open to hearing it

• The role model, demonstrates qualities, choices or ways of leading that you want to develop

• The guide, understands your organisation or sector and helps you navigate its culture, relationships and expectations

• The fresh eyes, brings experience from elsewhere and helps you see possibilities your usual network may miss

• The contrast, offers insight shaped by a different career stage, discipline, culture or lived experience

How can you build your personal board?

Start by mapping the people you already turn to.

• Who gives you honest feedback?

• Who helps you see the wider picture?

• Who advocates for you?

• Who will disagree with you when necessary?

You may discover that your network offers plenty of encouragement but too little challenge. Or perhaps you receive useful advice, but no one actively helps you access new opportunities.

Some of the people you need may already be close by: your manager, a senior leader, a trusted colleague, someone in a similar role elsewhere or a person whose career you admire.

Be clear about what you want from them, eg is it being a Critical Friend, or the Role Model?

You don’t have to follow every piece of advice they offer. The value comes from listening, considering perspectives beyond your own and deciding what to do with greater awareness.

Where can an executive coach fit into your personal board?

As an executive coach, I often become part of someone’s personal board.

I bring an independent perspective, ask questions that probe more deeply and help leaders examine important decisions from different angles.

Unlike a colleague, manager or sponsor, a coach does not have their own organisational agenda or need a particular outcome from the conversation. That independence can be particularly valuable when the issue is complex, sensitive or difficult to discuss with people around you.

If you would like to understand more about how this works, you can explore our Executive Coaching approach.

What could you do next?

Take five minutes to sketch out your personal board.

• Who already has a place?

• Where are the gaps?

• Who might you invite into a more purposeful conversation?

It is also worth considering what you offer in return.

Whose thinking could you challenge? Whose confidence could you strengthen? Where could your experience or influence open a door for someone else?

A strong network isn’t only about who stands behind you. It’s also about whose development you choose to support.

So, who is in your corner, and who might need you in theirs?

If this has prompted you to think differently about the support and challenge around you, explore our Executive Coaching work or contact me to discuss what would help you at this stage of your leadership.

Kate Jennings