Most of your advisers, you never actually chose

You probably chose your accountant more carefully than the people you turn to before the biggest decisions of your career.

Most leaders never really pick their advisers. They accumulate them. The colleague down the hall, the friend who always answers, the peer from two jobs ago. A cast assembled almost entirely by accident, then trusted with everything that matters.

The research even has a number for the better way. In 2014 Albert Mannes, Jack Soll and Richard Larrick tested it across ninety datasets. The average judgement of a small, well-chosen group, what they called a select crowd, beat both the lone expert and the wisdom of the larger crowd. Around five good advisers were more accurate than one guru, and more accurate than fifty.

Most leaders have nothing like that. They have whoever ended up nearby.

The mentor myth

For decades the advice was to find a mentor. One senior figure who takes you under their wing and pulls you up. It is a lovely idea. It is also a single point of failure.

Priscilla Claman called time on that in Harvard Business Review in 2010, in a piece bluntly titled "Forget Mentors". Hitching your future to a single rising manager, she argued, had become a bad bet. People move. Sponsors fall out of favour. One person can only ever see you from one angle.

The academic version came earlier. Monica Higgins and Kathy Kram reframed mentoring in 2001 as a developmental network, a constellation of people who actively push your thinking and your career, rather than a single wise hand. The board is just the practical name for that.

Most advisers you have, you never chose

It rarely happens on purpose. Left to itself, the group of people you turn to fills up by proximity. The colleague down the hall. The peer from your last company. The friend who thinks like you.

McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook called this homophily in their 2001 review, one of the most cited findings in social science. Similarity breeds connection, which is a polite way of saying we quietly collect the people who nod. We gather advisers who share our background, our instincts, our blind spots.

It feels supportive. It is also how a leader ends up with five versions of their own opinion and calls it a consensus.

Build it by role, not by warmth

A good board is assembled by function, not by who you enjoy talking to. You are picking a board, not a dinner party.

You need someone who will advocate for you when you are not in the room, which is a different job from giving advice. Herminia Ibarra, with Nancy Carter and Christine Silva, studied this across more than four thousand high-potentials. The women in the group had more mentors than the men, and were still promoted less and paid around four thousand six hundred dollars less in their first post-MBA roles. The finding became a phrase. Over-mentored and under-sponsored. Advice is cheap. Advocacy moves careers.

So design the seats. Someone who advocates. Someone who genuinely knows your field. Someone from a world you do not understand. Someone who will tell you the thing your team is too polite to say.

Why difference pays

The instinct is to fill those seats with people like you. The evidence says do the opposite.

Ronald Burt at Chicago studied six hundred and seventy-three managers and found that the ones whose networks bridged otherwise separate groups had better ideas, by independent judgement, and went on to earn more, score better on performance, and get promoted more often. He called the gaps they spanned structural holes. The value was in connecting worlds that did not otherwise talk.

An adviser who only ever agrees with you is a comfortable and expensive mirror. The new information tends to come from the one who lives in a different world.

The loneliest seat

This matters most exactly where it happens least. At the top.

RHR International surveyed eighty-three chief executives and found half of them described real isolation in the role. Of those, sixty-one per cent thought it was hurting their performance. The higher you climb, the fewer people have faced your specific problem, and the ones who have are busy running their own companies.

The people with the most access to advice are often the most starved of the candid kind.

How I would build one

No perfect formula. But a few moves help.

Keep it small. The research points at roughly five, not fifteen.

Choose for range. At least one person who makes you slightly uncomfortable because they see the world differently.

Go outside your organisation. People inside it are evaluating you, consciously or not, and that filters what they say.

Make the roles explicit, at least to yourself. Know who is your advocate, who is your challenger, who is your map to an unfamiliar world.

And refresh it. The board you need as a function head is not the board you need as a chief executive.

The uncomfortable bit

Most leaders confuse being liked by their advisers with being well advised. The two come apart more often than anyone admits.

A board that always reassures you is doing the opposite of its job. The point of assembling these people is to hear the things proximity and politeness would otherwise keep from you.

If every conversation with your advisers leaves you feeling good, you have probably built the wrong board.

So here is the question. If you wrote down the five people you actually turn to before a hard decision, how many did you choose on purpose, and how many simply happened to be there?

The ones who happened to be there are not a board. They are a habit.

I help boards and founders think harder about who they trust and who they hire. Start a conversation

FAQ

What is a personal board of advisers?

A small, deliberately chosen group of people, often around five, who advise you in different capacities, rather than relying on a single mentor. The framing was popularised by Priscilla Claman in Harvard Business Review (2010) and has academic roots in Higgins and Kram's "developmental network" (2001).

How many advisers should you have?

Research on "select crowds" by Mannes, Soll and Larrick (2014) found that averaging the judgement of about five well-chosen people outperformed both a single expert and a large crowd.

Should I look for a mentor or a sponsor?

They do different jobs. Ibarra, Carter and Silva (2010, more than 4,000 high-potentials) found people can be "over-mentored and under-sponsored": mentors give advice, sponsors advocate for advancement.

Why should my advisers be different from me?

Ronald Burt (2004, 673 managers) found that people whose networks bridged separate groups had better ideas and stronger careers. Different advisers carry information your own circle does not have.

Sources

• Mannes, A.E., Soll, J.B., & Larrick, R.P. (2014). The Wisdom of Select Crowds. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(2).
• Claman, P. (2010). Forget Mentors: Employ a Personal Board of Directors. Harvard Business Review.
• Higgins, M.C., & Kram, K.E. (2001). Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective. Academy of Management Review, 26(2).
• Ibarra, H., Carter, N.M., & Silva, C. (2010). Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women. Harvard Business Review. (Catalyst survey, n > 4,000)
• Burt, R.S. (2004). Structural Holes and Good Ideas. American Journal of Sociology, 110(2). (n = 673)
• McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J.M. (2001). Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27.
• Saporito, T.J. (2012). RHR International CEO Snapshot Survey (n = 83).