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Opinion

Six practical uses for a Personal Board

Emma Maslen, founder and CEO of inspir’em, explores how building a Personal Board can transform your career and personal growth.

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Six practical uses for a Personal Board
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Throughout your career, you’ve likely leaned on the guidance from your colleagues, friends, or mentors. A Personal Board takes that idea one step further: it’s a group of trusted advisors you gather, whom you can turn to regularly for advice on achieving your goals. 

If you are going to accumulate some of the best minds in the world to support you, you might be thinking, ‘What can I use them for?’ and ‘What is the benefit of calling on this group of people for regular input and advice on my career?’ The following is a list – by no means exhaustive – of how I have seen others benefit from Personal Boards.

Making your network work for you

At any stage of our lives, the goals and achievements we strive to achieve are influenced by others. Whether it’s the people we would like to work for, or the customers we would like to work with, our goals are to some extent in other people’s hands.

When I was starting in my career, we talked about six degrees of separation, meaning everyone in the world could be reached in six relationship hops. For example, you know one person, who knows someone else, who knows another person, who knows someone, who knows someone else… who can finally, by association, connect you to Elton John.

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Now that we have larger professional networks and multiple social media platforms, it is estimated that you can reach anyone in the world in only three or four hops. That makes our networks more powerful, with other people easier to reach than ever before. In these networks, you will find people who can accelerate your success and achievement.

Gaining knowledge for career advancement

When you take on new roles, move companies, or are tasked with an unfamiliar project, there is often a knowledge gap. Put frankly, there should be. You need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, so you shouldn’t expect to have all the answers in place – first, to step into the challenge, and second, to thrive within it.

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Perhaps you are looking for a new role, but you haven’t quite worked out how to gain the right experience or connections to make that next step. Often, the missing answers lie in your existing network. This presents a prime example of the benefits of using a Personal Board: not just in securing your next role but also in helping you prepare for the new position.

Starting somewhere new

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Life moves fast, and things will often happen before you have had time to properly plan your journey. Your Personal Board can guide you through these transitions.

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Trusted connections can help you in settling in and broadening your network after you have moved to a new role, company, industry, or even country.

Setting up a new business

Personal Boards are not only about corporate careers. Entrepreneurs in any industry benefit from setting up an entrepreneurial Personal Board. Entrepreneurs need to be thinking about how they can use and expand their network to quickly scale their business. The personal network is often invaluable in the early days of a business when cash is tight, and you’ll need a favour or two.

All entrepreneurs will also have personal areas in need of development – for example, their skills in running a business, the sales skills required to sell the product or company, or the industry knowledge needed for operating in a new space.

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Career transition or building a portfolio career

I have already had several careers: as a salesperson, a leader, a consultant, a property owner, and an author. According to Dawn Rosenberg McKay, the average person will have five or six careers in their lifetime. It’s therefore likely you will change jobs more than once, each time needing new skills, new connections, and more help.

Portfolio careers (careers including multiple positions at one time) and the gig economy (chiefly contract and temporary work) have become increasingly popular. They have been accelerated by The Great Resignation – the higher-than-usual number of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs since late 2020. However, frequently changing jobs requires planning and a different way of thinking.

Clearing blind spots

One of the biggest and most useful objectives for having a Personal Board is to gain feedback for improvement. This case is useful for anyone – young, old, new, tenured, corporate, or entrepreneurial. Structured feedback from different perspectives provides new insight into your strengths and weaknesses, which you can use for your development. With this feedback, you can ensure you purposefully build your brands to achieve your goals.

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Final thoughts

Personal Boards are super-versatile. Whatever the stage of your career, a diverse group of connections will help you with advice and new perspectives on anything you want to achieve. A Personal Board also encourages creative thinking – finding solutions you wouldn’t previously have considered. There is a danger of thinking that, mid-career, you don’t require any further input because you already know yourself and where you are heading; however, an extra pair of eyes helps by feeding back your strengths, weaknesses, suitability for a position, etc.

Accessing critical but constructive feedback is a huge advantage and one that tends not to be delivered by organic advice. The extra pair of eyes doesn’t necessarily have to belong to somebody more senior. In a position with junior subordinates, it can be hugely informative to check in with younger people’s beliefs, values, and preferred ways of working.

Essentially, the Personal Board is such a flexible concept that it can be adapted to practically any person and any situation. You only need to have the confidence to embrace it.

Emma Maslen is founder and CEO of inspir’em and author of The Personal Board of You Inc

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