CEO Peer Organizations
When faced with an especially daunting challenge, the best advice often comes from someone who's been there. CEO peer organizations offer business leaders a network in which to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and make new connections that can improve productivity and profitability. Their success, like that of any networking group, depends on their members' active participation. And individual members' levels of success within the organization depends, in turn, on how they define active participation.
People who achieve the most via networking have a knack for fitting puzzle pieces together. They listen well, remember what they hear, and have the ability to pull the strands of disparate-sometimes even seemingly unrelated-facts and conversations together to create new opportunities for themselves and others.
Their approach to business interactions involves little in the way of direct self-promotion, and with good reason. A 2009 Rutgers University study of the conversion rates of regular Twitter users revealed that 80% are "meformers," people who post primarily about themselves in constant grabs for attention. But it's the remaining 20%-the "informers" whose posts are not self-promotional-who "have larger social networks and are more interactive with their followers."
The same principal applies to interaction with peers in CEO organizations, whether they meet in real life, communicate via teleconference, or network via CEO groups within professional social media sites like LinkedIn. Those who invest the most energy in being resources to others net the greatest return in resources group members share with them. To make participation in a local peer organization yield the greatest results, seek out those whose members put that simple business principle into practice.
