A Friendship Group Figured It Out. Leadership Development Hasn't.

Building meaningful connections with other women leaders is difficult, especially if you don’t have another colleague to lean on within your organization. You’d hope that leadership conferences would help with this, but instead they have you sit at round tables having “discussions” triggered by questions on slides. Most of the time you’re either sitting at tables with people you know (and brought with you), or with strangers you don’t yet trust. Or worse yet, you end up at a table where everyone knows each other, and you’re the odd person out. It’s no surprise that nobody says anything real during these ‘discussions’, as the room isn’t designed to build trust or encourage vulnerability.

In contrast, I recently joined a new friends group 5 weeks ago within a not-for-profit organization designed to create lasting friendships for women. With this group, like-minded women are matched up and a facilitator asks questions that unlock real conversation, vulnerability and raw emotion. These women know more about my life challenges than some of my other friends do, and a month ago they were perfect strangers. I’ve built more trust with these women in a matter of weeks than with some friends I’ve had for years.

How does that work? Every meetup has an activity: we go bowling, play mini-golf, explore a new coffee shop or go for walks. We have group events and a 1:1 activity weekly. The app does all the matching up of 1:1’s to make scheduling easy, but our connection happens through what we decide to do together. The events that have created the most connection for me are those that include movement and/or exploration.

A group of women building friendships figured this out. The leadership development industry still hasn’t.

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