Build Your Parenting Board

Gibson Biddle was 30 when he got promoted to VP. He asked his CEO how to learn the job. The answer surprised him: 'Build your community of peers.'

He calls this building your 'personal board of directors' - a group of people you can reach out to when you're stuck. Not mentors above you, but peers alongside you, working through similar challenges.

'When I would have questions... I would just text my pals, and they would just give me the data. That's amazing insight, just by having peers in the business that you talk to.'

Parenting desperately needs this approach.

You're not supposed to figure this out alone. Every challenging stage your kid goes through, someone else's kid went through it six months ago. They have data. They've tested approaches. They know what actually worked.

But parents often try to solve everything independently. They Google instead of texting the parent friend who just went through the same thing.

Build your parenting board. Three or four parents with kids at similar ages. People you can text 'help, my kid won't eat anything but crackers' and get real answers within the hour.

This is how VPs learn to do hard jobs. It's how you learn too.