One of the best decisions I ever made in my career happened before I had achieved any real success.
When I decided to enter the speaking and consulting profession in 1989, I knew I was called to help people, but I didn’t yet have complete clarity about exactly who I was meant to serve or how I was going to build a successful business.
Rather than trying to figure everything out on my own, I made a deliberate decision to learn from people who had already achieved what I hoped to accomplish.
Several successful members of the National Speakers Association generously took me under their wing. They answered my questions, challenged my thinking, and shared lessons they had learned through years of experience. One of those individuals remains one of my close friends more than 35 years later.
Not long afterward, another speaker introduced me to a coach named Mike, who specialized in helping people discover clarity and purpose. Coaching wasn’t nearly as common in 1989 but every month, I drove two hours each way to meet with him because I believed investing in my own growth would produce returns for the rest of my life.
A few years later, I made another significant investment by hiring Allen Weiss, one of the most respected consultants in our profession. During one of our mentoring sessions, he suggested an approach to a client opportunity that I would never have considered on my own. That single conversation resulted in a quarter-million-dollar contract—an opportunity I doubt I would have secured without his wisdom and guidance.
Those experiences taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten.
The fastest path to growth is rarely walking alone. It’s learning from people who have already travelled the road ahead of you.
That principle has shaped every stage of my career, and after more than 35 years of coaching leaders and working with organizations around the world, I’ve become even more convinced that success is influenced not only by what you know—but by who you choose to learn from.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” While it’s a simple phrase, it contains a profound truth.
Most parents are careful about who influences their children because they understand that relationships shape attitudes, decisions, and behaviour. The wrong influences can normalize poor choices, reduce ambition, and quietly steer someone in the wrong direction.
Yet many adults fail to apply that same level of discernment to themselves.
Think about it.
- Who influences your thinking?
- Who do you call when you’re facing an important decision?
- Whose opinions carry the most weight in your leadership, career, finances, business, relationships, or health?
- Most importantly, have those individuals achieved the kind of results you’re hoping to achieve?
The quality of your life is closely connected to the quality of the counsel you receive.
That doesn’t mean every friend should become your advisor. Friendship and wise counsel are not the same thing. You can deeply value someone while recognizing they may not be the right person to guide you in a particular area of life.
Unfortunately, many people confuse familiarity with wisdom. They seek advice from those who are closest, most available, or most opinionated rather than those who have demonstrated sound judgment through experience and results.
Opinions Are Everywhere. Wisdom Is Rare.
Everyone has an opinion.
Social media has made that abundantly clear.
Wisdom, however, is something entirely different.
Wisdom combines knowledge, experience, humility, discernment, and proven judgment. It helps us see beyond emotions, assumptions, and blind spots. Wise counsel doesn’t simply confirm what we already believe—it stretches our thinking and helps us make better decisions.
Yet it’s remarkable how often people seek advice from individuals who have never accomplished what they hope to achieve.
Someone wants to start a business and asks friends who have never owned one.
A leader struggling with culture seeks advice from someone who has never led a team.
Someone planning for retirement assumes every accountant or banker is qualified to provide investment advice, even if they have little personal investing experience.
Titles, credentials, and years of experience certainly have value, but they don’t automatically equal wisdom.
One observation I’ve made over the years is this:
I’ve met people with thirty years of experience who simply repeated one year of experience thirty times.
Experience alone doesn’t guarantee growth.
Real wisdom comes from learning, adapting, reflecting, and improving.
When you’re seeking advice, don’t simply ask how long someone has been doing something.
Ask yourself:
- What results have they produced?
- What lessons have they learned?
- How have they grown through success and failure?
- Is their experience relevant to the decision I’m facing?
Those questions will usually lead you toward much better counsel.
Strong Leaders Don’t Lead Alone
One of the greatest leadership myths is that leaders are supposed to have all the answers.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, I’ve found the opposite.
The more responsibility you carry, the more intentional you must become about surrounding yourself with people who are willing to challenge your thinking.
Years ago, a CEO of a large organization hired us as an executive coach to help implement significant organizational change.
He wasn’t looking for someone to tell him what to do.
He wanted someone who would ask better questions.
Someone who could identify blind spots.
Someone who wasn’t influenced by internal politics.
Someone who could provide objective feedback without worrying about organizational hierarchy.
That’s wisdom.
As leaders move higher within an organization, honest feedback often becomes more difficult to receive. Employees may hesitate to disagree. Colleagues may avoid uncomfortable conversations. Friends and family often encourage rather than challenge.
The result is that many successful leaders slowly become isolated—not intentionally, but because fewer people are willing to tell them what they genuinely need to hear.
Wise counsel protects us from that isolation.
It expands our perspective and helps us make better decisions before small issues become major problems.
Seek Counsel Before You Need It
Too many people wait until they’re in crisis before asking for help.
By then, emotions are elevated, options are fewer, and decisions become more difficult.
The better approach is to build relationships with wise people long before you need their advice.
Spend time with leaders whose judgment you admire.
Learn how they think.
Observe how they evaluate opportunities.
Watch how they respond to setbacks.
Pay attention to how they make difficult decisions.
If you want to become a better leader, spend time with exceptional leaders.
If you want to build a thriving business, learn from people who have successfully built one.
If you want healthier relationships, stronger finances, greater purpose, or better health, intentionally learn from people who consistently demonstrate wisdom in those areas.
That doesn’t mean copying everything they do.
Your personality, values, life experiences, responsibilities, and goals are unique.
But understanding how wise people think will almost always improve the quality of your own thinking.
Be Willing to Hear What You Need to Hear
Seeking wise counsel requires more than finding the right people.
It also requires the humility to listen.
I’ve watched leaders ask for advice when what they really wanted was validation. They continued asking different people the same question until someone finally gave them the answer they wanted to hear.
That’s not seeking wisdom.
That’s seeking agreement.
The purpose of wise counsel isn’t to make you feel better about a decision you’ve already made. It’s to improve the quality of your thinking before you make the decision.
Sometimes the wisest advice is also the hardest to hear.
It may challenge your assumptions, expose a blind spot, or reveal that your preferred course of action isn’t your best one.
Ultimately, you’re still responsible for your decisions.
The goal of seeking counsel isn’t to transfer responsibility—it’s to increase the likelihood of making the right decision.
Failure Can Produce Wisdom
Does this mean you should only learn from people who have never failed?
Absolutely not.
In fact, some of the wisest people I’ve ever met have experienced significant setbacks.
The difference is they accepted responsibility, learned from their mistakes, adjusted their thinking and achieved better results.
Failure by itself doesn’t produce wisdom.
Reflection does.
Experience becomes wisdom only when it changes how we think, how we lead, and how we make decisions.
That’s why I often say that setbacks don’t define us—our response to them does.
Make Mentoring a Two-Way Relationship
If someone is willing to invest their experience, wisdom, and time in helping you, value that gift.
Don’t approach every relationship by asking, “What can this person do for me?”
Instead ask, “How can I contribute to this relationship?”
Offer encouragement.
Share an article or resource.
Make an introduction.
Buy lunch or coffee.
Send a handwritten thank-you note.
Look for opportunities to add value without expecting something in return.
The strongest mentoring relationships are built on mutual respect, trust, appreciation, and generosity.
Even when one person has significantly more experience, both individuals should feel the relationship is worthwhile.
Examine Your Circle of Influence
Take an honest look at the people and information influencing your thinking.
Do they encourage growth, accountability, excellence, and lifelong learning?
Do they stretch your perspective?
Do they consistently demonstrate sound judgment?
Or do they reinforce fear, excuses, negativity, complacency, and limitations?
Remember, this isn’t about believing you’re better than anyone else.
It’s about recognizing that different people bring different strengths and experiences to your life.
You don’t necessarily need to change your friends.
You may simply need to become more intentional about where you seek advice.
Coaching, Mentoring, and Self-Awareness Accelerate Wisdom
Over the past three decades, one lesson has become increasingly clear to me.
Experience alone doesn’t create wisdom.
I’ve seen leaders with decades of experience continue making the same mistakes because they never stopped long enough to reflect, receive feedback, or challenge their own assumptions.
On the other hand, I’ve watched emerging leaders accelerate their growth because they intentionally invested in coaching, mentoring, and self-awareness.
Why?
Because they learned faster.
At CRG, we’ve seen this repeatedly through our coaching, mentoring, and research-based assessments.
Tools like the Personal Style Indicator (PSI) help leaders understand how their natural behavioural tendencies influence communication and decision-making.
The Leadership Skills Inventory (LSI) identifies strengths and development opportunities across the critical competencies required for transformational leadership.
The Values Preference Indicator (VPI) helps people understand the principles and motivations driving their choices.
When these insights are combined with intentional coaching or mentoring, leaders begin recognizing blind spots, improving their judgment, and making wiser decisions much sooner than they would through experience alone.
Self-awareness doesn’t automatically produce wisdom.
But it’s one of the fastest ways to develop it.
Questions to Consider
Take a few minutes to reflect on these questions.
- Who has the greatest influence on your thinking today?
- Where do you turn when you’re facing an important decision?
- Are you receiving wisdom—or simply collecting opinions?
- Do the people you seek advice from demonstrate the results you hope to achieve?
- Who consistently challenges your thinking rather than simply agreeing with you?
- Are you intentionally investing in your own growth through coaching, mentoring, reading, or professional development?
- Who is one person you should contact this month to learn from?
Your future will largely be shaped by the decisions you make.
And the quality of those decisions will often be influenced by the quality of the counsel you receive.
Choose your advisors carefully.
Remain teachable.
Seek people who challenge you to think more clearly, lead more effectively, and live more intentionally.
If you’re ready to accelerate your leadership growth, consider investing in coaching, mentoring, or increasing your self-awareness through one of CRG’s research-based assessments. Sometimes the greatest breakthrough doesn’t come from working harder—it comes from seeing yourself and your opportunities through a wiser perspective.