One of the things you need to have to maximise your professional development is a trusted peer network. This is basically a set of people that you respect and can call on for support when you’re stuck or frustrated at your job – and there are four types of peer you need to get the best coverage.

👯‍♀️ The four types of peer you need.

Your peer network should be made up of four types of people:

• Craft peers

• Senior experts

• Craft-adjacent peers

• Internal peers

They can all help you solve different problems and will give you a wide range of perspectives, so it is important to have some people in all slots.

🎨 Craft peers

Craft peers are people who are doing the same job that you are, around the same level as you, outside of your workplace. So if you’re a designer, this is other designers. If you’re a copywriter, this is other copywriters. You get the idea.

The thing with craft peers is that they’re living a similar experience to you but in another context. They’re facing similar challenges to you and expected to have similar technical skills, which means you can really help each other solve problems. But that different day-to-day context will also expose you to other things that can influence your approach.

Another thing that’s really important about craft peers is that they’re some of the best people to just have a vent to. They really get it, because they’re probably living through the same things – but because they’re external, you don’t risk doing damage to your company culture or relationships. They can also be a great neutral person to snap you back to reality if you’re being unreasonable.

💼 Senior experts

Senior experts are people who are in management in similar fields. The role of the senior expert is to advise you when facing a tough challenge, give you more of a zoomed-out perspective on your work, and give you advice on what skills you need to be developing.

They can be internal to your organisation (and can include your manager) or external – and ideally you’d have at least one of each.

Having an internal manager that you trust can give you exposure to the hiring process, promotion process, and any other nuances that are important for advancement at your workplace. They can also help to get you more growth opportunities internally, and can help to connect you to others in the business.

The benefit of an external expert is that they can expose you to different approaches or techniques that your workplace isn’t using, and they can also give you a better understanding of what you need to develop in order to be hireable.

External senior experts are usually the hardest type of peer to get, so you might have to lean on a mentoring service like ADPList to connect to people like this.

💻 Craft-adjacent peers

Craft-adjacent peers are people who aren’t doing your exact job, but are usually in supporting or collaborative roles, and are external to your company. (So for me, I’m in design/product so my craft-adjacent peers are usually engineers.) This network usually emerges from past jobs you’ve held.

The thing about craft-adjacent peers is that they give you a lot more empathy for your frequent internal collaborators. They can give you a better idea of what’s important to those roles, what they’re evaluated on, what they usually find frustrating, and how you can make the relationship better.

Craft-adjacent peers are a really great way to bring balance to your perspective when things are going wrong. If you’re frustrated working with someone from another department, one of your craft peers might be very supportive because they always find them difficult too. But relaying the same problem to someone craft-adjacent will help you to see things from another point of view.

👋 Internal peers

Last up, we have internal peers. These are people who are internal to your company, in similar levels, but in any role. Some people would just call these work friends!

Your internal peers are great to work through anything that has company-specific context that your external network doesn’t really understand, and they also give you someone to go to who isn’t your people manager.

It’s important to note that internal peers should be of similar levels because internally, you need to be aware of impact up and down the chain of command. For managers especially, you need to be wary of being too candid with subordinates in case it ripples across the business.

Internal peers also have the highest risk out of your peer network, in that you don’t want this to become gossip. Your internal peers shouldn’t be who you complain to about the coworker you can’t stand.

📲 How to leverage your peer network.

Every relationship is different, so there’s no gold standard for how these relationships have to be. Your cadence with everyone will be different. You might have some peers you are chatting to casually on a daily basis, and you might only talk to some others a couple of times a year. What really matters is that you have people in each area that you feel comfortable going to when you have a problem.

Some ways might include: a past job group chat, individual texts, occasional coffee catchups, a formal mentoring schedule, a regular meetup you attend, an online community.

If you don’t have a lot of work experience or don’t have a network, try looking up meetups in your area, online communities, or anyone on LinkedIn who looks interesting.

🤗 Being a good peer.

Peer networks are a two-way street. That means that not only do you have people to vent with and get advice from, you’ll also be able to support others, which is another crucial skill for development.

Being a good peer looks different for your different relationships – for some people, it’ll be more like just being a friend, and for others it’s a bit more professional. But the important thing is to recognise that it’s a privilege to be so trusted, and to respect the position that puts you in. 💖