Who Is In Your Corner?

What if the biggest driver of your leadership isn’t your strategy, but your circle? 

This week, Lois  unpacks the quiet decision that shapes your confidence, creativity, and speed: who you keep closest when the stakes are high. Drawing on years of coaching alongside pioneers like Sir John Whitmore and deep research on psychological safety, we explore how your environment programs your expectations and why no one truly thrives in isolation.

We start with a candid story of a senior director whose brilliance was dulled by a chorus of yes but. From there, we move into the neuroscience of co-regulation and how emotions, beliefs, and energy spread through teams. 

Lois explains why the leaders who outperform over time curate three non-negotiable roles in their inner circle: the Champion who holds your vision when you wobble, the Challenger who tells you the truth you need to hear, and the Energizer who sends you back into the arena more alive and more yourself.

You’ll get a practical, fast exercise to recalibrate your network: a two-column leadership circle audit that treats relationships as data. Identify who expands you and who quietly shrinks your ambition. Then make deliberate choices—deepen the ties that raise your game, set clean boundaries with the voices that drain you, and seek out the roles you’re missing. 

Along the way we connect the dots between trust, candor, and better decisions, showing how a balanced circle compounds into smarter bets and faster growth.

We close with an invitation to become that person in someone else’s circle: celebrate without envy, challenge without sting, and bring energy that travels. 

Plus, a heads-up: we’re marking our one-year anniversary with a special Ask Me Anything Episode and some fresh changes rolling out soon. 

If this conversation sparked something, follow the show, share it with a leader who needs a lift, and leave a quick review to help more people find us.

If you want to submit a question (please state if you do not wasn't your name mentioned) that I will answer on next weeks episode 25.02.2026 please email me lois@loisburtononline.com

You can check out further details on my websites:

https://www.loisburtononline.com/

https://www.loisburton.co.uk/

email:  lois@loisburtononline.com

Leadership Horizons - Helping You Lead Beyond Boundaries 

Transcript

The Hidden Decision: Who’s In Your Corner

A Client Drained By Negativity

Neuroscience Of Social Regulation

Research On Safe, Trusted Relationships

Three Roles Every Leader Needs

Weekly Action: Circle Audit

Choose Wisely And Lead By Example

Anniversary AMA And Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome back to Leadership Horizon. I'm your host, Lois Burke. I started my coaching career working alongside some of the most pioneering figures in the field. People like Sir John Whitmore, author of Coaching for Performance, and Peter Bluckett, co-founder of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. And one of the greatest gifts those early years gave me was an understanding of just how much the people around you shape who you become. Today, that's exactly what we're exploring. Because one of the most overlooked leadership decisions you will ever make isn't a strategy decision, it isn't a budget decision, it's a people decision. Specifically, who do you choose to have in your corner? I want to tell you about a client, a senior director in a large financial services organization. When we first began working together, she was brilliant, experienced, and completely exhausted. Not from the work itself, but from the environment she was operating in. Her inner circle, the colleagues she confided in, the peers she leaned on, were chronically negative. Every idea got a yes but. Every risk got a warning. Every ambition got quietly deflated. She hadn't noticed it happening. We rarely do. Because here's what the neuroscience tells us. Our nervous systems are fundamentally social. We co-regulate with the people around us. We pick up on their emotional states, their beliefs about what's possible, their energy, and it shapes ours. The people closest to us become a kind of mirror, and over time we start to see ourselves through their reflection. So ask yourself right now, what does that mirror look like for you? And this isn't just a feeling. The research is compelling. Harvard Business Review has consistently found that leaders who cultivate strong, psychologically safe relationships with trusted peers, coaches, and mentors make better decisions, recover from setbacks faster, and show higher levels of innovation. Jim Rohn famously said we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. And while that's a simplification, the underlying principle holds true. Our environment shapes our expectations of ourselves. In all my years of coaching, I have never met a leader who truly thrived in isolation. Not one. Every single high-performing leader I have ever worked with has, whether consciously or instinctively, built a community of people who believe in their capacity to grow. So, let me share three types of people I believe every leader needs in their circle. And I mean really needs, not as a nice to have, but as a non-negotiable. First of all, the champion. This is the person who sees your potential, often before you do. They remind you of your strengths when you're doubting yourself. They celebrate your wins without envy and hold your vision when your own grip on it gets shaky. Champions don't tell you that everything you do is wonderful. They tell you you are capable of wonderful things. There's a difference and it matters enormously. Secondly, the challenger. This is the person who loves you enough to tell you the truth. The one who asks the uncomfortable question. The one who says, is this really aligned with what you said you value? Or have you considered what you might be missing here? A great challenger doesn't undermine you, they sharpen you. And in my coaching work, I've seen how the leaders who are most open to challenge are consistently the ones who grow the fastest. Thirdly, the energizer. This is the person who, after every interaction, leaves you feeling more alive, more capable, more yourself. Not because they've solved your problems, but because something about their presence activates the best version of you. We've all experienced this. That person might be a colleague, might be a peer, might be a coach, might be a mentor, might be a friend, might be your partner. But that person, after whose company you walk away feeling like you can take on the world, these people are rare and precious. Find them. Invest in those relationships. Now here's your action for the week for the week. I want you to do what I call a leadership circle audit. It's simple and it's powerful. Take a piece of paper and draw two columns. In the first column, write down the names of the people you spend the most professional time with. You're trusted in a circle. In the second column, next to each name, honestly know do I leave interactions with this person feeling energized and expanded, or do I leave feeling smaller, more cautious, more depleted? No judgment. This is simply data. Because once you have that data, you can make intentional choices, you can invest more deeply in the relationships that raise you up, you can create some distance from those that consistently pull you down. And you can actively seek out the champions, challenges, and energizers who might not yet be in your life. Remember, as a leader, you are always setting the example. And when you make intentional choices about who you surround yourself with, you also give permission to the people around you to do the same. You know, I began this podcast with a belief that has stayed with me throughout the time I've been doing this and is becoming even more clear today. That's that the way we led yesterday is not going to lead us into tomorrow. And the same is true of the conversations we have, the communities we build, and the people we choose to grow alongside. So choose wisely, invest intentionally, and be the person in someone else's circle who raises them up too. Because that is what transformative leadership looks like. Just before I go, I have some very exciting news. Next week marks the one-year anniversary of Leadership Horizons. And I'm so thrilled about that, and I want to celebrate it with you. I'm doing a very special Ask Me Anything episode. Your questions, your topics, your leadership challenges. We did one of these before Christmas and we got a great response. So I want to hear what's on your mind. Between now and next week, send me your questions. You'll find all the details in the show notes. And join me as we mark this milestone together. As you know, I've been talking about it, I've been posting about it. We're going to be doing something different with Leadership Horizons this year. Um, heads up, it will be starting towards the end of April, and I'll be keeping you informed with everything we're doing, but we're going to be building on all the success we've had this year, and it's all thanks to you. So it's been an absolute privilege to be on this journey with you, and I'm looking forward to continuing it. Can't wait to see you next week.

unknown 7:20

Thanks.