Is Your Team Truly Performing? Peer to Peer Leadership.

Article written for Boards, CEOs and HR Directors by Nick Roud. Founder of Nick Roud Coaching.

When I sit down with leadership teams whether in Auckland, Jakarta, or anywhere in between one recurring theme emerges every time: the relationships between peers determine the success of the entire organisation. It’s not the CEO’s brilliance or the clever strategy pinned to the wall. It’s the daily dynamic between leaders who share the table, make the calls, and shape the culture together. How are your teams actually working together or are they really working in silos?

Teams rise when peers challenge and support each other in equal measure. They stumble when the space between them grows cold or cautious. Too often I observe peers trying to steal the spotlight or talking over others to ‘get heard’. Peer-to-peer relationships are the lifeblood of high performance and nurturing those relationships is one of the most overlooked areas in leadership development today. Over the years we have found that evidence allows Boards and CEOs to pinpoint what must and should happen.

Many coaches tend to focus upward, helping leaders influence their teams, their boards, or their customers. But truly great leaders also look sideways, with a nod to curiosity, humility, and courage. In doing so they ask themselves a deeper question: How do I show up to my peers? Am I enabling our team or pulling it down?

Why Peer Relationships Matter More Than Ever

In a volatile, fast-moving environment, no executive can afford to operate as a silo. The complexity of today’s decisions economic, technological, ethical demands shared wisdom and mutual accountability. High-performing teams no longer depend on one heroic figure at the top; they depend on collective leadership. How are your teams performing, not against budget but as a team?

Contact Nick to discuss peer-to-peer culture

Strong peer relationships are the connective tissue of that collective leadership. They are built not just on respect for roles but on respect for the human behind the role. The peer who carries both authority and vulnerability. When leaders know they can speak openly, share pressure honestly, and challenge each other constructively, something powerful happens: performance becomes truly interdependent. In a workshop last year with 12 executives we spent the majority of our time together focusing solely on how they will behave with each other, collectively and one to one. It was amazing to witness first hand genuine care and I am pleased to say that 6 months on they are very much a unified executive team.

I often see teams where the technical capability in the room is outstanding, but trust is thin. People work side-by-side but not with each other. They nod through meetings spending more time on their devices than in conversation, hesitate to speak truthfully. Over time, that distance becomes invisible yet deeply costly it saps energy, stifles creativity, and erodes alignment. Whilst the Board and CEO can see it a mile away little is ever done to course correct, that’s why they bring me into independently bring teams together.

Flipping that coin over, in high-trust teams where peer relationships are healthy, you feel a different rhythm. There’s laughter and spirited debate. People really enjoy being around each other and build on each other’s ideas instead of guarding their own. They hold one another accountable very high standards have to be adhered to in high-trust teams without resentment. And most tellingly, they leave each meeting just a little better than they arrived and very clear on the action that will now take place.

The Realities Beneath the Surface

When I bring leadership teams into an offsite workshop, I often ask a deceptively simple question: “What would it take for this to be the most effective team you’ve ever been part of?”

The answers rarely begin with strategy or structure. They begin with emotion: trust, clarity, openness, forgiveness, respect. These are peer dynamics, not organisational mechanics. And just to be very clear this is not about an organisation wide ‘north-star’ this is about the team!

Here are a few truths that consistently emerge across high-performing peer groups:

Mutual respect is non-negotiable. It’s not about being best friends; it’s about recognising capability and showing professional appreciation, even in disagreement.
Neutral zones must vanish. Silent bystanders weaken teams more than loud dissenters. Healthy peers speak up for the business, the customer, and the colleague who needs a nudge.
Feedback isn’t an event; it’s a daily habit. The best peers normalize feedback, not as judgment but as shared commitment to improvement. They lean into difficult conversations early, before issues become fractures.
Ego management is an everyday practice. Titles and turf tend to obscure collaboration. The mature leader constantly asks, “Is this about me, or about what’s right for us?” or as I like to bring into the room “no-dickheads”.

It’s no coincidence that these teams outperform on every meaningful metric engagement, speed, innovation, and retention. When peers are aligned and connected, the whole enterprise hums with coherence.

A connected team is a performing team
Nick Roud Coaching

Communication: The Currency of Peer Connection

Communication sits at the heart of every peer relationship. But not all communication is equal. High-performing leaders communicate with intention and awareness they know when to speak, when to listen, and how to align words with emotion and action.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Transparency over polish. Polished communication can make teams look cohesive but feel brittle. Transparency sharing doubts, insights, and reasoning, builds confidence and clarity.
Curiosity before judgment. High-trust peers pause before reacting. They seek to understand, not just to respond. This creates psychological safety, the condition for open thinking.
Listening as leadership. Active listening demonstrates respect and engagement. It’s one of the quickest ways to strengthen relational credibility.
Consistency breeds confidence. Peers who communicate reliably showing up when they say they will, delivering on promises, build invisible capital within the team.

One exercise I often use with teams involves identifying communication gaps. The unspoken rules that shape how people engage. For instance, is challenge welcomed or resented? Do meetings invite honest dialogue or reward compliance? Once teams surface these patterns, they can redesign how they talk to one another and the difference is often immediate. Don’t leave the elephant in the corner of the room bring it in, welcome it and talk about it. That is how you move the needle forwards.

Honest Tension: The Engine of Growth

Here’s something many leaders find uncomfortable: high-performing teams are not always harmonious. They are often filled with honest tension. They disagree, debate, and test ideas robustly, but never at the expense of relationship. I love it when teams robustly discuss specific situations, never do I see it spill over to personal attack. Mature leaders who are united want this they need this to perform.

Healthy peer tension is a sign of maturity. It means people care enough to risk discomfort in service of a better outcome. The challenge for leaders is to build the emotional resilience to stay in that tension without personalising it.

When teams avoid conflict, they trade short-term comfort for long-term mediocrity. But when they handle conflict well, balancing assertiveness with empathy they sharpen one another. It’s like heat in forging steel: the right amount of friction creates strength.

A CEO I worked with recently said, “I want my executive team to be able to argue passionately at 10 a.m. and still go for lunch together at noon.” That’s the essence of peer-to-peer maturity.

Accountability Across Equals

Accountability feels different when it flows sideways rather than downward. Between peers, accountability must be negotiated—not imposed. That requires courage on both sides: courage to ask for what’s needed and courage to deliver what’s promised.

The most effective teams depersonalize accountability. They view it not as critique but as care. When a peer calls you out for dropping the ball, they’re really saying, “I trust you to be better, and we need you at your best.”

This mindset transforms accountability from tension into teamwork. It reinforces the shared standard that defines elite performance. One executive client once told me, “I don’t want friends on my team, I want peers who tell me the truth.” That’s the benchmark of professional respect. Our Peer To Peer Leadership Assessment allows a line in the sand to be placed and progress then made.

The Shadow Side: What Gets in the Way

Every team, no matter how experienced, or new, has blind spots. In peer dynamics, the most common traps I see include:

Selective candour: People communicate openly only with certain peers, creating inner circles and quiet divides.
Comparative identity: Leaders measure success by relative status (who has more influence or airtime), not by collective outcomes.
Emotional carryover: Old frustrations persist beneath the surface, colouring present interactions. We must break ties and move quickly on, if you are holding on to past things you will derail the progress of a team.
Busyness as armour: True peer connection requires time and leaders often hide behind calendars instead of making space for conversation. Clear the decks get together and get working.

When these patterns take hold, collaboration becomes procedural rather than relational. People show up in body but not in spirit. The antidote starts with awareness, candour, and often, guided intervention. That’s where structured peer-to-peer reflection tools like our Peer-to-Peer Leadership Survey can help break the cycle.

Our Peer-to-Peer Leadership Survey: A Mirror for the Team

At Nick Roud Coaching, we developed the Peer-to-Peer Leadership Survey to help teams see what they can’t easily discuss. It measures the quality of relationships across the executive table how peers experience trust, communication, alignment, and accountability.

Unlike a 360° survey that focuses on individual performance, this tool looks at the relational fabric of the leadership team. It’s about the “in-between” the space where real collaboration lives.

Key dimensions include:

Trust and Psychological Safety – Do peers feel safe to be candid, curious, and vulnerable?
Communication Clarity – Are conversations productive, consistent, and grounded in mutual respect?
Shared Purpose – Do team members connect their goals to a collective vision, not just individual success?
Conflict Agility – How effectively does the team navigate disagreement and decision tension?
Accountability Integrity – Is performance feedback delivered with honesty and follow-through?

Each participant answers based on lived experience, and the aggregated insights reveal both strengths and stress points. What I’ve found repeatedly is that the most valuable part of this process isn’t the data it’s the conversation it sparks. We have also seen it work exceptionally well when hiring in a new leader to join the team. Think about that for one moment. Getting fit right before a leader joins the team.

When a team sees its relational truth laid out in front of them, they begin to name what was previously unnamed…and that shift can change everything.

From Insight to Habit

Once awareness arrives, the real work begins, turning insight into shared practice. Here are a few simple yet powerful habits that sustain healthy peer relationships over time:

Scheduled peer dialogue. Make intentional time to talk about how the team is working, not just what it’s doing.
Peer feedback loops. Rotate structured one-to-one conversations between team members. Keep them forward-focused and balanced.
Collective reflection. Build 15 minute debriefs at the end of meetings to capture what went well and what stretched the team’s dynamics.
Celebrate collaboration. Recognise moments when peers supported each other or resolved tough issues together these gestures build culture.
Anchor decisions in principles, not personalities. This keeps debates on the professional plane, even during tension.

With discipline, these practices compound. Over months, subtle shifts in language, tone, and behaviour create an unmistakable change in atmosphere. Teams that were once functional become exceptional.

Leadership Coaching and the Peer Perspective

As an executive coach, one of the most rewarding moments occurs when a leader realises their greatest growth edge isn’t “leading others” but “relating better to peers.” It’s in that space that self-awareness deepens and leadership matures.

Coaching can provide a safe environment to explore that edge to test different communication styles, question assumptions about colleagues, and rehearse tough conversations before bringing them to the team.

I often encourage leaders to reflect on three anchor questions:

How do I want to be experienced by my peers?
How might I be unintentionally creating distance or confusion?
What one behaviour could I change to strengthen trust within the team?

These questions unlock personal responsibility the cornerstone of true leadership influence.

Stories from the Field

Let’s ground this in reality with a few examples from client work (with permission, anonymised).

Case 1: The Executive Circle That Stalled
A regional leadership team in a manufacturing business was stuck. Meetings were polite but sterile; decisions dragged on. Our peer-to-peer survey revealed that half the team felt they had “low confidence” in each other’s follow-through. The breakthrough came when they collectively redefined accountability: they agreed to give feedback weekly rather than quarterly. Within three months, decision time dropped by 40%, and morale rebounded.

Case 2: The Start‑Up Growing Too Fast
A technology firm’s founding team hit tension as the company scaled beyond 50 employees. Old friendships collided with new roles. Through facilitated peer workshops, they rebuilt their “team code” a shared charter on communication expectations and feedback norms. This simple step preserved their culture and clarified authority as they grew.

Case 3: The Public Sector Leadership Reset
A senior government team used our Peer to Peer survey as part of a wider cultural renewal. Their insight: They were aligned on purpose but disconnected emotionally. Over six months, they committed to monthly coffee conversations “no agenda except connection.” The outcome wasn’t just better meetings; it was renewed empathy and cohesion at the top.

These stories reinforce a truth I’ve seen across industries: when peers lean into honest relationship work, everything from performance to wellbeing follows.

The Cultural Ripple Effect, I love a good Ripple!

High-performing peer groups don’t just lead better they multiply performance through the organisation. When senior teams role-model open communication, trust, and constructive challenge, those behaviours cascade.

Teams further down notice. They mimic what they see. If executives collaborate well, conflict below becomes healthier. If executives show vulnerability, others feel permission to do the same. Culture, after all, is caught more than it’s taught.

That’s why strengthening peer relationships at the top is not a “soft” investment. It’s one of the highest-leverage actions any organisation can take. Culture begins at the leadership table and the quality of that table’s relationships shapes everything that follows.

A Call to Action or Better Still My Invitation

If you’re reading this as a member of a leadership team, I invite you to pause for a moment and reflect:

How strong are your peer relationships truly?
Where is trust strong and where is it tentative?
Do your peers know how to challenge you and do you welcome it?
When accountability slips, how quickly does honesty return to the room?

If some of those questions stir discomfort, that’s a good sign. It means you care and it means there’s room for growth.

Our Peer-to-Peer Leadership Survey is designed precisely for that purpose: to hold up a mirror to your team’s relational reality and give you the insights to strengthen it. It’s confidential, insightful, and practical built from years of coaching executive teams across industries.

When you and your peers commit to seeing the truth between you, transformation follows. Teams become lighter, faster, braver. Leaders rediscover the joy of working with each other, not just alongside each other.

If this resonates, let’s start the conversation. Reach out to the Nick Roud Coaching to explore how the Peer-to-Peer Leadership Survey can unlock new levels of cohesion and performance in your leadership group.

Together, we can build teams that don’t just perform, but connect. Because when peers thrive, leadership flourishes and organisations do their best work.

Nick x

Celebrating 10 years of quietly partnering leaders.

+6421375630 | nick@roudcareers.co.nz