Human Connections / Peership
I support organizations by bringing back authentic human connections into their environment, collaboration practices, and communities.
I’m on a mission to help people connect “better”: with more authenticity, empathy, & mutual support.
Peership is the tool I use to make this happen.
Authentically connecting humans to humans, hearts to hearts, is gold.
As humans, we all have a strong desire to be seen, understood, valued – to be loved.
The longest study on happiness, conducted by Harvard University, shows that relationships and community are the most important factors to our happiness.
Yet we live in a world of endless shallow connections (e.g. social media) and are having rarer opportunities for deeper, more meaningful, connections.
Community-building and collaboration designed to foster deep human connections bring us back to our core, our essence. They are crazy powerful and are often unlike anything we’ve previously experienced.
Peership
Peership describes an intimate group of peers coming together for deep and authentic support.
Peership happens when we agree to leave the Superman suit at the door, bravely open up on what’s hard, and solve our challenges together.
Peership is not a new concept, but it’s a hidden gem that I want to bring into the spotlight.
Why?
Peership solves massively important issues that stem from weak and inauthentic human connections.
Think of siloed organizations. Think of leaders facing stressful responsibilities alone and, hence, not taking the best decisions. Think of all the missed opportunities for mutual growth, collaboration, and partnership.
Bringing peers together and giving them a methodology to open up authentically and to see each other differently, helps develop deep empathy while problem-solving important issues together.
It’s transformative, wonderfully healthy, and insanely empowering – on top of having highly reliable outcomes.
It’s also simple to implement while having an incredible range of benefits.
I developed my own peership framework based on the Gestalt approach often used in forums as well as the research of Dr. Brené Brown, Dr. Otto Scharmer, Dr. John Gottman, Dale Carnegie, David Brooks, and many others.
Peership can be used as a one-time occurrence (e.g. for events) or to establish groups to collaborate regularly (e.g. leadership growth, culture building, or cross collaboration).
Many events miss a massive opportunity: to create meaningful connections amongst their participants.
Our peership framework ensures that attendees truly get to know each other and meaningfully connect.
Imagine creating an event that is impactful, transformative, connected, & intimate.
(Words from our testimonials, by the way – not mine!)
I’d love to work with you to get your community raving about your event unlike any other!
What I do for conference & event organizers
1. Consult: I enhance your agenda/programming to help foster deep connections
2. Facilitate: I lead the relationship-building activities (big and small) throughout your event
A few more testimonials from a recent event:
We’ve worked with thousands of participants across North America and our earliest clients still work with us, having embedded us in their regular programming.
Our participants love their experience (read more here).
The outcome of these groups is even more potent than having a one-off peership-flavored event.
Although InFounders specializes in supporting entrepreneurs, opportunities for peership groups go well beyond entrepreneurship.
Here are further examples:
- Leaders of siloed branches within an organization coming together to solve their challenges.
They not only gain incredible insights from each other, as peers who understand their company uniquely well, but they also get closer in understanding each other’s branches and finding opportunities for their departments to better collaborate together.
- Industry experts (non-competitors) unite to tackle their independent hurdles and gain fresh expert perspectives while also keeping ahead of their industry’s trends.
- Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives bring together employees of a same organization to connect meaningfully with the few peers who truly understand their situation.
What I do for organizations that want to empower cross-collaboration or improve their culture:
1. Assess your current state to understand your opportunities
2. Help create peership groups (i.e. we make it happen for you with experienced facilitators and our methodology)
I trust that we’re just getting started in discovering how truly powerful peership.
Aïko Thurlow
Empowering Authentic Human Connections
Bring your people together like never before!
Find me on LinkedIn