Watered, Pushed, and Steadied: What a Real Support System Looks Like

By Sarah Brobeck, President & CEO of ALM

I’ve written about Liz Remillong and about Rocco Romeo. If you’ve followed either of those posts, you know how each of them shaped me. Liz waters. Rocco pushes.

There is a third person I need to tell you about. Chip Malboeuf.

Chip is the steady one.

I care deeply about the work I do, and when I care about something, I get animated. I get worked up. I get invested in the outcome to the point where I can feel myself spinning in the face of a hard situation. That is the version of me that shows up when the stakes are real, and I have made peace with it. It is how I lead.

But every good leader needs somewhere to set the weight down before picking it back up. Chip is that place for me.

When something has me spinning, Chip listens. He does not match my energy. He does not tell me to calm down. He does not minimize what I am feeling. He waits until I have said the thing all the way through, and then he responds in the same steady, even voice he uses for everything. And then he asks the question that unlocks me every single time.

So what are you going to do?

That question does two things at once. It grounds me by reminding me that the situation has an answer and that I am the person capable of finding it. And it gently but firmly moves me out of the reeling and into the work. Chip does not solve the problem for me. He clears the noise so I can solve it myself.

There is another reason Chip is able to do this for me that I want to name, because I think it matters for anyone reading this who is at the top of an organization.

Chip is not on my team.

I love the people I lead. But I cannot fully let my guard down with them, because part of my job is to be the steady one for them. Leadership at this level is often described as lonely, and there is a reason for that. The people who report to you cannot be your primary sounding board without you accidentally shifting weight onto them that isn’t theirs to carry. So you have to build a different kind of support somewhere else.

Chip is one of the people I have built that with. He can hold the space for me to be fully human because he isn’t the person I have to be composed for.

Here is where this all starts to come together.

Liz waters me. Rocco pushes me. Chip steadies me. Each of them is a different shape of support, and each of them fills a role the other two couldn’t fill alone. Liz’s belief in me is what carries me through the moments when I doubt myself. Rocco sees more in me than I sometimes see in myself, and he refuses to let me settle for less than that. His belief in what I am capable of is what carries me through the moments when I would take the easier answer instead of the right one. And Chip’s calm is what carries me through the moments when I am so invested in the outcome that I can’t yet see the path forward.

I am lucky to have all three of them. But I want to be honest about something. Only some of this was luck. The rest of it, I built on purpose.

I did not assemble any of this. These are people who were already in the work with me. What I did build was the awareness to notice what each of them was offering, the humility to receive it, and the intention to invest in the relationships that were showing up for me in different ways. When you pay attention, you start to see who steadies you, who pushes you, and who waters you. And then you invest in those relationships on purpose.

This is the part I most want you to hear.

You do not have to have a Board like mine to build a support system like this. Yours can be made of peers you meet at conferences. Mentors who saw something in you early. Industry friends who understand the specific pressures you carry. People one or two steps ahead of you in your career, and people one or two steps behind you who keep you honest about what you are here for.

Networking is not small talk. Networking, done with intention, is how you find the people who will water you when your confidence is low, push you when you are settling, and steady you when you are spinning. It is one of the most important career investments most leaders never make on purpose.

Surround yourself with people who believe in you and who push you to be the very best version of yourself. Then make room for the ones who can steady you, too. All three roles matter. All three roles are different. And when the people filling them are the right ones, you show up to your work differently than you ever could alone.

Liz waters me. Rocco pushes me. Chip steadies me.

I am who I am because of the three of them. And the best thing I can do now, for the people coming up in this industry behind me, is to be one of those three roles for someone else. If you don’t have your three yet, come sit by me. I’ve been on the side of trying to do this work without them, and I would not wish it on anyone. Let’s figure out who yours are together.