Leadership Network Diagnostic
The Leadership Network Diagnostic maps who a leader actually relies on for information, advice, and energy, then checks whether that network is wide and alive enough for the role they're growing into.
Four boxes carry the work from mapping who's currently in the network to closing the gaps the audit exposes.
Reach for this when…
- A leader relies on the same three people for every decision and hasn't noticed.
- Someone is stepping into a bigger role and their existing network won't stretch to cover it.
- A leader feels isolated at the top and can't say exactly why.
How to run it
- List the 10-15 people you rely on most for information, advice, and energy.
- Score the network on breadth, connectivity, and dynamism.
- Identify who should be in the network but isn't.
- Build a 90-day plan to close the gaps.
A worked example
Situation. Njeri Kamande runs Simba Cargo, a freight logistics firm in Nairobi, Kenya, and had never mapped her own network before a coach asked her to.
Applied. She listed twelve people. Scored against breadth, connectivity, and dynamism, the network came back narrow and static: almost everyone worked in freight, most of them knew each other already, and nobody new had entered it in over a year.
Result. Her 90-day plan added two contacts outside the industry - a customs-tech founder and a regional bank contact. The first cross-sector partnership Simba Cargo signed in three years came out of one of those conversations.
The catch
The list only captures who's in the leader's head that day, not who actually matters but has slipped from view. And 'dynamism' is impossible to judge properly without a second network map months later to compare it against.
A network that looks broad on paper but is one phone call away from being cut off two people deep isn't broad.
Origin: Herminia Ibarra ("How to Revive a Tired Network", HBR 2015)