You can’t do big things alone. Yet so many of us try.
If you’re the person everyone comes to for advice, it’s easy to forget that you need support, too. Learning how to build a personal support system is one of the most powerful ways to lead with confidence and stay energized.
Why You Need a Support System
When life feels heavy, a strong network reminds you that you don’t have to carry it all yourself. Research shows that having supportive relationships improves mental health, job satisfaction and resilience.
Your support system isn’t about having more friends. It’s about intentionally surrounding yourself with people who help you grow, keep you accountable, and remind you of your worth.
How to Build a Personal Support System
Start by listing the five people you spend the most time with. Then ask yourself: Do they lift you up – or drain you?
Next, identify who fills these essential roles:
The Cheerleader
Every leader needs someone who believes in them without hesitation. Your cheerleader reminds you of your strengths when you forget them. They celebrate your wins and encourage you through setbacks. When learning how to build a personal support system, this person fuels your motivation and helps you stay confident, no matter what life throws your way.
The Coach
A coach keeps you accountable to your goals. They don’t just tell you what you want to hear – they reflect your vision back to you and challenge you to keep growing. Whether paid or personal, this relationship helps you turn plans into action. Including a coach is essential when figuring out how to build a personal support system that drives real progress.
The Mentor
Your mentor is a few steps ahead of you on the path you want to follow. They share hard-earned lessons, offer guidance, and help you avoid unnecessary mistakes. A mentor doesn’t do the work for you – they light the way forward. When thinking about how to build a personal support system, this role gives you clarity and direction.
The Peer
Peers are the people in the trenches with you. They understand your daily challenges because they’re living them too. These relationships create empathy, accountability, and a sense of belonging. As you explore how to build a personal support system, peers remind you that you’re not alone in your journey.
The Therapist
Sometimes, you need a safe space to process emotions without judgment. A therapist – licensed or a support person who holds space for your emotions – helps you unpack what’s weighing you down so you can move forward with clarity. Their role brings emotional balance to your life. Knowing how to build a personal support system means knowing when to seek this kind of professional support.
You may find one person can play several roles – but no one can play all of them. Creating a well-rounded support system ensures you have balanced emotional, mental, and professional backing.
Keep Nurturing Your Support Network
Support isn’t static. As your goals evolve, so should your network. Check in regularly with your board of directors and adjust where needed.
And if community is something you struggle with, you can discover what’s really holding you back by taking my free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz.
Final Thoughts on How to Build a Personal Support System
Strong leaders know they can’t grow alone. When you learn how to build a personal support system, you create the foundation for sustainable success – without burning out.
So, who will you invite onto your personal board of directors first?
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[00:00:00] You are the one everyone leans on but when you need support, you’re left holding your own weight. Here’s how to become the CEO of your life and build a personal board of directors, even if you are the strong one that no one ever checks in on.
I’m Corrie LoGiudice, professional keynote, speaker, coach, and creator of the Overwhelm Culprit Framework.
I help high performing women and allies identify exactly why they feel stuck, stressed, or unsupported. And community is one of the biggest culprits, or I should say a lack thereof.
In fact, one of the very first exercises I walk my workshop and keynote audiences through is this. Make a list of the five people you spend the most time with, just like the famous Jim Roan quote. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so you’re gonna make a list of the five people you spend the most time with, and then ask yourself for each one of them, how are they helping you, or how might [00:01:00] they be preventing or hindering you?
This simple exercise is a wake up call for so many of us, especially if we’ve built a life where we are the support system for everybody else. That’s where your personal board of directors comes in.
Here’s what a well-rounded support system might look like for you. And yes, one person can play multiple roles, but ultimately you’re gonna wanna look to have each one of these covered in some way, shape, or form. First up is the cheerleader, the person who believes in you no matter what. This person, it could be a partner.
It could be your bestie from kindergarten, it could even be your kids. Anyone whose love feels unconditional and energizing, these folks are your cheerleaders, and we can’t accomplish big things without having cheerleaders in our corner.
The next one up is the mentor. The mentor is someone who is multiple steps ahead of you in achieving something it is that you’re working [00:02:00] towards. They’ve done what it is that you’re working toward, and they can help you sidestep unnecessary mistakes. Mentors could come in multiple different forms.
They could be either a paid mentorship. I did one very recently where I paid to work with an author mentor because I was working on my very first book and trying to get a literary agent. And working with that mentor actually helped me break into the publishing industry. But there are lots of mentors especially within organizations
if you’re in corporate where you could find mentors for free, there are folks who are higher up on the chain than you. So the most important part is that you find somebody that’s a few steps ahead of you and whatever it is that you’re looking to do.
Next step is the coach.
the coach keeps you accountable without shame or judgment. They’re not here to cheer you on blindly, but to reflect your goals back to you and challenge you to keep you going. The coach keeps you accountable. You can have coaches in your life that are paid engagements. I do coaching [00:03:00] with a lot of clients myself, or a coach could be somebody that’s just a friend, a family member, a colleague who ultimately keeps you accountable.
So a great example of this would be if you decide that you’re working on your health and fitness. And you have that one friend that always goes to the gym that you decide, you know what, we’re gonna go to the gym together at the same time every day. So I have somebody to hold me accountable to showing up for myself,
that person, even though they’re not a health coach specifically, but they’re helping coach you towards your goal of staying accountable to yourself. so you want somebody that’s gonna help fill in that role for you, whether it’s a paid engagement or it’s somebody who can help set in and achieve the same thing.
Next up is the peers. These are the folks that are in the trenches with you every single day, so it could be if you’re an entrepreneur, fellow business owners, if you are a working parent, it could be joining your family and caretakers, ERG. Caretakers folks who are in the [00:04:00] sandwich generation that are doing kids and elderly parents, you get it people who get it because they’re doing the exact same thing. So for me, many years ago, at one point in time, the group of peers that I had was a group of single working moms when I was going through my own divorce and also working. So you gotta figure out like who is it, with what it is that you are going through currently at the moment.
Who else is in those trenches with you and how can you get in touch with them to go through it together?
Next up is the therapist. Now, I’m not always saying this is a licensed professional, though I highly recommend it, and it is great as well, especially if you’re dealing with any kind of unresolved trauma. But this is the person that you can emotionally unpack with. No judgment, just the space to feel free and to be able to process.
So as I mentioned before, you might find several of these roles in one person. So for me, I’d say my therapist, my cheerleader, and my coach would be my [00:05:00] husband. He keeps me accountable, he’s always cheering me on, and he’s always there to, hear from me if I’m having a rough day.
More times than not, you’re gonna have to seek out additional support for areas that they can’t fully hold or sometimes even just as an example, you might be going through something emotionally that’s very difficult at that time and it is not fair to that other person to have them be solely the one that’s handling that.
So it may actually make sense to get a licensed therapist. To help with it so as not to overburden your partner or your friend or whoever it is that’s filling that role for you. So a lot of times it could be one person, but sometimes you gotta give them a break and find other people to help fulfill that role for you as well.
So there you go. This is how you curate your team because you are the CEO of your life. And remember, no CEO ever does it alone.
So I’d love to know which one of these is gonna be the very first person that you add to your board? Go ahead, drop it in the comments, send me a dm. I am [00:06:00] most active on LinkedIn. I would love to hear how you’re applying this and building your own personal board of directors.
So if this topic hit a nerve, it might be time to identify your Overwhelm Culprits. I have a sneaking suspicion that if this specifically resonated for you, that your overwhelmed culprit is probably lack of community. So go ahead, take my free quiz to discover what’s keeping you stuck, whether that’s lack of Clarity, Confidence, Community Conditioning, or Consistency.
You can take the quiz now at www.corrielo.com/overwhelmculprit and we’ll make sure that we link to it in the show notes.
And remember, the strongest leaders know how to build strong teams. Let’s start with yours. Thanks so much for being here. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. I’ll see you next time.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next [00:07:00] time.