Build a trusted peer group
Sidebar is a personal board of advisors for the next generation of leaders who want to grow in their careers.
"A career tip that changed everything for me: your path to a leadership role does NOT start with you."
How Sidebar Works
Apply
Apply in under four minutes. If you qualify for the program, an interview follows.
Interview
A 25-minute discussion with our team explores your experience and goals.
Match
On acceptance, get matched with 6-10 similar yet diverse peers. Gain exclusive network and event access.
Grow
Networks offer benefits, programs yield outcomes. Boost your development with ongoing resources.
Each Sidebar group is expertly curated to support your professional journey—it’s a blend of science and human touch that results in a dynamic, supportive environment tailor-made for accelerating your learning and growth. Sometimes, the rationale behind a match might not be immediately clear. Trust the process; often, the person you least expect is the one you learn the most from.
Our matching process includes:
- In-depth understanding: We start with an interview and a detailed matching survey. This allows us to understand where you are today and where you aspire to be. Everything we learn about you, from your membership interview onwards, informs our matching process.
- Algorithm + human insight: We use our highly sophisticated algorithm as a foundation, pairing members based on career stage, job function, industry, and areas of expertise.
- Qualitative The algorithm provides the foundation. Then we add a crucial human layer, taking key qualitative factors like goals, preferences, personality traits, and personal connections.
- Complementary goals: We strive to ensure the professional aspirations within each group are aligned and complementary, fostering a dynamic where everyone grows together.
- Diversity and balance: Demographic diversity is crucial. We aim for a balance that ensures enough common ground for mutual understanding, while also embracing diverse perspectives.
Timing and logistics: We recognize the importance of timing. Your time zone and schedule preferences are key factors to ensure your group can meet successfully and consistently.
Sidebar meetings are carefully designed and expertly facilitated to catalyze your professional transformation and growth. Here's what to expect:
- 90-minute, interactive sessions: Twice a month, you meet with your small group. Every minute is optimized for maximum impact.
- Sharing challenges and solutions: Each meeting is an opportunity to share your biggest work-related challenges, strategic advice, and practical solutions with peers who can move you forward.
- Continuous learning: Every meeting is an active learning lab. You’re not just passively absorbing information; you're applying insights, practicing new strategies, and evaluating your growth trajectory. It's peer-to-peer coaching at its finest, ensuring everyone is heard and helped.
- Accountability and action: Sidebar groups are about turning insights into action. You will establish clear next steps, share progress on your goals, and receive support from your group to ensure you're meeting them. This approach guarantees that every session contributes to tangible progress in your professional journey.
Curating the perfect group for you—the people you will learn the most from—is one of our superpowers. It's important to remember that building relationships within your group takes time. Often, those who seem quite different from you offer the most insightful perspectives. Diverse viewpoints can be incredibly valuable, providing new angles and ideas you might not have considered otherwise. Embracing diversity within your group can lead to richer discussions, deeper understanding, and more meaningful learning experiences. So, we encourage you to stay open and curious about each group member; you may be surprised by how much you can learn from each other. That said, if you feel like you’re not in the right group, reach out to your group facilitator.
We do periodically calibrate groups, and if your group isn’t delivering what you need (or your needs change), we may reconfigure your Sidebar group or move you to a new one.
Sidebar's curriculum is an invitation to experience intentional, facilitated growth, requiring nothing more than your commitment to show up and engage. The environment, the content, and the collective energy of your Sidebar group do the rest, guiding you to achieve your most audacious goals. The program is the product of extensive research and has been honed over thousands of hours of meetings with a diverse global group of leaders and innovators. It blends scientific principles of effective group dynamics with proven coaching practices to foster individual brilliance and collective growth. Here's what to expect:
Structure: Each meeting is carefully structured with a unique goal, agenda, and outcomes.
Progression: Each meeting is carefully sequenced so that insights and actions from each meeting drive progress for the next
Expert facilitation: Every session is led by a highly trained facilitator to guarantee efficient use of time, equitable participation, and a safe space for confidential dialog.
Practical value: Each meeting is engineered to yield practical strategies you can immediately put to work in your personal and professional life, propelling you closer to your goals.
Perhaps most importantly, the Sidebar program is a dynamic, living system, and we are always iterating to make it progressively better.
Real Impactful Wins
Members support each other to achieve their career goals and solve challenges.
93%
of members say that Sidebar has made a significant difference in their career trajectory.
My group provided unbiased support and valuable insight to give me the push I needed to have some hard conversations. Now I find myself applying those different perspectives to my daily work life and it's yielding amazing results.
Courtney Steinberg
VP of Finance
The group provides constructive feedback and encouragement that helps me reflect on actions and decisions I've made or need to make in my professional development. This has helped my self-awareness and decision making.
Mark Longmore
Director of Operations
I have a really good group. We are at similar stages career-wise. Three people who are expecting babies. Other folks have really young children. It's really hard to talk about work without what ELSE is on your plate. It's really nice to share that point of connection. It allows us to think BEYOND learning and growing in careers. There are a lot of other sides you have to take into consideration.
Haomin Xu
Product Design Manager
It’s refreshing to bring up an issue and realize I'm not alone. It’s great to hear perspectives across different geographies, industries, functions, and how they've solved it. It's sort of like phone a friend, but you get six very different takes, and some of them build on each other.
Diana Rothschild
Director of Retail
I've recently made big progress in locking down the business model, working with my business accelerator. These convos have given me a lot of clarity.
Glenn Block
CEO
Just had my first group session and it was great! Exceeded my high expectations. Looking forward to more of these.
Phil Carter
Growth Advisor
I've found the various talks I joined to be helpful and I really enjoy the variety of members. It's made me realize how isolated I've been.
Polly Barton
Artist & Owner
The group brain is so valuable!
Ida Wainschel Cools
CPO, CIO, CTO Advisory
I love to hear the different perspectives, allowing me to think about different angles of the problem I'm facing.
Brian Benitez
Executive Director
I can already see HUGE advantages in Sidebar's approach, particularly with the tech support. The Sidebar team clearly has a good process on the human side of things too.
Sondra Pepe
Senior Vice President
I love my group. I really appreciate having the space with different people from different industries.
Halimah Jones
Learning Manager
The facilitation has been great. I love the timer bar, the way the conversation is structured, the commitment and accountability.
Yeong-Ping Koh
VP of Product
I love that each meeting has unique goals, opportunities, feedback and areas for insights.
Elizabeth Carey Smith
Design Director
I've been impressed by Sidebar’s technology platform. The real time agenda tracker at the top of our weekly meetings really helps the group stay on track. I would love to implement something similar for my Microsoft Teams calls at work.
Jack Cowett
Senior Director
I've never been in a networking type setting where, so quickly, people are so supportive of one another and open about their challenges.
Jessica Dominiczak
CPO
I've been part of groups where there is no facilitator before. The facilitator makes a big impact, adjusting on the fly and pushing where it's important.
Victor Skrylev
CPO
The facilitator tooling is really good. The agenda tracker is brilliant!
Michael Scully
Senior Director