What is the key to being a good peer in the business world? In my view, there are two tests that tell you if you are a good peer, that is, if you work to make people lateral to you great and help them perform to their potential.

The first test is one that is internal to you. One way to conduct it is to ask yourself, on the occasion of a promotion or award for one of your peers, how you feel about it. Are you upset or jealous? Do you secretly wish that he didn't get it, believe that you deserved it more? Do you feel sour and vituperative? If the answer to any of these is “yes” and in the absence of an absolute and egregious case of unfairness (not too common), you are not a good peer.

The second test is one that you might or might not be privy to. On the occasion of a promotion or award to you, what do your peers think and say and think? Are they happy for you or do they begrudge you your good fortune? What happens when they subject themselves to test one?

Okay so you didn’t pass either test. What do you need to do? And why is it important?
Let’s start with the second question first. Why is being a good peer important? There are essentially 4 reasons.

Reason 1: No one works in a silo. To get YOUR job done effectively, you must peer well.
Nowadays, organizational structures are almost always matrixed—you own a piece of a piece of a business along with dozens or scores or other people. In addition, the effectiveness of your work is often judged by how well it scales through the organization or scales to your external base of customers and partners. In either case, you are highly dependent on people whose work is adjacent to yours and in many cases on colleagues who might appear at first glance to be far-flung, but own components of the business that you need to be successful. Peering well means you have access to the resources and channels you need to make your projects successful.

Reason 2: Intelligence and ideas abound.
It has become something of a truism in today’s business world that good ideas come from all parts of the organization and from people of all ranks, titles, levels and salary grades. As such, your peer pool might very well be the source of enormous wisdom, strategy, and operational excellence. To tap into this pool, you need to work in a symbiotic mode with peers in an environment of equality and mutual respect. In large companies especially in which learnings are not transferred from person to person by osmosis, peering well is essential to gain best practices, and to avoid missteps that others have taken and rued. It is important to reject the arrogant view that you know everything and to actively access the knowledge of peers.

Reason 3: If you move up, your current peers will report to you.

Guess what? If you move up the chain as you likely want to, your current peers will report up to you. Couple that with the obvious fact that having a team that respects you, trusts you, and likes you is necessary for success and you have another truism: you will move up only if—and be successful in new role only if—you peer well. There is no way around this one. Some people, but very few, can ride roughshod over others and still move up the chain. Real leaders, however, peer very well and their peers hope one day to be able to work on teams lead by these superstars. If you want to be a leader you had better start by being a good peer.

Reason 4: It’s the right thing to do!
Making others great is the hallmark not only of great business leaders, but, instead, of great people in all areas of human endeavor. Approaching your work selfishly is not only limiting for yourself, it's also simply unfair. Just as you want people to support you and look out for your interests, so must you be willing to extend that elemental courtesy to others. Being a good peer is not only necessary, it's the right thing to do-for yourself and for others.

So what do you need to do to peer well if you aren't a good peer now? First of all, you need to conduct another self-test. Ask yourself if you really want to peer well. If you conclude you do then you have to make a difficult set of promises to yourself; first, you need to go through the process of discovery to find out where you stand today and second you need to be willing not only to be inured to the fact that this process will reveal uncomfortable truths but also to the fact that you need to make changes based on what you discover.

If you are ready to make these promises, then you need to:
• Set up 1-1 meetings with at least 5 peers
Ensure that you do so with people that you tend to work with well and with peers that typically you have rocky relationships with. You should approach them openly with the idea that you desire, even welcome, feedback on yourself. Make sure that you listen to them, that you don't attempt to defend yourself, and that you don't react. Take their feedback as a gift, even if it's negative. If they are good peers, they will most likely couch their comments in constructive language.
• Talk to at least 5 people of your level but who are NOT in your reporting structure.
Follow the same steps as above-listen, don't react, and treat their feedback as something to cherish.
• Ask your direct manager and your skip-level manager for feedback not on your performance but on their perceptions of your desire to and success in making others great.
Go in with the attitude, again, that feedback is a gift to be treasured. Also, you need to show your management that you are truly interested in improving yourself.
• Be introspective and honest
This is the hardest part. You really need to imbibe the lessons above and to want to be a great colleague and peer. You need to subject yourself to more scrutiny that you subject others to.

Leadership is not a function of your title or your salary. It is not about exerting power. The essence of leadership is about engendering desire and passion in people to work towards goals you articulate.

Being a good peer is a key to being a leader. If you can't work well with people adjacent to you, how do you expect to work well with people far removed?

Ask yourself this very moment if you are a good peer. The time is now.