Leo Bottary

Leo Bottary is the founder and managing partner of Peernovation, LLC.  An award-winning author of three books, including Peernovation: What Peer Groups Can Teach Us About Building High Performing Teams (November 2020), Leo is also a speaker, adjunct professor for Rutgers University, Opinion Columnist for CEOWORLD magazine, and co-host of the Peernovation podcast.

Leo’s first book, which he co-authored with Leon Shapiro, The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership Growth & Success (2016), explored how and why formal peer groups for CEOs and business leaders are so effective. His second book, What Anyone Can Do: How Surrounding Yourself with the Right People Will Drive Change, Opportunity, and Personal Growth (2018), examined the power of enlisting and engaging the complete circle of the people who surround us.

Prior to teaching at Rutgers, Leo was an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University, where he led graduate-level online and on-campus learning teams studying leadership and strategic communication. In April 2015, he was named adjunct teacher of the year for Seton Hall’s College of Communication and the Arts.

Earlier in his career, Leo served in senior leadership positions at Mullen and Hill & Knowlton, where he was also director of client service for the US. In the mid-1990s, he founded a public relations agency that a leading trade publication hailed as a regional powerhouse, new media pioneer, and great place to work.

Leo earned a BA from Jacksonville University, an MA in Strategic Communication and Leadership from Seton Hall, and completed his doctoral coursework at Northeastern.

Learn more at leobottary.com.

How Peer Groups Can Help You Maximize Your Learning and Development Investment

With organizations across the globe spending north of $350 billion on training their employees, it’s a clear priority yet a shockingly ineffective investment.  Not because of the quality of the training, but because there’s no mechanism for facilitating effective implementation.  The lessons are lost, as smaller teams charged with doing more even faster simply don’t have the time or the forum to absorb and implement what they’ve learned.  As a result, everybody loses. Find out how peer groups inside your organization can help you breathe new life into your learning and development program! (50 minutes)

How Group Dynamics Can Drive Higher Performing Teams

A presentation on how understanding group dynamics translates to building higher-performing teams in the workplace. Bottary looks at high performing teams in business and in sports and offers a simple group dynamics-based model for organizational teams that they can implement easily and immediately. (50 minutes)

The Power of We Begins With You

A look at the power of peer groups for business leaders and why you should have both groups and teams inside your organization. While reading books, going to graduate school, and hiring coaches can be useful, we know that we learn better when we learn together and from one another. Bottary reveals how and why peer groups are so effective and why every organization should consider creating internal peer groups to drive greater learning, alignment, and performance.  (50 minutes)

How Group Dynamics Can Drive Higher Performing Teams (Plus) - Workshop

For leaders and teams who aspire to go beyond a one-hour webinar and roll up their sleeves, you’ll self-assess yourselves using the five factors common to high performing teams, developed from the group model introduced in The Power of Peers and advanced in Peernovation. The workshop includes a number of dynamic/interactive exercises that will help you identify how to bridge the gap between where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow.  (Half -Day)

Who You Surround Yourself With Matters – An Aspirational Journey (Workshop)

This session is designed specifically for newly formed business peer advisory groups who want to establish a solid foundation for growth and optimize their ability to create value for one another over time. Using the five factors common to high performing groups from The Power of Peers, the 3-hour workshop serves as an aspirational exercise designed to establish a solid foundation from the start.  It provides a framework designed to optimize the group experience, set expectations for participation, increase individual member value, and provide the group leader with specific guidance for leading the group over the coming year.  Members reach agreement about what it will take as individuals and as a group to create the ideal peer group for them, based on the outcomes they hope to achieve.  It also provides guidance and an action plan for growing the group.  It essentially answers the questions: What do we want our group to look like in a year? What will it take to make that possible?  How will we make that happen? (Half-Day)

“Leo spent a day with our Senior Management team talking about ‘The power of peers in the workplace and what high performing teams look like.’ Leo spent the first part of the day watching our Senior team operate in a normal management meeting and then took the stage to talk about his topic. From the very beginning, he had the attention of our entire team. He was able to present his topics in an informative and convincing manner, but most importantly provided an environment that all senior team members felt comfortable in and as such contributed and collaborated on the topics presented in a manner that will ensure that we operate more effectively as a team. His objective of taking this group of A players and exploring how they could raise their game as a team and discover new opportunities for collaboration both inside and outside their monthly meetings was accomplished in flying colors. Our team felt this was the most valuable session that they had participated in. THANK YOU Leo!” — Ron McArthur, President, Napoleon

“I met Leo Bottary online when I was looking to strengthen my inner circle with the best leaders in the peer-to-peer industry. I couldn’t stop until I finished the last page of his book, The Power of Peers. Some weeks later, we (CEO World and ANJE) invited him to come to Porto to deliver an incredible talk about Peer Advantage and participate in two peer group sessions. Leo is definitely a peer evangelist, always willing to support his peers to grow every single day.” — Miguel Dias, Co-Founder and CEO of ScaleUp Valley

“Leo helped my team at Taylor Guitars understand how to harness the underlying power of working together as a high performing team of peers. Before Leo, they already were a high performing team of peers, but now they work even more effectively by understanding how to maximize their peer advantage.” — Xavier Downes, Vistage Chair