Cultivate The Sweet Lemons
Build Your Circle Before You Need It: The Five People Every Leader Needs to Rise
Angeli Gianchandani applies cultural intelligence and leadership strategy to the question most leaders ask too late: who belongs in the circle that makes you rise?
The Edge | By Angeli Gianchandani · June 2026 · 4 min read
The Comment Nobody Followed Through
Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and CEO of VaynerMedia, posted a photo of lemons. An actual bowl of lemons with a caption urging removal of the rotten fruits before they spoil the rest. Two thousand likes.
I scrolled past it. Then went back.
Mita Mallick, author of The Devil Emails at Midnight, left four words in the comments: “Especially when that person is your boss.”
The thread stopped there. Those four words hold an entire career's worth of complexity. The performance review you did not get. The conference room you were not brought into. The year you spent being excellent in a direction no one was watching.
And they raise a question Gary did not ask: what happens when you cannot remove the lemon?
I know what it costs when the circle isn't there. I learned it the hardest way. This piece is not about that. It is about what I built after.
The Flip
He is right, but incomplete. You cannot make lemonade with bad lemons. But the real question is not just how to remove the rotten ones. It is whether and how you choose good ones in the first place.
And lemons are entirely in the eye of the beholder.
What a Six-Year-Old Already Knew
My nieces are twins. Every summer since they were born, they trade New York City for Los Angeles, leaving the city behind for their aunt's house on the other side of the family. And in that backyard, there are lemon trees.
Not a bowl on a counter. Actual trees, heavy with fruit, that the twins have grown up treating as both playground and learning ground. They climb around the lemons, play beside them, water them, tend them, and pick from them every summer. At a young age, they already understood what it takes to grow something worth keeping. Those trees are as familiar to them as anything in their world.
So when their aunt started preparing dinner, the twins did not wait to be asked. Let's go get the lemons. Off they went, returning with handfuls, already knowing which ones were ready.
They never saw lemons as anything but abundant. Vibrant. A given. Something you just go get because there are always more, and everything tastes better with them.
The good ones are out there. Go find them before you need them.
The Five Seats
Most leaders build their circle accidentally. Colleagues who become friends, contacts who become references, and they call that a network. They wait until they need a door opened to notice no one is standing at it.
There are five seats at the table that matter.
The Truth-Teller has no stake in your comfort. They tell you the presentation landed wrong before you walk into the next room, not after. Rare. When you find one, hold onto them.
The Connector makes the introduction before you ask. Not transactional. They see two people who should know each other and make it happen. They are thinking about your next move while you are still executing this one.
The Challenger reads the room differently from you. They do not share your blind spots, which means they see what you miss. The best Challengers are not always comfortable to have around.
The Mirror reflects your best work back when you forget what it looks like. Every leader loses access to their clearest self under pressure. The Mirror has been watching long enough to hand back that version of you. You need them most when you are least likely to call.
The Door-Opener has been where you are going. They know the unwritten rules, who actually makes decisions, and how to show up in a way that lands. This is not formal sponsorship. Someone who goes ahead and leaves the door ajar.
Most people fill one or two seats without realizing it. The leaders who compound their impact fill all five and refresh the circle as they grow.
The Real Reason Most Circles Stay Small
It is not that people do not know they need this. It is that competitive ego that trains us to see potential allies as threats. We size people up across the table instead of inviting them in. We protect our contacts rather than connect them. We call it being strategic. It is actually scarcity dressed up as professionalism.
My nieces did not compete over the lemons. They tended them, picked them together, and came back with more than enough for the whole table.
You can only make lemonade when you have good lemons around you.
Build the circle before you need it. Fill all five seats. And the next time someone who could be a Connector, a Challenger, a Door-Opener sits across from you, stop sizing them up and start asking what you could build together.
That is the question Gary Vee's post did not ask.
That is the one worth answering.
Read the next piece in The Edge at mobilitygirl.com: the door that looks open but never lets you in.
Angeli Gianchandani is a global brand strategist and cultural intelligence practitioner. She is Adjunct Faculty at NYU School of Professional Studies, Visiting Lecturer at African Leadership University, and holds a master's in international relations from The Fletcher School at Tufts University. The Edge is published through Mobility Girl LLC. Visit mobilitygirl.com/theedge and connect on LinkedIn.
