What is a mastermind group and how to organize it

To solve problems that you do not tell friends and family about, collect your mastermind. It is a group of people who come together to support and help each other. We tell you how to organize it

What is mastermind

Mastermind is a group format of like-minded people who regularly meet together to support each other and help with personal and professional problems.

For example, if you lose your job, group members will help you create a new resume, share contacts, and recommend you to friends.

Here you can share personal problems and thoughts that you do not want to discuss with relatives or friends. You will be supported, accepted and offered non-violent help. And they will expect the same from you. Mastermind is a group of mutual improvement.

Some groups meet to solve a specific problem. For example, you are starting a new project. You select people with positive experience who will help you avoid mistakes and bring the project to launch. After the problem is solved, such groups are disbanded.

Members of the Mafia have funded or led several of the world’s largest technology companies. Fleximize spoke in detail about the composition of the PayPal Mafia and their relationships

Other mastermind groups support each other all the time. In such groups, people work on their goals as a team. Everyone invests in the success of other participants, supports, shares experience and resources.

For example, the PayPal Mafia is an association of former founders and employees of PayPal, including SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk, Clarium president Peter Thiel, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

The idea of ​​a mastermind was proposed by Napoleon Hill. He studied successful Americans: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt and interviewed more than 500 people to find the secret to success. In his books The Law of Success and Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill described the idea of ​​a group of people working together to help and support each other. Modern historians have criticized Hill for deceit and fraud, and in 2019 Gizmodo called him “the greatest fraudster of all time”. At the same time, the concept of mastermind groups turned out to be working and took root in many countries.

Hill described the concept of the mastermind group in 1928, but such groups had existed before. In 1727, Benjamin Franklin organized the Junto Club of 12 members. Club members gathered on Fridays to share their discoveries, discuss politics, morality and philosophy.

The more carefully the goals of the participants are formulated, the easier it is to choose formats to support these goals. For example, invite an expert or use brainstorming (Photo: Natalia Yadrentseva)

A mastermind group is your “personal board of directors” that will help you achieve your goals, gain new experience and support in difficult times. Here is how it will be useful:

• Mutual support. Group members will support you despite failures, they will not laugh or downplay problems. Support, security and understanding in the group is built on the reciprocity of all participants, so you will be expected to do the same.
• Other points of view. The different points of view of the participants in the mastermind group will help you see problems that you did not notice before. Feedback from other people may not be pleasant, but it will give a new vision of the situation and opportunities.
• Resources. Each group member will have a different set of skills and contacts. By asking for help, you can find suitable competencies in other people to solve your problems. Conversely, offer your skills, experience and connections to help the rest of the group.
• Networking and promotion. You will meet new people and get useful contacts that will help you grow your business, find a new job or like-minded people. You can promote projects and profiles of each other. For example, group members will talk about your blog or product on their social networks, and you will talk about them.

What kind of people are needed for a mastermind

The mastermind group consists of five to eight people. In such a composition, there are enough people and life experiences – in a large group they will be too different. Group members should be about the same level: similar income, position in society, education, so that no one is jealous or looked down on.

The group should not have the same people, competition for the same clients or projects. We need participants with different backgrounds, experiences and worldviews. The difference in life experience helps to find optimal solutions, but if people are too different, the dialogue may not work. Try to choose people from different fields of activity. So each of them will bring ideas and thoughts that are different from the others. Here is an approximate composition of such a group: an entrepreneur, a designer in a large company, a sales manager in a small company, a freelance programmer and a photographer in a studio.

Different composition of the group improves its productivity. According to the womanonoards study, teams with mixed compositions at the strategic level of management contribute to a more active growth in business value, or hold back the fall during periods of crisis (Photo: womanonoards)

In this case, the relationship between the members of the group should be approximately the same level. No need to take relatives or colleagues, otherwise you will not be able to fully trust each other.

How mastermind works

Group members gather in a quiet, cozy place: an apartment, coworking space or office. You can call via Google Meet, Zoom or Skype, and meet in person several times a year. One meeting lasts about four to five hours.

First, the participants exchange news for five to seven minutes per person. Everyone tells what happened in his career, self-development, personal life, health. Participants then propose issues and topics for discussion that have accumulated since the previous meeting.

What can you choose as a case for a group:

• specific tasks you need help with;
• difficulties in work or study;
• building a career, educational or other life strategy;
• everyday problems: cleaning or finding housing;
• questions about money;
• personal relationships;
• life goals;
• physical and psychological health.

Each person is allocated 20-30 minutes. During this time, he talks in detail about his problem or idea, asks for advice or shares plans. Then the rest of the group gives him five to ten minutes of feedback. The person whose problem has been discussed should draw up a plan of action and share it with the other participants. The group then moves on to the next problem.

If you scheduled a meeting for four hours, it will end when the time runs out. Problems that have not been discussed are transferred to the next time. At a new meeting, the participants talk about what they did or did not manage to do from the planned plan.

Principles and basic rules for the success of a mastermind group

The concept of a mastermind group differs from mentoring or friendly conversations in a strict format. Participants must take meetings seriously and keep the principles of mastermind in mind.

• Trust. Members of the group trust each other as much as possible. Maintain confidentiality to ensure trust. At the first meeting, sign a non-disclosure agreement. Say that for its violation the participant will be expelled from the group.
• Don’t interrupt. All group members are equal. Everyone gets the same amount of time and attention. Do not interrupt the speaker or interfere in the discussion unless you have a specific question. Write down your thoughts so you can express them at the right time.
• Meet regularly. Group members regularly attend meetings and do not miss them without a good reason. Keep track of your schedule and plan ahead. If participants are consistently late, come up with penalties. Let the latecomer treat everyone with food, pay for coworking or a program for calling.
• Choose a moderator. Moderator – a person from the group or an invited expert. He makes sure that the meetings do not turn into gatherings, are non-conflict and end with a result for each participant. The moderator encourages everyone to work at the peak of productivity. If members do not want to be honest with themselves or others, the group will stall. In this case, the moderator will remind you that asking for help is normal, this is growth above yourself.
• Fix. Group members write down their thoughts and ideas that come up during the meeting. If your problem is solved, draw up an action plan, fix it and share it in the group chat. This will help structure the knowledge in your head and start acting. Recordings can be made in Google Documents, Notion, Trello, and other programs.

How to find the right mastermind

If you want to build your own mastermind group, start with a goal. Choose a specific aspect of your life that you want to improve. For example, to develop professional skills in order to take on more expensive and interesting projects.

Make a list of friends and acquaintances with similar values. Tell them about the format of the mastermind group and invite them to join. If there are few such people, tell us about the creation of your group in social networks. Go to mastermind dating meetings that are looking for people for mastermind groups. For example, such events are held at the Kocherga rationality center in Moscow, and the Random Coffee project gathers online groups for entrepreneurs and IT specialists with the support of experts.

Together with your group, come up with and write down the ground rules and principles. Remember about mutual assistance and respect. Sign a non-disclosure document, create a group chat in a convenient messenger and schedule your first meeting.

How to organize a mastermind remotely

Yulia Sadovnikova, head of the Retail practice at the Russian office of Spencer Stuart, believes that mastermind works better when participants communicate in person. Due to the pandemic, we do not know when we will return to safe in-person meetings. At the same time, it is important to change right now in order to enter a new round of development and win after the peak of the crisis. The mastermind group format helps generate ideas for these changes, so it’s important to adapt it effectively to the new reality.

Julia shared the algorithm and key principles for organizing a remote mastermind group, which they developed and use together with their colleagues.

• Check your communication channel seven times. Incorrect communication tools and a slow connection channel are obvious things that often get in the way of effective group communication. Make sure you choose a convenient and secure communication channel. Try several video calling services and programs in advance with other participants.
• Seeing each other is critical. In the current environment, it is important to conduct video meetings, not calls. People are dispersed physically, subject to stress, their attention is scattered. Without a camera, the focus will blur even more. To make remote meetings useful, arrange with your group to use cameras.
• Meet on clothes. This principle remains relevant – people form an opinion about you in appearance. Formal wear helps keep you on your toes and contributes to the work of the mastermind group. If you are dressed very relaxed, it will be more difficult. You don’t have to wear suits, but having roughly the same business casual style is important. Put on trousers, a shirt or a simple sweater without prints, this will be enough.
• “How much to hang in grams?” The clarity of the agenda and action plan is very important. Carefully prepare topics and questions, think through possible objections and conflict points, provoke correct disputes. It is the polarity of opinions and respectful disputes that give rise to new meanings in the mastermind group.
• Facilitation. Take the time to understand where you are with the group now, what you got, what you achieved, what didn’t work out. This will help to find solutions faster, and all group members will be in the same cognitive and emotional state. Do not think for someone, clarify everything. It’s better to over-communicate than under-communicate.
• Do “check-in” and “check-out” when meeting with the group. People can remain out of the meeting with attention and emotions, so you need to “bring yourself” into any conversation. Before the meeting, check-in, do not rush into brainstorming on important topics right away. Ask the group members how they feel, what their attention is focused on in principle. It looks like a “check-out” at the end of the meeting. Find out from each participant: with what he leaves the meeting, what ideas, steps and actions he takes to work until the next time.
• We’re the same blood. Participants must understand why they are in the group, why they make time for meetings and follow generally accepted rules. What is important is the equal level of people in the group and approximately the same length of time in the respective roles. For example, Julia and her colleagues often organize mastermind groups of the CEOs of the largest companies in various industries. In such groups, participants should be from companies that are similar in size, business complexity, and context. At the same time, the duration of work in the role of CEO should not differ several times.

How to evaluate the effectiveness of a mastermind group

Coach, mastermind expert and strategic development consultant Natalia Yadrentseva believes that each participant evaluates the effectiveness of the group’s work.

Some indicators can be measured. For example, a person joins a mastermind to realize their idea or create a new product. The result may be a test of the idea for viability or the first sale. There are also indirect indicators. For example, the lifetime of the mastermind group. There are groups that continue to meet regularly for years. This speaks to the value the participants receive.

How to increase trust between participants

To increase trust between group members, Natalya Yadrentseva suggests using three tools.

Conduct motivational interviews to form a group. Ask questions to better understand each other. Here are some sample questions that will help to open the interlocutor:

• What will be a breakthrough for you now?
• How will you know that you have achieved results?
• Why haven’t you reached this result yet? What stops?
• What kind of support is needed?
• Why do you want/wanted to join the group?
• How can you be useful to other group members: skills, knowledge, strengths?

Voice stories and thanks. Personal stories bring participants together and better involve each other in life. An important part of such stories is gratitude. Set aside time at the end of the meeting for each participant to share: what he takes away from the meeting, what was useful for him and whom he wants to thank. Gratitude will help create an atmosphere of openness.

Use active listening, strong questions, and mirroring. The participants of the mastermind group share their problems in order to find solutions to the current situation, rather than complaining. Powerful questions and active listening help group members not worry about what others think of them. Share your ideas and mistakes to learn together. Mirroring – similar movements, facial expressions, intonation with the interlocutor help to win over the interlocutor.

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