Building a Mastermind Group – Part III Rules

Today on our teleconference call Rich Grof gave us three of his top ten things to do to help double your income.  The first was to find out what’s holding you back and get accountability partners, technical experts, and outsourced support to help free you from the things you shouldn’t be doing to focus on the things you should be doing.

The second was to focus on mastering a single revenue stream at a time, adding to the effectiveness of your efficiency model and your attraction cycle.

And the third was to get support. Have a great network of people you can count on so you can stop the distractions and get down to business. Among the suggestions he had was to enlist your family and friends, a mentor, a coach and/or mastermind group. These people can add additional insight to help you focus and streamline your thought process so you will not burn your self out.

If you cannot join a facilitated mastermind group then you might want to build one yourself. The last two weeks we have been looking at the top three things that are important to have in place when building your own mastermind group: Intake, Commitment and today we are going to discuss the Rules.

1. Rules and Consequences

It is important to have rules for your group. Without clearly defined boundaries some people will get bolder and some will shrink and the group will loose its effectiveness.

Contract

For all partnership relations in business I recommend having a contract. In this case it is not for legal purposes but to have people commit to a certain behaviour for the meetings. You want people to be present at all meetings (if they can – remember life happens). When they are at the meeting you want them to allow others to speak when it is their turn and wait for their own. You also want people to use positive language when referring to suggestions that are shared by other.

Saying things like “I’ve tried that before” or “Yes, but…” reduce the value of the information and make the contributor feel like they are not offering any help. If you do that enough they will not contribute and you will not have a fully functioning, healthy group. Everyone gives different levels of information at different times. Everything has value because sometimes it the information you have already heard that will finally take seed if you let it and will change the way you do your business.

Consequences for bad behaviour

You may get someone in your group that has a more powerful personality and they can take over or hijack a meeting (or several). You may get a person that is not accepting feedback and not living up to their commitment to participate. You could get someone that is a ‘nay sayer’, not listening or contributing to the topics.

If you do, you will need to have a process in place to address the issue. You may put this in to the contract you all signed so that you can go back and point it out – holding them accountable to their commitment. If they do not come around you will need a process to ask someone to leave. Who will be in charge of this? How do you make this decision as a group without damaging the group dynamic? What are the infractions that get you kicked out? What are the infractions that don’t get you kicked out, and how do you address these too? You need to know this before you start your meetings.

Put all the pieces in place before you start the meetings and you will then have a foundation to run a group that will help you with your challenges and keep you accountable.