By Joel Chue
It can be quite a daunting prospect trying to form your mastermind group for the first time. You start to wonder where can you find the right people, questions start to be asked, you doubt the practicality of your efforts and eventually a cloud of uncertainty pollutes your mind. Soon enough, you may even drop the whole idea! To avoid descending into this pitfall, you must learn to make the power of the mastermind work for you, regardless of what you are pursuing.
The identity of a group is paramount to its success. By identity, I refer to the vision as perpetuated by the individual/s who founded the group. A mastermind group cannot achieve its desired results should the members lose focus or deviate from its vision. The vision stems from the reason why the mastermind group is put together in the first place. There must be a purpose which not only serves the interests of one or two members in the group but that of the entire group. Hence, the challenge would be looking for the kind of people who would benefit from being in your group yet are savvy enough to offer something to your group. The foundation work done is crucial because you do not want a high turnover rate, when you realise that the members in your group are not quite like what you are looking for. Starting a mastermind group takes a lot of time and energy, and this energy must be reverberated throughout the group so as to bring out the best in the members. Therefore, it is recommended you take your time to source for the most suitable candidates possible for your group.
The next aspect is the selection of members for your group. Members constitute the most important element of any mastermind group. As in any venture, when human relations and emotions are involved, conflicts might arise and along with them, irreparable damage and subsequent split follows. Hence it is important to choose people who do not have a huge ego and think they are above everyone else. No matter how good they may be, these are the sort of people who would bring any group down, even if they might be your friends. In a business-like environment as delicate as this, friendship and past business relationships go out of the window. The overriding criteria for inclusion is the individual's ability to bring significant knowledge to the group and the willingness to share that knowledge with others. A member must be willing to contribute to the group, be it through his experience, contacts, innovative suggestions or the energy that he offers. However, he must be willing to listen to the opinions of others as well. Though a leader can be appointed, there is no room for people who refuse to accept the views of others and tend to argue ostensibly. The general code of conduct of members is essential as well. Punctuality and commitment must be forthcoming. Members must share an insatiable thirst in the sourcing of solutions to problems and coupled by the positive outlook which they are encouraged to adopt, the mastermind group has a good chance for success.
Even after you have your group in place and agreed upon a systematic way of working, conflicts can still occur when members disagree with one another. At this moment, I feel obliged to share with you a case study dating all the way back to January 28, 1986. A space shuttle named "The Challenger" exploded within moments of being launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. During the investigations that followed, it was found that an engineer warned of the dangers of the mission due to the low launch temperatures. However, the senior personnel involved in the launch of the shuttle, worried that the delay in the launch might cause them to lose out in contracts in the future, pressed ahead with the launch , resulting in the catastrophe.
Through this example, it demonstrates the devastating impact on any group should a decision be made by people who are ill-advised and the rest have to follow suit. This applies to your mastermind group. If you are the leader, what would you have done should you sense a great business opportunity and decided to go for the kill, with members of your group urging caution? Or imagine that you belong to a mastermind group and the leader and the other members are in favor of a particular business decision which you voice strong disapproval to.
Do you follow the group's decision due to a majority vote even though you have a feeling that this project is doomed to failure? Would you want to get implicated by the group's decision? Or do you brush aside that sentiment, and allow your group to convince you beyond all reasonable doubt of the project's benefits, just because you do not want to be portrayed as a member who brings a negative vibe to the group?
To this, I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of the focus and the unity within the group. It would be best that members of the group share similar traits, have a shared ethical sense and generally display characteristics reminiscent to that you like it to be. This can in some ways alleviate some potential conflicts arising from a clash of personality to a certain extent but not totally. There can be no definite solution for these sorts of problems, as it deals with the sensitive nature of the emotional side of things.
There is not a soul in this world who does anything with the goal of failing. Likewise no one forms a mastermind group with the intention of it failing. While this article is definitely not exhaustive, it is hoped that it does aid in making the power of the mastermind work for you to a certain extent.
PS the reference made earlier in the article with regards to the space shuttle was taken from http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory16.htm#The%20Challenger
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Alex Cheong
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