The Unspoken Danger of Business Masterminds

The Unspoken Danger of Business Masterminds

It’s a time of year when many business owners join a mastermind.

So today, I‘d like to share something with you that really bothers me about masterminds.

It’s something that can potentially lead people down a path that is damaging to their business.

But once you know how to keep an eye out for it, you can avoid this pitfall and still get all the amazing benefits that masterminds offer.

Once, I was sitting in a mastermind meeting where one of our group (I’ll call her Erin) was in the hot seat asking for ideas to generate more leads for her business.

Immediately, someone jumped in to share how they were doing really well with paid ads and sending leads to a webinar.

As soon as there was a gap in the conversation, another member of the group jumped in to talk about how much his podcast had grown his email list.

It continued like this for the next fifteen minutes. Bit by bit, I could see Erin’s eyes glaze over. I knew this look. She was totally overwhelmed. But she didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so she didn’t say anything.

I see this happen a lot in masterminds. The problem is two-fold.

First, people want to appear accomplished and smart. This leads them to offer advice even when it might not be the best fit for the person they are helping.

Second, people genuinely want to be helpful, but they offer advice before asking questions to better understand the problem. Without the right context, how can they give the best advice? Just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it will work for someone else the same way.

In Erin’s case, she felt like she needed to generate more leads to grow her income. But had the group asked more questions, they would have realized that the best thing she could do to bring in more revenue was to change up how she was interacting with her list rather than trying to grow it faster.

You see, often someone asks one question, not realizing they need to ask something different.

Had the group asked questions first, they would have learned that Erin didn’t have the budget or bandwidth yet for paid ads and she had no interest in podcasting.

Masterminds are most effective when the group knows what questions to ask first.

Additionally, it’s important that the group members know when to NOT offer their advice, even if it’s something that worked well for them.

Sometimes advice is just noise.

The goal should always be to offer advice and input that will best fit the specific person and their business at that time.

Keep this in mind when giving advice to someone in a mastermind.

Keep it in mind when asking for advice. Notice who asks questions first. You can also request that the group ask questions before jumping in with ideas. A good mastermind facilitator will lay down ground rules to make sure this happens. This is something I do with my masterminds.

Most importantly, keep it in mind when choosing a mastermind.

I would boil this idea down to one word: empathy.

Empathy does not mean withholding the truth. It does not mean tip-toeing around an issue.

Empathy means really listening to the person in front of you and meeting them where they are at, with their resources, and their personality, strengths, and limitations.