Should you have a Mastermind Buddy?

Guest Contributor: Melanie Benson Strick
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Many years ago I was part of a mastermind where we paid a well-known performance coach to facilitate our group's experience.

In the first call the performance coach assigned the members into buddy teams. This was something new to us as we our current process had been to show up on the calls and conduct our mastermind meeting. So why did we need a buddy? We would soon find out.

To help us get started our performance coach gave us a buddy task.

Each week we were to check in with our buddy for 15 minutes to set an intention for the week and state anything that we needed support around. We HAD to have that call regardless if it was 5 am in the morning or 5 pm at night.

So we all embarked into our buddy calls, religiously checking in each week, else the wrath of our performance coach was to be had by all. (We were all a little afraid of this man, which I guess on some level meant there was no way we were going to fall down on our commitments. But I digress.)

What happened over the course of the next 6 months was truly amazing.

My buddy and I flew into massive transformation and accomplishments. We were both relatively clear on our focus and the weekly buddy calls helped us flush out any issues so we stayed on track. We kept our commitment to our time each week and often talked up to 30 minutes.

The second group of two had decent success. They were both floundering a bit with goals and clarity but managed to support each other on an emotional level. The calls happened about 80% of the time and they often talked up to two hours.

The third group couldn't find a time to talk, were not willing to challenge each other to keep the commitment and actually gave up on the group all together.

Notice a theme here? Not only did regular, committed check-in's with the buddy increase our ability to accomplish our goals but an added bonus occurred. Both of the “successful buddy teams” are still close friends almost five years later.

I've used this strategy with the groups I facilitate (without the coach fear factor) and I've found that the members who truly keep their commitment to a weekly buddy connection propel beyond the members who don't.

I believe that the level of accountability, feeling of regular connection to another "like minded person," and weekly clarity about what's truly important keeps us on track like no other process can.

I hope this inspires YOU to engage a weekly buddy connection too.