Don't go it alone. Join a master mind group

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. This axiom suggests that leadership is fraught with hard decisions that weigh heavily on the conscious of the leader. Leadership often does present difficult choices, which is why Kings have their courts, presidents have a cabinet and arguably, why Jesus had 12 apostles.  

Great leaders surround themselves with experts, supporters, counselors, yet so often in our individual careers, we labor alone making our road unnecessarily harder and longer. 

Great leaders become our heroes.  From Nelson Mandela, MartinLuther King Jr. or Wayne Gretzky to Mother Theresa, whoever you classify as a hero, it’s likely that you view that person above and apart.  Our culture has an appetite for hero worship. But this solitary view of heroes is often misleading; yet, we carry this solitary perspective into the management of our careers and make one of the most time-consuming inefficient choices we can make, which is to work in isolation. 

Surrounding yourself with a team, cabinet or support group provides you with structure that underpins leadership and growth. It gives you access to insight and wisdom almost impossible to procure alone. It’s the reason pilots have co-pilots, golfers have caddies and the President has his advisors.  When the stakes are high, risk is mitigated by bringing more minds to bear. The best hospitals have weekly meetings where doctors share the details of their cases to glean the experience, perspective, and intelligence of others. In this scenario, people’s Iives depend on the doctor leveraging every resource they can access.  Your life and career (or at least the quality of it) depends on you finding a group who want your “patient” to make it and will contribute to that end.


This paradigm of isolation is outdated and costs inestimable time and money. The "suffer in silence" code and  “figure it out on your own” rule costs everyone knowledge, experience and progress. Another driver for “John Wayne-ing” it was that unlike in college where the entire class can get an “A”, in the office, the bonus pool is finite and the promotion slots are few and get fewer the higher you go, so in this environment, people are rarely keen to share their hard earned lessons, tips, trick, or shortcuts. The environment can be one of scarcity and intense competition for the things people value – status, money and power. While most of us are not positioned to single-handedly change the culture of the company or business we work in, we can change our own experience and surround ourselves with people who will support, counsel and believe in us.


American Philosopher and human development expert Jim Rohn posited that you are the composite of the 5 people you spend the most time with. And who you spend time with in your life is 100% your choice. You can make a tremendous impact on your life, experience and results by simply taking stock of the company you keep. 

So how does one get this support? How does one find people who will help them cure their virtual patient, review their  “great American novel” or give them the right phrasing to ask for raise? One of the best ways to get support toward your goals and dreams is to join a master mind group. One of the most successful businessmen of the 20^th century was W. Clement Stone. He was so poor growing up that he was selling newspapers on the south side of Chicago by age 6. By 1919, Stone built the Combined Insurance Company. By 1979, his company exceeded $1 billion in assets. He said the single biggest contributor to his success was participating in a master mind group. 

The term master mind was coined by Napoleon Hill in his book “Think and Grow Rich” in which he describes thirteen steps to wealth and happiness. He defined a Master Mind as “Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose.” More practically, master mind groups offer a combination of support, brainstorming, education, and accountability in a group setting. A master mind group helps you and your group members achieve success through leveraging each other’s experience, knowledge, resources and contacts.

Members meet regularly and encourage and challenge each other to set important goals, and hold each other accountable for accomplishing them. To be effective the group requires commitment, confidentiality, willingness support each other with total honesty, respect and compassion. Mastermind group members act as expert counselors, devil’s advocates or even, occasionally a shoulder to cry on.

In master mind groups I’ve participated in, I’ve been given resources, access to training and learning that would have costs me thousands of dollars, support to break into new markets, help in scripting difficult conversations and most importantly, I’ve seen myself through the eyes of my peers, giving me the perspective and courage to break out of old ways of thinking and doing things that were holding me back. And I was able to do this in a safe environment where I knew I would not be judged and could share and ask for help on things that I could not have presented elsewhere.  I have observed members of the group experience the same breakthroughs and more.

You can find and join an established mastermind group - I've established my own and seen others on Meet Up or you can create your own. Some meet as often as once-weekly or once monthly, there are others that meet annually and spend several days working with and for each other. They are powerful, connected, quorums that have an incredible positive impact on the participants. Typically a group of  5-7 people meeting once every two weeks is best. The meeting lasts an hour and each person gets 8-10 minutes to present the issues, problem or challenge they want help with, they receive feedback, suggestions, resources, recommendations and agree to a challenging goal that they probably would not pursue if they weren't in the group. When the group reconvenes, each member is help accountable for the goal they set.

For more information on joining or starting a master mind group, contact me. 

Courtney Kirschbaum, 
Founder, Her Next Move
Connect with her next move on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Or on our website

What do you need to ask for?

Will you throw the ball for me?

Last year, my brother and his wife got a Black Labrador puppy - cutest thing you ever saw. They named him Jack and he grew up fast and found his purpose in life a lot easier than most people do. Jack's purpose in life is given away by the name of his breed Labrador Retriever. And that's what life is all about for Jack.

When I visit my brother and sister-in-law,  he walks up to me, grimy tennis ball in his mouth, asking to play and I can never resist him. He quickly drops it at my feet with a short bark as he jumps back to get a good view of which direction I'll be throwing, and I always throw for him, at least once and usually many more times.  I'll be in a dress and heels heading out for dinner and still I'll give him one good throw.  It would be against my principles not to acknowledge and respect Jack for his persistence.  We often don't ask for what we most want and if we do, we often aren't as persistent as we could be. Jack was born and bred to retrieve and he's not self-conscious at all; he's on a mission. So often, we don't persist in finding or pursuing what we were born to do. And it shows up most clearly in that we stop asking. We give up too soon.

Jack's persistence is what never fails. He returns over and over until I'm have to move on and when I do, Jack takes his ball and moves on too. He finds someone else. He never takes it personally. He doesn't sulk, he doesn't give up and stop asking people to throw the ball for him. To Jack, it's a data point without emotion, if he has cogent thoughts, I imagine they would amount to: "humph, Courtney's done throwing the ball, but I'll find someone else to throw it and I'll hit her up later ...Squirrel!"

Somewhere along the line, most of us learn to fear asking, we learn to fear rejection and we learn to tell ourselves all sorts of nonsense about what might happen if we asked:

"They'll say 'no'"
"They'll think I"m stupid, or greedy, or needy or _____ "fill in the blank.
"I'll look like a fool."

Or we simply just don't like the vulnerable, exposed feeling that sometimes comes with asking.

We let our pride get in the way and don't ask for more, time, money, help or love, whatever it is we need, and it costs us happiness, and comfort and often it costs us our dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "you gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop and look fear in the face. You  are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'" Most of the things we need or want to ask for aren't "horrors", but we sometimes act as if they are.

The sooner you step out of your comfort zone and ask, the faster you'll get what you want. 

Take lesson from Jack and ask yourself these questions?

What do I want?
Who do I need to ask to get it?
Why aren't I asking?

What is is costing you not to ask?

Link to this great Get a Move On tool that will help you get to the heart of what you want to ask for and help you get into action asking for it.

Make your move .... ASK!

Courtney Kirschbaum
Founder, Her Next Move