Several years ago, I was approached by a prominent business and community leader. This leader was looking for a venue to interact with other business owners whereby they could mentor and coach each other through the facilitation of a business coach. The goal was to more fully develop their respective businesses as well as brainstorm and share other common issues typically only associated with successful business owners.
Together we identified several other business leaders we felt would be willing to participate and able to bring value to the group. We presented the peer to peer coaching program I will outline shortly to this carefully selected group of local business leaders.
After learning about what each wanted to accomplish both personally and professionally from being involved with such a program, I knew just the platform that would propel them to their goals while maintaining a sacred space for them to dive in, be vulnerable and really learn from one another. This setting enabled them to leverage their collective brilliance and stay accountable to getting even greater traction in their professional and personal endeavors than they otherwise could.
I felt compelled to share this successful model with you so you could duplicate the process if you desire.
The FAST Alliance (Focused Action for Successful Transformation) is based on a number of presuppositions including:
• People may do more to not let down their peers than they will to help themselves up
• We each have the answers inside us and in the right environment can easily bring forth our hidden genius
• We cannot not learn
• There is power in inquiry and questions are the answer
• Successful and fulfilled people operate from an abundance mentality and not a lack mentality
• People naturally want to expand, grow and learn
• What gets measured gets done
• When you bring two minds together you thereby create a third and so on
• People desire to feel safe and have a sense of being in control (honor confidentiality)
• People always have a minimum of 2-3 ongoing “bottlenecks” ( issues limiting growth or productivity)
The structure of the program is deceptively simple and yet drives incredible results. Here is how the process works. The program can work with either four or six business owners. This is so that each member has meaningful exposure as the “Focus Member” through the course of the year. The group meets monthly for two and a half hours with the Focus Member providing lunch. The team of business leaders sticks closely to a highly structured schedule facilitated by an independent coach.
The monthly meeting schedule includes :
• An opportunity for each member to provide a state of affairs regarding their business by sharing their achievements, based on their commitments during the prior month along with what they are committed to accomplishing during the upcoming month. These are done in a very concise meaningful way so as to provide value and learning for the rest of the group as well as themselves.
• The Reporting Member (Prior month’s Focus Member) has a an opportunity to present to the group their achievements of which they committed during the prior meeting and takes a bit more time in sharing what they learned as a result of what worked and didn’t work based on the feedback they received from the group the prior month. This provides experiential learning for the entire group.
• The current month’s Focus Member comes to the meeting with two or three identified “bottlenecks” and then selects one of which they ask the group to assist them in working through to success.
• Once the group is clear on what exactly the “bottleneck” is they proceed with a focused line of questions carefully designed to discover the actual circumstances around the selected “bottleneck” and to then really tap into the wisdom of the Focus Member to get him or her thinking in a bigger more resourceful way than they had before to address the issue.
• After the questioning round each member then provides their laser feedback.
• From the round of feedback the Focus Member then selects and proclaims what they intend to commit to executing as a result of the session to move past the “bottleneck”.
• The following month the process repeats as the members rotate from Focus Member to Reporting Member to Member at Large and then back into Focus Member when their month comes around. This way each member gets to be the Focus Member two to three times per year.
• In between the monthly group meeting each member receives individual coaching calls where they work one on one with the coach to stay on track with their key performance indicators they established at the beginning of the year.
This process provides members a powerful environment that supports tremendous focus, resourcefulness and lasting personal and professional friendships.
It will take a month or two to get the meetings moving smoothly and for the group members to gel. Be patient.
If you have questions about The FAST Alliance process please feel free to contact the ProBrilliance offices at (530) 273-8000 or send an email to [email protected]
Until we connect again,
Make it up, make it fun and make it happen!