Building a Men’s Group That Lasts for Life

All right, and welcome back. So on this episode, I want to talk about one of the most crucial components to making a thriving and lasting men's group.

This is something I talk about non stop on the show and on other podcasts you've maybe heard or seen me on. Because my mission really is I think every man should be in a men's group, profoundly change the world in positive ways. From where I stand and from what I've experienced now, what I want to dial into today is the importance and unique power of decentralized men's groups. So that word, decentralized, it's kind of a buzzword these last couple of years with the web and crypto and all this different stuff, but all it really means is where's the locust of control in power?

In a centralized system, often it's flowing down from the top. In a decentralized system, we're kind of keeping the reserves of power more locally. Now, in a men's group, why is this important? Right, and this is coming from a guy who leads centralized men's groups, right? I'm a men's coach, group facilitator. I lead programs, many of which are the led by me. So I lead the groups. Guys come in, they experience what I'm leading and then they're done.

That is not a decentralized group in the sense I'm talking about here. And while there's some gifts to that kind of top down centralized model, depth, structure, ease for getting things started, there are some real weaknesses as well, which really come to play for the long term. There's a model out there of kind of men's group by subscription, right, where you pay monthly and you get to join a group, you have your little team, whatever that might be.

I know many of the guys leading these and it's great, right? It really can create an amazing opportunity. But the downside is those kind of groups rarely have the type of buy in that will keep a man's participation durable for the long run, right? Because suddenly maybe I lose my job or I get busy or I have a kid, my schedule changes and it's like, well, I'm just not going to go anymore, right? I'm going to cancel my subscription and it's fine.

I can maybe come back to it sometime. It's really different in a decentralized groups now. I've been part of four fairly significant decentralized groups throughout my life. And some of them started as centralized and then actually that created the momentum where we could decentralize. And all that really means is we're not paying anyone to participate in the group. No one is requiring that our group keep meeting.

Right? It's not currently coming from the outside. The commitment of the group is coming from the inside. And that is really key and really, really important. Decentralized groups create real ownership. This is what's so key. When it's my group, when it's our group, when no one is telling us to be here, we have to step up and really own. This is something important to me in my life.

This decentralized model is also key because it can break up. You know, something I've talked about before and you know, it's particularly sensitive to me, the whole kind of guru model of oh my God, the guy leading the group, the teacher, the coach, whatever, they have all the answers. Oftentimes, yeah, those of us leading we can have some answers, but we sure as shit don't have all of them. And everybody is a work in progress. A decentralized group kind of breaks that up a little bit instead of, oh my God, the leader's going to figure it out, they can handle the conflict, they're going to hold all the structure.

Suddenly the group has to own that and that's really, really important. Sharing the responsibility for the group creates more of a buy in and a sense of importance and frankly, commitment. It really leads to a deeper personal investment. In my experience of my own groups and what I've seen with other men, it's a shift from I'm just attending a group to I'm co creating and building a group.

Every time I show up flowing through that again, the importance of a decentralized group, which doesn't necessarily mean a leaderless group, it means we're not just paying someone to hold that. The leadership is dispersed. And in most groups I'm part of that are decentralized. We actually rotate leadership, right? So I might be doing it for a month or two, someone else might be doing it for a month or two. And that really breaks the pattern of dependency of just relying on one person to hold all the structure or have all the answers.

And it can frankly be really good for continually kind of breaking up the family systems dynamics that often do occur when groups form and often do occur around leaders, right? Where sometimes, not always, we project our unconscious parent child power dynamic kind of stuff onto the leader. When the leader is our peers rotating at different moments, it kind of prevents that from happening in some really powerful ways.

What's also great about this, a decentralized model, is at some point every man is asked to step into leadership and has to exercise that muscle of learning to lead. And I've led a lot of groups over the year and I can years and I can tell you the best way to learn is to do it. We actually learn through the leadership.

When I was first hosting groups on my own out of my living room in Los Angeles, just posting them on meetup.com the first couple of times, maybe three or four months, dozen meetings or so, I would get so nervous and I'd like structure out the whole night down to the minute and make them. Was really obsessed with having a plan because I wanted to like give a good experience. Would sometimes take me a day to prepare. Now I don't really need to prepare, not in the same way.

I have a toolkit that has come from experience. I've led enough groups to know how to work with a group, what might come up, and how to deal with it. All that comes through the actual process of learning through leading, which is something that's much easier to do when you have this distributed, distributed leadership model, right. It actually changes things to a relationship. And we all get the experience of kind of holding the space for others.

And what else is great about this is it trains us to then do the same out in the world, right? Many guys, I've encouraged many, many guys in my program to take the step and plant the flag and call some men together. And they're often extremely nervous when they do it. But once they do it, they actually feel happy, they feel proud. The men around them are often thankful. And they've discovered a component of themselves, a part of themselves, a capacity to maybe they never even knew they had.

The other really great thing about a decentralized group that has rotating leadership is that it forces you to take responsibility for getting what you want and need out of the group. This is so huge, right? When it's someone else's group, if you're not getting what you need, it's often disempowering, right?

It's like, well, it's not my group. I can't change it. I need this. I'm just going to complain, whatever that might be, and the leader may or may not shift. Actually, no, we don't do that. In this kind of group, we do this when you have a decentralized model. In particular, when you're coming into leadership, if there is something you're craving more of in the group or wanting, it is your responsibility to then bring it forward. So if you want a group that moves slower sometimes, where men can really slow down into their experience, when it's your turn to lead, you bring that.

If you're in a group that you feel is too soft, it needs more fire, needs more challenge, needs more accountability and truth telling, boom. When it comes your turn, that's what you bring into the group. So by every man tracking what they're wanting, what they're needing, and then taking responsibility to bring it forward in the group itself, the group becomes a lot more robust rather than that more standard, top down style of groups.

The other thing about having a decentralized group is you're creating a culture, not just participating in a club, let's say. What does that really mean? Well, a culture is something that can outlast any one man. So again, I lead centralized groups. Some of you guys as listeners have participated in them. But what happens if I start leading? Stop leading that group. Often do, do, do do that group of men, it just dissolves away because the culture hasn't been created of shared leadership and ownership of this is something we want to carry forward, that is important to us.

This is so key because it creates something that outlasts any specific man. Men may come and go from an ongoing decentralized group, and the texture, nature and style and flavor of that group has room to adjust and evolve over time. And to be totally frank, the only way we can ever scale men's work fast enough is through this decentralized model.

There are not enough facilitators to be leading groups all around the world, particularly in local geographic spaces. Right? Zoom is awesome and it really opens the door and it's incredible. But if you want to have local groups, we need men to lead them. And what I often tell guys is if you can't find a group in your local area, it may be on you to start it. And that decentralized model is really what will allow that of don't wait, right?

Don't wait for a big organization to come through town and start leading groups. Get the tools and start creating the group yourself. Find the people that want to co create a group with you for the long haul. I recently moved about a year ago back to somewhere I had lived previously in my 20s. And crazily enough, I got to rejoin the very first men's group I was part of. Those guys kept meeting every other Wednesday for 14 years while I moved away, started my own group in Los Angeles, grew into other groups and they welcomed me back with open arms.

That group started with someone facilitating us, giving us some tools, giving us some structure so we could get the ball rolling and have that experience of how valuable it was in our lives to have this kind of space. And it's been just awe inspiring coming back to this group who's really dialed into, as one man said, you know, we're to the grave, meaning we're going to run this group till everybody dies.

And it's going to start to happen, right? At some point a member will pass and that will be a massive milestone, but the group will outlast that member. It may even start to bring new people in over time, who knows? But again, decentralized groups are going to be the most powerful, sticky ones that you can possibly imagine. Because it becomes your group when you own a part of it, when you are responsible for it, you have a much larger stake in it.

And again, just to highlight this is one of the issues I've seen with more of the centralized models of okay, just pay this much a month and come to dry and drop into groups anytime. You lose a lot of that stake because at any time you can just drop and it doesn't matter in a decentralized group. It matters that you're there, it matters that you're showing up on time. It matters what you go off and learn and maybe bring back to gift to the group in your leadership.

A new practice, a new emotional tool, a new structure, a new prompt. Who knows what it could be. It all becomes fodder in a sense to keep the group dynamic and keep the group growing. Decentralized groups are so important and they can scale, right? Once you have a framework, you can take your group wherever you want. And yeah, you can always go out, get more trainings, bring people in. You know that first group I was talking about when we were first starting, we had one specific facilitator who stayed with us about a year until we kind of had, yeah, we had land legs.

And then, since then it's been self guided. But occasionally other facilitators we know would come through town who we knew were really deep, gifted, profound men and leaders and we'd invite them in for an evening, hey, take us deeper, right? Take us, take us deeper. But it's still our group. We're inviting them into our space in our group, which Is really different from we are participating in their group, right, Their vision.

Owning a vision of your group, being part of a decentralized group is the kind of thing that can absolutely change your life. It has changed mine. And it's a big passion of mine to start. Will help start and promote guys creating these types of groups that you own, not me. So the heart of shadow program I lead with Dr. Luke Adler, this is one manifestation of that. We take guys super deep in about 10 or 11 weeks with a live retreat to just create a profound level of connection and intimacy with each other that often creates a terminal velocity, a liftoff capacity.

And those groups all have continued meeting. After we wrap the program and we're not leading it anymore, we hand over the keys, we say, hey, we helped you build this boat, but it's yours now. It is yours. You can let it go away or you can keep tending, building, bringing it forward. And it's been profound. We've had many men share how life changing it is to now have their group.

We help top it up, sometimes offer some guidance, but we are not running those groups. Those groups are not paying us to be run. They are theirs. And that is a crucial thing. Now, my upcoming men's group experience program in men's group mastery, they are going to be versions of this as well. Where I'm going to give you, if you're a man who's interested in starting a group or running a group or just experiencing a group, a framework to get going, some structure, right?

Where do I start? How do I find people? Maybe I just want to come in and experience a group. I'm going to kind of lay the pathway. But then it's going to be up to you as men. Those that decide to continue on after the program, it will be your group. Nobody will own it except for you members. And that's really profound because then nobody can take it away from you. It's your asset.

It's something that the more you invest in, the more you get to take the goods out of, so to speak, you will benefit in reward. So all the energy you put in comes right back to you, and your group becomes something you can carry forward with you as far and long as you want in your life. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world world, just go to evolutionary men apply.