Opening
Working alone, even on work you love, can quietly shrink your world until the problems all sound the same. What most of us are missing is not more advice. It is a small trusted group that meets often enough to know your story and is brave enough to challenge it.
Masterminds have been answering that need for a century.
The idea
Chris Chandler Yates is a former police officer in New Zealand who now builds masterminds, including a motorcycle mastermind and a free debriefing group for serving and former police. His route here matters.
Seven and a half years of policing, from front line work to protecting the prime minister, left him carrying trauma that cost him almost everything, and a mastermind community became part of how he rebuilt his life.
A mastermind, in Chris’s terms, is a group that uses the collective knowledge of everyone in the room, guided by a facilitator, to help each member solve real problems. The lineage runs back to Napoleon Hill and the idea that coordinated minds achieve more together.
What makes a mastermind work is not the topic. It is the mix of contribution, accountability and regularity. His first fitness mastermind ran for five years and carried more than 600 people through goals from police entry tests to mindset work.
He put his first payment for mastermind training on a credit card he could barely service, which tells you something about how much he believed in the room. Chris also showed me how far the model stretches.
His motorcycle mastermind pairs riding with nightly debriefs, drawing on research that a 15 minute ride lowers anxiety more than the same drive by car. Every night each rider comes with at least one question from the day, so the conversation never runs dry.
Members can also put themselves in the hot seat, naming exactly what they are struggling with and asking the group for help. That willingness to be the person with the problem is the engine of the whole thing.
And his free debriefing group exists because officers who lose the camaraderie of the job often lose their footing with it.
“You need some people that are outside of your inner circle.”
A mastermind is that outside circle, chosen on purpose.
What I took from it
I am preparing to launch my first mastermind, so this conversation was both research and encouragement. Five years of listening to leaders has taught me that the right room changes what people believe is possible. I have felt it personally too.
The ecovillage where I once shared around 13 meals a week worked like a gentle mastermind, because the same faces kept returning and the honesty deepened each time.
Chris reminded me to design for that return, and to build the hot seat in from the start rather than hoping someone will eventually volunteer their struggles. His story also pressed on an old bruise.
I have sat in groups that looked like support but ran on competition, where sharing a difficulty felt unsafe. What Chris describes is the opposite. The room is structured so that honesty is the currency, and the facilitator holds the conditions rather than the outcome.
That distinction is the difference between a network and a belonging.
Three things to try this week
- Invite two or three trusted peers into a monthly hour with one shared question each time. Agree on the purpose, keep the group small, and let every person take a turn bringing a real problem.
- Offer before you ask. Bring one useful idea, one introduction or one hard-won lesson to your next professional conversation, and notice how quickly the exchange turns mutual, because generosity is the currency a mastermind runs on.
- Name the circle you are missing, whether that is new parents, career changers or peers who understand your field, and take one small step this week towards joining or starting it.
Watch and go deeper
Chris tells these stories best in his own words. The full conversation is waiting in the player below, including how he curates a room people want to return to.
You can explore Chris’s work at Chris Chandler Yates.
New conversations land on the Rediscovering Connection channel most weeks
Close
Belonging with purpose is one of the strongest predictors of connection in our research with more than 1,200 leaders. Explore the research, then ask who belongs in your outside circle, and what you would be willing to bring to it.