Personal Development Club

[seeker5]

What would be a great way to structure a Personal Development club that met once a week? It could be structured similarly to toastmasters, but tailored to personal development.

Any ideas?

[hugofortin]

Great idea!

You need some good leaders to make it happend.

bye

Hugo

[LVGeneration]

That would be a great idea! I would want to be part of something like this if it were online, because due to my schedule always changing I have to work different hours and days every week, so it would be hard for me to physically get to a meeting place. Most people probably have the weekend off, which I don't ever. But if you posted the results of these meetings online I would participate maybe with ideas.
It's a great idea and I hope you'll pull if off. Would this PD Club be involved with the community? I think it would be a great personal feeling to try to raise awareness in the community. Things like giving away reusable shopping bags in front of stores, volunteering for animal shelters, getting people to sign petitions for different causes, etc... Ok, I'm getting carried away already keep us posted !

[Holistic Star]

I was part of a group that read and discussed a new chapter of Think and Grow Rich for 10 weeks. That was good because it gave each meeting a focus, even though I'm not a huge fan of the book. 1 person led the meeting and prepared homework, quotes to read out, bits to discuss etc.

We carried on meeting monthly, but with only an informal focus and different people leading each session an a topic of their interest which didn't work as well. Mainly because the personalities and interests in the group were very diverse and some people were there to socalise and gossip, and others there for growth and personal development. I know when I was running one meeting and trying to help them prepare for a health fair the following week, it was really hard work keeping everyone focused on the task. It felt like herding cats!
Eventually we stopped meeting formally as a group, although we still catch up socially.

Erin talked about how her Mastermind group in a blog post was very focused in helping each other get into alignment with their intentions. I thought that sounded really cool. Could be a good model to follow.

[Brutha]

Toastmasters works by having a rigid structure that allows a meeting to run by itself and let everyone concentrate on public speaking.
I'm not sure how that would work by having personal development as a general topic and how the structure would look like.

[spirit4711]

A structure that I've participated in several times:
- everybody declares goals
- weekly meeting (2-3 hours); no exception for absence except severe illness or death in the family.
- everybody shares what they achieved, what they need coaching on, and gets coached by the group.
- meeting 'in the flesh'. No phone in, skype etc.
- group size 6-8 works best.

Throughout the week email updates, 1 on 1 calls (buddy system).

Worked very well.

[Plato]

The most successful personal development clubs are focused very narrowly: AA, weight watchers. These are the things that provide massive value to people because everybody is in a similar position and the objective is very clear. Stop drinking, lose weight.

I feel that personal development is too broad a topic... People will rarely have shared goals in the category of personal development. Except in the really general sense.

What could you do that is specific but also teaches people to grow? Lessons learned in weight watchers or AA can spill over in to all areas of life. You could set up the next big thing.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by hugofortin

You need some good leaders to make it happened.

True, but if we can have a good structure then you could just have ok leaders who can make it work. I've seen toastmasters club do nicely with just "ok leaders" because the structure there lends itself to that.

Originally Posted by LVGeneration

I would want to be part of something like this if it were online

I was actually talking about doing something like that face to face, locally where people met in person.

Originally Posted by LVGeneration

I think it would be a great personal feeling to try to raise awareness in the community. Things like giving away reusable shopping bags in front of stores, volunteering for animal shelters, getting people to sign petitions for different causes, etc... Ok, I'm getting carried away already keep us posted !

That's more about being of service. The Personal Development club would be more about helping members develop themselves personally. The helping of other people in the ways you mentioned - well there's a bunch of civic clubs already out there (at least in the U.S, I don't know about other countries) for that . There's even some in Las Vegas since you live here, I can direct you to some if you're interested in a pm.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

A structure that I've participated in several times:
- everybody declares goals
- weekly meeting (2-3 hours); no exception for absence except severe illness or death in the family.
- everybody shares what they achieved, what they need coaching on, and gets coached by the group.
- meeting 'in the flesh'. No phone in, skype etc.
- group size 6-8 works best.

That seems more of a "Achievement club", not really a personal development club that is focused on helping people grow. Maybe it can be adapted in some fashion though.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Plato

The most successful personal development clubs are focused very narrowly: AA, weight watchers. These are the things that provide massive value to people because everybody is in a similar position and the objective is very clear. Stop drinking, lose weight.

That's a good point. Toastmaster is also a PD club that is focused on speaking as well as leadership. What other PD specific clubs are there?

However, maybe there is a way to have an overall PD club though that could help out everyone out who is ready to take 100% responsibility by following maybe the principles laid out in Steve's book.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by seeker5

That seems more of a "Achievement club", not really a personal development club that is focused on helping people grow. Maybe it can be adapted in some fashion though.

It was PD allright. Setting goals and achieving them, confronting your fears, dealing with frustration is all about PD and growth in my experience.

[LVGeneration]

Originally Posted by seeker5

...There's even some in Las Vegas since you live here, I can direct you to some if you're interested in a pm.

Thanks, that would be nice.
So what would be the rules of such a club? Would presence be mandatory every meeting? Would there be a topic for every week and participants would expose their thoughts on the topic? Would there be any goals to achieve, kinda like 30-day trials, or would it be concentrated on discussions, not so much action?

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

It was PD allright. Setting goals and achieving them, confronting your fears, dealing with frustration is all about PD and growth in my experience.

Heh that is true. However, growth is a byproduct of achieving goals, but not always present. Some goals do not require growth though, but simply due diligence time and effort.

Originally Posted by Holistic Star

I was part of a group that read and discussed a new chapter of Think and Grow Rich for 10 weeks. That was good because it gave each meeting a focus, even though I'm not a huge fan of the book. 1 person led the meeting and prepared homework, quotes to read out, bits to discuss etc.

We carried on meeting monthly, but with only an informal focus and different people leading each session an a topic of their interest which didn't work as well. Mainly because the personalities and interests in the group were very diverse and some people were there to socalise and gossip, and others there for growth and personal development. I know when I was running one meeting and trying to help them prepare for a health fair the following week, it was really hard work keeping everyone focused on the task. It felt like herding cats!

That's interesting Holi! I'm glad it worked for a while, I'd be interested in talking to you about how it worked - at least those times it worked. Even though it didn't work out in the end, it did work for a while (at least when talking about Napoleon Hill).

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by LVGeneration

Thanks, that would be nice.
So what would be the rules of such a club? Would presence be mandatory every meeting? Would there be a topic for every week and participants would expose their thoughts on the topic? Would there be any goals to achieve, kinda like 30-day trials, or would it be concentrated on discussions, not so much action?

All those are good questions that can be worked out!

I don't think you can have "mandatory" meetings in volunteer organizations though, because the only way to enforce that is really to kick someone out if they don't make it, or you could enforce that by making them pay a penalty if they want to stay in the club. Both options kind of sux IMO.

Perhaps, each meeting could focus on a different principle (such as Truth, Love, Power, Authority, Courage, Oneness, Intelligence) from Steve's book, and people talk about it and then during the week until the next meeting they go and do things to grow in that area. I like the idea from Holistic Star's meeting where someone different prepare each meeting, that's kind of like Toastmasters where while there is a 6 month (or 1 year in some cases) president, there is a different "toastmaster of the day" that prepare each meeting. Individuals though would all have different ways to grow - for example some people want to grow socially, others want to grow career-wise, other have different areas. So maybe by focusing on the principles, then people can figure out what to do in their own areas of interest. Then go out and next meeting report back on it and what they've learned through their experiences through applying that principle. That would be fun to hear different people's experiences in trying to grow!

I do think that it would be good to mix the two though - discussion and action. Personal Development needs both IMO.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Heh that is true. However, growth is a byproduct of achieving goals, but not always present. Some goals do not require growth though, but simply due diligence time and effort.

A (for me rhetorical ) question: is growth possible without setting goals?

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

A (for me rhetorical ) question: is growth possible without setting goals?

Yes, I'd say growth is possible without formally setting goals. You can lose something very valuable to you and be "forced" to grow in order to live on without feeling so attached to what you've lost. Perhaps you can argue that deciding to do something is setting a goals, but in the context you're talking about formally setting goals, I'd said deciding to overcome immediate pain isn't really about setting goals. Thus growth is possible without setting goals, although not necessarily recommended .

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by seeker5

What would be a great way to structure a Personal Development club that met once a week? It could be structured similarly to toastmasters, but tailored to personal development.

Any ideas?

I've not done anything like this before (I do have some experience with meetings, though. I've been a member of two Toastmasters clubs for a year; President of one, Secretary [albeit not a very good one] of the other), but I think a clear focus is essential. You want people to be clear on why they're there at the club and what the goals of the club would be so people can decide whether or not the club is appropriate or not. If you're unclear, I think you'd get lots of conflicts of interest in that people would join the club but bring along agenda's that aren't congruent with the overall agenda of the club. And such a club would definitely have an agenda (regardless of how specific or general it is), so I think being very clear about it would be a helpful first step (kind of like choosing a niche is essential for a website... it helps you tailor your efforts to your audience and focus your marketing efforts).

For actual meeting structures, I think I'd borrow a lot from Toastmasters. Assign roles to people, have an agenda, and use things such as the round robin and other such tools that allow everyone to have the opportunity to participate.

As president of a Toastmasters club, I've been hosting club executive meetings for about a year now, and I found round robins and open discussion segments to be very helpful. It was just essential to be clear and give people an agenda (an actual paper agenda, although I also explained the specific agenda for--the purpose of--that meeting. E.g. One of the agendas was "getting more members").

I've found it's really important to have a chairman--someone to lead the meeting (although I think you could also have multiple chairmans if each chairman chaired a different segment of the meeting, kind of like a Toastmaster does for speeches [although I'm not sure if the way the Aussie Toastmaster works--i.e. the actual role of Toastmaster in a meeting--is different to the US Toastmaster]).

I also found it important to lead people into things. E.g. If you are going to discuss something in an open discussion format, I found it important to time the segment, and also to introduce the segment so everybody knew what we were talking about. If I extended an invitation for people to speak without giving them a clear idea of what we were talking about, people would talk about random stuff that wasn't even related (you'd think they wouldn't, and other people would kind of be like, "what? Why are they talking about that?"), but people still do it.

So yeah, in my experience, (1) leading is very important (otherwise your "invitation" is for randomness to come in, which can quickly derail a meeting), (2) as is a clear focus, and (3) clear boundaries (about what is expected and allowed--the constraints of a segment, just like speeches have constraints of timing, as well as topic constraints, etc). In other words, goals and outcomes.

* * *

I know Steve's wanted to get something like this going for a long time (so have I!), but I don't think he's been ready to do it yet (nor have I). Maybe speak with him next time you see him (or something) and see what his ideas were for a PDSP, TLP-oriented club in terms of structure. You don't have to get Steve involved or anything (unless he wants to be), I just mean it might be helpful to hear his ideas.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Yes, I'd say growth is possible without formally setting goals. You can lose something very valuable to you and be "forced" to grow in order to live on without feeling so attached to what you've lost. Perhaps you can argue that deciding to do something is setting a goals, but in the context you're talking about formally setting goals, I'd said deciding to overcome immediate pain isn't really about setting goals. Thus growth is possible without setting goals, although not necessarily recommended .

I agree with what you write. Events can indeed 'force' us to learn and grow, whether we like it or not.

However, in the context of a PD club I'd say there's no growth without goal setting. It may be an interesting club to discuss all kinds of PD methods and techniques, but for me that would not be very valuable. I've experienced that several times.

YMMV of course .

[Jack Christopher]

A collection of experiences on setting up mastermind groups:
How to set up a mastermind group

[hugofortin]

Originally Posted by Jack Christopher

A collection of experiences on setting up mastermind groups:
How to set up a mastermind group

Wow! What a useful web page!

Hugo

[James81]

You know, I'd love to be a part of an online PD group.

And it looks like there is definately interest in the idea based on this thread.

What say we get one going here? I'd be up for pitching in some ideas on how to go about an online group. And I'd even be willing to set up something on my website for the group (like forums directed specifically at the idea--if there was enough interest, that is).

[carenkh]

Christine Kane just posted this article that might help you gain some clarity, Seeker!

7 Real-Life Tips for Creating a Successful Mastermind Group | Christine Kane

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by James81

You know, I'd love to be a part of an online PD group.

You know what? Even though I started this thread to brainstorm ways to create a PD club offline, it could be interesting to create an online PD group too. Want to go ahead and start a new thread to discuss how to do it? I'm interested in how you would implement it.

There's other good and interesting posts in this thread and I'll reply later on to them