By:  Sinem Günel
https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/the-power-of-mastermind-groups-and-how-you-can-benefit-from-them-bf4e6eeb66e6

What is a Mastermind Group?
Per definition, a Mastermind Group is a mentoring concept through which individuals can form groups to learn from each other and grow together.

A Mastermind Group can significantly help you in shaping your life, personality, and business.

The intention of a Mastermind Group is that peers can help each other solving problems and developing themselves together through input and advice from each other.

The core value of a Mastermind Group is the synergy of energy, motivation, and commitment as well as the willingness to learn and grow together.

The concept of Mastermind Groups was first introduced by Napoleon Hill. In his book Think and Grow Rich (1937) he described Mastermind as a group of at least two people who come together with the aim of solving problems. Hill’s findings mainly based on studying successful American companies which had some sort of Mastermind Groups.

The beauty of Mastermind Groups is that participants raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other with total honesty, respect and compassion.

Types and Goals of Mastermind Groups
There is no ultimate solution for the perfect Mastermind Group. There are several approaches which can have different goals and outcomes.

For example, the goal can be the success of an individual person or the success of everyone in the group.

A Mastermind Group could aim improvement in one of the following areas:

• Brainstorming and collecting new ideas
• Education
• Peer accountability
• Group support
• Improving personal skills
• Improving business skills

No matter what the topic and actual theme of a Mastermind Group is, even though groups can highly differ, they have one thing in common:

The peers empower each other to set and crush powerful goals.

Individual successes are celebrated loudly and problems are solved collectively through mutual support.

Core Principles of Mastermind Groups
In fact, a Mastermind Group doesn’t require a lot, but some key principles should be met.

Commitment: Chances are high that a person who joins a Mastermind Group is pretty determined and aims to make the most of his or her life. One can say that most high achievers and passionate people would join such a group — meaning people who are aware of their time and energy. Those people commit to their groups and to contribute. Every new project, therefore also every Mastermind group means that one has to spend time and effort. People expect you to engage with them and support them, therefore a level of commitment is the key of a Mastermind Group.

Confidentiality: The members of a Mastermind Group want and should be able to feel comfortable in their group. Sharing goals, thoughts and ideas often requires a certain level of courage, therefore, members have to trust each other's confidentiality to smoothly work together.

Willingness to both give and receive advice: There is absolutely no space for ego in Mastermind Groups. The success of the group is defined by the willingness of the individuals to engage with each other. By not contributing to the group you will only unsettle your peers and lose their trust.

Mastermind group members act as catalysts for growth, devil’s advocates and supportive colleagues.

Group Size
According to science, in the case of a real-life Mastermind Group, 5–10 people is the ideal size of a group.

If we talk about in-person groups, the group size should be defined based on some of the following criteria:

What amount of time commitment is required? — Everybody should have the possibility to share ideas and problems to be solved
What kind of topic is issued? — Certain group topics might require more different opinions and therefore peers than other issues.
However, nowadays the idea of Mastermind Groups grew much further and is also transferred to the digital world. This means that there are many Mastermind Groups which are found and run only through digital communication. In fact, this can kind of exchange can nowadays have the same quality of interaction, however, it is obvious that through digital means the group sizes can grow enormously.

Of course, it is controversial, if we still talk about a Mastermind Group, when in fact it is a Facebook group with hundreds or thousands of members.

Those huge groups might change the primary idea of Mastermind, however, people can still benefit from them hugely.

Exchanging ideas and getting ideas, however, is not much affected by the big size of those digital groups. On the opposite, if the aim is not to create exchange on a personal level, those big groups can, of course, lead to much more ideas than a group with five people.

Meetings
Based on Napoleon Hill, of course, the core idea of Mastermind Groups have been in-person meetings to exchange ideas.

Due to busy schedules and remote work, this is nowadays neither easy to implement nor necessary.

Mastermind Groups might as well exchange ideas through video conferences, phone calls or even messaging services.

One key factor of succeeding in meetings is to have clear rules. According to topics like punctuality, agenda of discussed topics, the maximum time that people should take to answer on a message etc. If those rules are set at the beginning, leading the group will be much easier and the benefits bigger.

Reasons to join a Mastermind Group

• You will come across ideas and solutions that you would not have found by yourself
• You will be able to learn from others skills and experiences and expand your own knowledge
• You will be much more committed to your goals as you openly share them with your peers
• You will have a small network of people who are always willing to help you
• Through daily interaction, your overall attitude can be influenced in a positive way