Connor Beaton, who has run men's groups for over a decade, explains why most fail: unclear leadership, over-structuring that kills conversation, and poor follow-through. He outlines what to look for in members and warns against turning groups into rigid accountability formats instead of building genuine connection.
Today we're gonna be talking about how to start your own men's group or improve the one that you're in and some of the fail points, some of the things that guys do wrong that cause their men's groups to fail. So this is coming from over a decade of experience on my end. I have been running mastermind groups, men's groups, performance groups for guys. I've tried a bunch of different structures. I've run some phenomenal, phenomenal groups, and I've run a couple that were not so great. And so I'm going to share with you some of the mistakes that I've made along the way. And some of the things that I have found that make them work really, really, really well. So the first thing that we're gonna talk about is who. Who should be a part of your group? Now, in general, you want to have men that are committed to growth. You wanna have men that you wanna grow with, that you genuinely care about. They don't have to be men that you necessarily agree with everything on. In fact, I think that that's an important thing. I think in our culture, in our society today, we oftentimes look for agreeableness and agreeable people and people that we have a lot sort of not just in common with, but people that we agree about most subjects with. And what I found is that sometimes when we have a men's group that we can be a part of where we have guys in that group that we don't necessarily agree with on certain issues, certain political issues, sometimes even that can be incredibly beneficial because they generally are going to have a different personality style than you. They're definitely— they're, they're generally going to have different personality traits than you and things that you are probably lacking within yourself that you can learn and take from them. First and foremost is you want guys that have a desire for personal growth, right? That they're, they're, they're looking for some type of betterment, right? If you're you know, you've got some buddies that you're thinking about starting a men's group with, and they think that they're totally fine, there's nothing wrong with their life, they're not interested in growing, you know, they don't really care about that kind of stuff, they think that personal development is for losers, like, that's probably not the type of guy that you want to have in your men's group. You want somebody that's dedicated to personal growth and development. Uh, next is that you find like-minded men who are interested in connection and community, right? I think there's a misconception that a men's group is just about the one night every week or the one night every two weeks that you have your call or your meeting. These are really the guys that you're going to be developing a deep connection with and you're going to be developing some community with. You want to find men who are open to feedback and This is a challenging one sometimes, but you wanna have guys who are like, "Yeah, I wanna hear the hard thing." Next, you want natural collaborators and contributors. So guys who are willing to take on a role in the group, guys who are willing to contribute to the group, they're willing to make an effort. It's not just like, "I'm gonna show up and expect everything to be done for me." You want guys that are there to help the other men in the group. And then lastly, you want men who, are really consistent and reliable. You want guys that are going to show up, that don't flake last minute, you know, that only show up to half the meetings, that don't respond on the text chain, you know, that are kind of checked out from what's happening in the group. You want guys that are actually invested and involved and present. All right, so where do most guys go wrong in starting a men's group? Well, the biggest one is that there's a lack of leadership or clear roles within the group. There's a lack of leadership or clear roles. This is a very, very common one is that the group gets overstructured. And so, I've seen a lot of men's groups where like every minute is accounted for. And a lot of guys come in with this like, you know, we have 90 minutes. And so, in that 90 minutes, we need to, you know, break it down into 5-minute segments or like 10-minute segments. That is going to diminish the quality and the caliber of the group. And then lastly, is when a group lacks any type of follow-through or accountability. That can really, really be detrimental for a group. Now, again, you don't want a group where it's just an accountability group. That's a very different thing. Maybe that's the intention for your men's group. Maybe you just want 5 or 6 other guys that are there to do an accountability challenge, right? Where you're like, you're gonna do a habit for 3 months. You're gonna, but for most men's groups, If you lack any type of accountability or follow-through, or if it has just become all about accountability and it's super rigid, that can also cause guys to want to peace out because they don't feel like they're talking about the depths of the issues. If you don't want to go through the work of starting a men's group in your own life, find one that you can join. In ManTalks, we have the Alliance. Again, we've got 500, 600 men that are in there. The doors are open right now if you are interested. There are a ton of exceptional men in there. We have some great structure and we have some phenomenal, phenomenal conversations. So I encourage you to go check it out. The link is in the bio, but you can go to mantalks.com/alliance. Again, it's mantalks.com/alliance. All right, thank you so much. Let me know what you thought in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. I'd love to hear some of your best practices as well. And until next time, this is Connor Beaton signing off.
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