Strategic Moderation: Utilizing Unprocessed COPI to Enhance Group Discussion

Welcome everyone to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. This is the podcast for you if you are wanting to create or already running peer groups. It's what we call PACs, Peer Advisory Councils. They might be known as mastermind groups, CEO peer groups, all the same. But this is the podcast if you want to run better PACs, that you want to be better at being a moderator, you want to up your game, learn advanced techniques, hear from myself as well as guests, what works, new concepts, trends, techniques. Also learn content, things you could take back to your meetings, different ways to do different things to solve problems that we all have when we're running groups. It will increase your retention, reduce your attrition, get you more members, make you more money. This is the podcast for you. I'm Tina Corner Stolz.

The host.

I've been doing this since 2005. I built a territory of 10+ groups, sold for a multiple, started Ellis Council, Leader Exchange Council, in 2012. We are a licensing model. We are the leading educator in the peer advisory council space. We have the podcast. I have a licensing program with certification. I've written 2 books. So today, when you hear this episode, each and every week it's a new podcast where we dive deep into a topic for 15, 20 minutes. One week it's me doing a deep dive on all the experience and insights from not only today with our entire licensed partner community or the past, what I've learned along the way, but we also have guests that are out there doing groups today that share their insights and new concepts. So let's get started with today's episode.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. I am your host, Tina Corner Stolz. And I am on a roll with a series around moderating, the skill of moderating. It is a skill where I'm not talking about running a meeting. I'm talking about within the meeting structure, how it is that you ebb and flow, navigate in such a way that it makes the meeting so much more valuable but impactful. That you're not just letting it happen, but you're navigating it to bring out the best that it can be. And that's the skill of moderating. I realize that over this last year, actually, I've been doing the podcast, I haven't spent much time on the skill of moderating. And for those of you out there that have been running groups for quite some time, always, always improving upon your moderating skills are not only going to serve you well, but serve your members and increase their member experience. And we all know what it's like to be in a meeting that wasn't planned or run well. You do not want to have that be the case where your members experience that from you. So today I'm going to dive into a very narrow topic in regards to moderating, and it's a little bit about tracking the COPIs that are not processed. And COPIs, for those of you if you're a new listener, is a challenge, an opportunity, a problem, or idea. So C-O-P-I. It is what the member brings to the table where they need help in solving with insights and experiences from their peers. Most of us, okay, will ask the members, what COPI do you have? Today. And that is in itself a skill. So what you don't want to do is say, what is your copy? And somebody says, I don't have one today, and you let them off the hook. And I've talked a lot about that, so I'm not going to get into that today. What I'm going to get into is why do you need to track the ones that are not processed? Because there is a lot to that and why you do that. And yes, it is part of moderating your meetings. Okay, while it's very tactical, it's not the behind-the-scenes nuance of what to say when, etc. But by tracking copies that are not processed versus just the ones that are can be extremely enlightening for you. Now, it may sound like a lot of hard work. Um, it doesn't need to be. You just get a big Excel sheet and you put the members down one side, you put across the top the topics or the member across the top and list underneath them all the topics in the month. So it could be very easy to do because you're just describing it with one sentence what it was. So don't let it seem like a lot of hard work be the reason not to do this, because the reason you do need to do this is this. So here's a bunch of them and what it can mean to you in helping you run even more effective meetings. So the most obvious is you're gonna find trends, right? Tracking a trend in common topics. So the first thing is, is that all your members are gonna articulate what their copy is that month. We all can't process all of them. That's not enough time unless you're doing a retreat or something to that effect. Because if you are trying to process a copy from every single member every month, you either number one, have a very small group. Or number 2, you have a bunch of time, or number 3, what usually is happening, you're not doing them all justice because you can't just spend 20 minutes on them unless it's a very simple one, and that's not the case always. Okay, so you have to typically rank and choose who the ones you're going to do for that particular meeting. So the ones that are left over, if you are tracking them and your members know that you're tracking them, then they realize that there's going to be a sense of accountability coming back to them at some point, whether it's next month— we're going to talk a little bit about that— or whether it's at the end of year when you do a recap. And it will create a sense of, I should be sure I'm bringing relevant copies, not layups or that kind of copies. Okay. And it encourages them therefore to come with more real relevant ones. If they know that you are tracking every single thing they have said about what is on their mind with Kopi. So by tracking all of them, not only the ones that get processed, but we're gonna focus on today the ones that don't get processed, is you will see a trend in common topics to where you either need to know then that one, should you get a speaker or some expert to come in and talk about Okay, or maybe you have a roundtable discussion if that's more appropriate, because it can be more applicable because it's more broader topic that's not so much extremely personalized to everyone. So maybe it's an accounting, like, um, copy, uh, relevant to you're coming up on the year and how people do this or that with their accountant. And, um, so that can be a roundtable discussion. It could be that there seems to be a trend in sales compensation. So then you might have an expert come in to talk about sales compensation, that kind of thing. So you're going to see trends that will help you in planning future meetings. Okay. You will also be able to see a trend with the member. So if a member is always bringing up, let's say, HR issues, well, that's a bigger issue in itself. Right? Leadership issues, client issues. So you want to be able to address the bigger issue and point it out as perspective to the member. Do you realize that the last 4 out of 6 meetings have all been wrapped around something similar to X? And that in itself can be so enlightening to the member and appreciative because they're in the weeds and they're not going to see that. But you as the moderator can help them see that through tracking their copy topics they bring up that you don't even process, in addition to with the ones that you do process with them, right? So you have trend as a group, trend with a member. It also will help because you can bring up these topics that aren't processed when you have your one-to-one, if you do those, or coaching session if you do those, or quarterly achievement session if you're doing those, it allows you to say to the member, I know you brought this up last month, we didn't talk about it, how is it going? It's not intended that you take the place of processing that with them versus their group, but it could be that you help them gain clarity around it so that it is processed with the group in the next meeting. But at least you get also a good view. Is it something that's gone away? Is it still there? And is it something that's really brewing and it's gonna become a major issue? And so you need to head it off at the pass and possibly be sure it's prioritized for the next meeting. Also, what will happen is when the members have all shared a COPPI topic, okay, it can encourage members who have similar topics to get together and talk about them. There are times in moderating you might lump them together and have one discussion and knock out two birds with one stone. But also, if somebody has tackled it successfully or have had experience with it, they can take it offline and help that member one-on-one. What happens then is that encourages other members to help other members when you can't get to topics in the meeting because you just don't have enough time to do that with everyone. So then you can have copy processing outside the meeting with members Maybe it's 2 members get together and talk to them about it specifically if it's something that is important to that member, but you just couldn't get to it because the urgency of others that day was more. If you have strategic partners, so many of you know that that's one of our key ingredients to success is strategic partnerships. But if you are aligned with someone, whether they are allowing you to have the meetings in their location like they're a host or a sponsor, or significant centers of influence that giving trends to them as general knowledge about what's going on with business owners, if that's your, your type of groups that you're running. I'm just using it as an example, but what is on their minds can be extremely beneficial to them. And of course you're doing this without breaching confidentiality, but let's say for example, you have a bank that is your strategic partner or a key center of influence, and your members are, let's say, worried about interest rates and what that's going to do to slowing down their business. And they don't know about what's going to happen with the election necessarily. And that has the impact on whether interest rates are going to rise or the labor market and all of this. Well, you might share that with the bank and say, You know, this is what they're feeling. Do you mind coming in and talking for a few minutes what your perception is about the future in the next few months on these topics? It could be that maybe you have a financial wealth firm that is a sponsor of your groups or connected in some way, and you might see trends where your members have not done proper planning, it could be estate planning, it could be maybe they don't have proper 401(k) for their companies being tended to, all of those things. And therefore you could ask for some resources to share with your members about that. And it's just helpful for your strategic partners to know what's on the minds of clients that are like theirs that are in your group. So it gives value to your strategic partners, your centers of influence, and allows you to tap into resources to help your members on those topics. Which is why being a resource connector, right, to your members is important. This is one way that you can do it that is super easy and doesn't take a lot of effort because it's what's happening in your meeting already. Now, the accountability part is that you can bring it back up next month. Just, just say, last month you brought this up, we didn't process it. Is it still on the table? You know, or you can look to see if they repeat it. And if they do repeat it, then you probably need to process it, etc. So you can include as an appendix to your agenda this Excel sheet to show them because it can be insightful for them to sit there and go, I can't believe I keep talking about this. I'm going to get off my butt. I got to solve it. Okay. So it can be motivational, insightful to them. So I encourage that you at times, if not every month, Show them what they've been bringing up, and, um, that actually instills some accountability for action in your member in a gentle way because you've provided data, right? Knowledge comes from data from the standpoint of when you provide it, it provides insight, it provides knowledge. Knowledge is power. So today's episode, a little bit shorter. I just want you to grasp the concept of the importance of tracking the COPIs, the challenges, opportunity, problems, or ideas your members are bringing up in the meeting. Tracking which ones are processed, which is what almost everyone does, of course, because you follow up on what the result was that in next month's meeting. But you don't track the ones that you don't touch, and I'm encouraging you to do both, because what you don't touch, there's a lot of opportunity in there for how you can increase your members' experience in all those ways that I talked of. So until next week, I so appreciate each and every one of you here listening. I hope these— and my, you know, sincere, genuine voice here— that the whole point behind me doing this is to help you run your groups better. To be the best that you can be as a moderator. And until next time, go make it happen. Hello, listeners.

And this is a quick promo because we have our national conference, Live Exchange 2024, coming up in October in St. Petersburg, Florida. One day you can attend for a mere $500 and interact with your peers, others that are running groups, network with them, find out best practices, all those challenges that you're having, get insights that can help you personally. In addition to hearing a phenomenal list of speakers, I will open up that day with some insights in regards to moderating, and it will turn it over to Vern Harnish, who, if you do not know him, you know, he's the one who founded Entrepreneur Organization. He understands peer groups extremely well. And he runs Scaling Up. You will take away phenomenal information that will help you run your groups, not only to scale your own practice, but to help your business owners in those groups with the content Vern is going to share. You will also hear on two other subjects, one about the importance of preparing your members for exiting the business. Whatever that transition may be, and how do you do that. You will also hear about making change. How do you manage change? How do you facilitate change, which is required in today's environment? Again, content you're going to be able to take back to your groups and use yourself. And last, we're going to end it with Horse Soldier and 12 Strong. So if you don't know that story. That is the 12 soldiers that went into Afghanistan on horseback prior to us invading Afghanistan. You will hear their story about leadership and how they have transitioned that into a phenomenally successful bourbon brand called Horse Soldier. And you will hear how they have scaled that business. And we will end the conference with bourbon tasting. Again, a very packed day. I encourage all of you, if you are serious about your own personal development, I will see you and I will love to meet you personally October 18th in St. Petersburg, Florida. Go to our website and you can get all the details, see the details of the agenda and register. Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of Mastermind Mastery and to get access to today's episodes.

Not only the show notes, but any tools and resources, encourage you to—

not only will you find them in the episode show notes, but also you can go to the website www.lxcouncil.com. So lx counsel.com, and you will find a plethora of articles and content and tools and resources and worksheets and things like that that can be helpful to you in creating and running successful PACs. I want to leave you with one thing that we end and teach to do in every single meeting, and that is the very last thing is to ask, what is your takeaway from today's episode? I encourage you to give that thought. Take advantage of the time you just invested in listening to the episode, and what can you do to move one step closer to the vision that you have and the goals that you're trying to achieve with your groups. So again, take a step back. What's your key takeaways? What can you actually act on? And I leave this with one note, and those of you that have read my book, Your Seat at the Table, you know that I ended the book with a story about my mentor. He always, when he met people, had a pebble in his pocket that he passed to them when there was knowledge shared. And so I ask you today to think about that pebble concept and to pass what you learned today on to someone else, which could be your members, or take it internally to yourself and act on it. So now go do something with those takeaways.