Journal · Formats
Mastermind groups: what they are, and what they do not do
The idea is old, the format works, and the two things that decide whether yours will work are settled before the first meeting.
What is a mastermind group? A small group of founders or executives, usually five to ten, meeting on a regular rhythm so each member can put a real situation to the others and get their read. Most are run by a facilitator, and most charge for it.
The term comes from Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, which is worth saying plainly: the format predates any evidence base, and there is no body of research establishing that mastermind groups improve decisions. What can be said is narrower and still useful. A small group that meets often, keeps confidence, and works on live problems gives you something you do not otherwise have, which is a room where you are not the most senior person present.
The facilitator, which is both the strength and the flaw
Most masterminds are convened by a coach. That is often useful: someone protects the airtime, keeps the discussion on the problem, and stops the loudest member from setting the frame. It is also where the format bends. When one person runs the room, sells the programme and invoices for it, the conversation is never quite among equals. There is still a centre.
The conversations that are worth the money are the ones where nobody in the room benefits from you deciding one way rather than the other.
The two questions that decide everything
- Who else is in it? A mastermind is worth what its members are worth. Groups recruited from one audience or one coach's client list tend to look alike, and similar people run out of angles fast.
- Are they carrying comparable weight? Around one table you can find a solo consultant and a company of five hundred. Both are legitimate; they are not discussing the same problem, and the smaller one usually stops talking.
- What is the group optimised for? Many are growth communities with a decision format bolted on. That is fine until the week your right answer is to shrink, wait, or stop.
- What happens between meetings? A format on a monthly rhythm cannot help with a call you have to make on Thursday.
Where it genuinely wins
Accountability and repetition. Coming back to the same five people who remember what you said last month is a real mechanism, and it is the part most solo alternatives lack. If you can find a group with unlike members carrying similar weight, join it.
Where we fit, and where we do not
Five Peers is not a mastermind and does not replace one. It is a board of five reasoning methods you convene for a specific decision, in the week you have to make it, and it writes what was decided into a record you keep. If your problem is isolation, find people. If your problem is that a decision is due on Thursday and nobody around you can pressure-test it, that is the one we take.
Five Peers editorial note. The format's origin is named in the text; no effectiveness study is claimed, because we did not find one.
Five seats chosen for the ways of thinking you do not have, convened for one decision.
Compose my board