Forming a Success Team
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Tips
& Guidelines for Creating Your Own Success Team
by
Judy Wolf
This article complements an Adventurous Life newsletter article entitled "Who Supports You? Building Your Own Net."
Do your personal dreams tend to get shoved aside for "later" whenever something more pressing comes up? Promises to ourselves are easy to let slip through the cracks. The next thing you know, that cherished dream of yours is hanging over your head, and you feel like a failure because you've stalled out.
Large numbers of people have found that they are more likely to keep moving toward their goals if they are accountable to someone else. An easy and affordable way to make this happen in your own life is to join -- or form -- a "success team." Originally coined by Barbara Sher (author of Live the Life You Love and I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, among others), the term has since entered the mainstream, and the concept is often advertised as an affordable coaching tool.
A quick web search on the term "success team" will yield numerous options for joining groups or getting trained as a facilitator, many of them offered by life coaches. Of course, I'd be the first to agree that a good personal coach is a great thing (check out Coachville's referral service and the International Coach Directory if you're searching for one), and that some people perform better when they've laid out money for a formal, eight-week success team experience. No doubt about it.
But some of us are happier forging our own way, and for any of you who are like me in this regard, I thought a few guidelines on starting your own success team might be helpful. Keep in mind that these are compiled based solely on my own and other members of my encouragement club's experiences, so take them for what they're worth. Ultimately, the only one who can decide what works for you or doesn't is you.
What is a success team, anyway?
A success team is a group of people who have come together to support one another's goals. Goals can be personal, professional, educational, emotional, spiritual... you name it! Members can be CEOs transitioning to retirement, stay-at-home parents, students, entrepreneurs starting a new business, people longing for a career change, overachievers who want to learn how to relax -- in other words, anyone seeking inspiration and accountability to pursue their own dreams.
Success teams help each other unearth and set goals, then hold one another accountable for reaching those goals. By breaking down dreams into realistic and practical steps, we can begin to make progress ("by next week, I'll have researched small business loans," or "by the end of the month, I commit to having attended at least three yoga sessions," or "for the next two weeks, I promise to practice saying 'no' to new projects").
How does a success team work?
Usually consisting of four to eight people, the group decides to meet on a regular basis for a set amount of time (every other Tuesday from 7 - 9 pm, for instance). They can meet the same place each week (a public meeting space or someone's house), or rotate from house to house as suits the needs of the group.
During the designated time period, members share their goals, challenges, frustrations, and successes with one another. The format can vary, depending on whether the group prefers to elect a facilitator (this duty can rotate) or self-regulate, but generally speaking, each member should get an equal share of time in which to speak.
In my own self-regulated "encouragement club" (as we call it), the speaker decides how long she wants to spend talking without interruption before opening up her time for discussion, feedback, and brainstorming. One person is designated the timekeeper, and another takes notes so the speaker can focus on the interaction.
Sound easy enough? It is! And to make it even easier, listed below you can find a quick rundown of things you may want to consider when you form your own success team:
- Choose your members carefully -- you're looking for interesting, positive, motivated people who will make a commitment to the group and bring value both as speakers and as listeners. Having an interesting goal isn't enough if a personality drains energy from the group, they absolutely refuse to believe in themselves (this is different than being a little hesitant!), or they consistently fail to attend.
- Diversity is a good thing -- the brainstorming that arises from the meeting of various perspectives and wide-ranging backgrounds is energizing and valuable.
- Strict confidentiality should be an essential part of the group's framework.
- Be flexible, especially if you're the person initiating the group. Present your ideas and suggestons about format and structure, and then let the group decide what works for it as a whole.
- Be clear about what you want to get out of each session before you arrive -- not only does this help you review your progress, determine your road blocks, and set your next goals, it also lets you maximize your allotted time by making it productive, rather than just a rambling progress report.
- Be strict about timing -- if the designated meeting time keeps getting stretched over budget, the group should mutually decide whether to extend it on a permanent basis, or make an effort to stick to each person's allotted speaking slot. It's okay to be rigorous about this-- when someone's time is up, they get to finish a sentence, and the next person starts. Use a "talking stick" (an object passed from speaker to speaker) if this will help create a sense of closure and time awareness.
- Understand that a success team is NOT a therapy group -- while emotional release may happen occasionally (we're talking about people's lives, after all), anyone seeking counseling or regular unburdening should find an appropriate and safe setting for exactly that. Can this happen in parallel with a success team? Absolutely. But the two have very different functions, and a goal-oriented, hold-each-other-accountable encouragement club isn't the appropriate setting for healing deep emotional wounds.
- Periodically revisit the group's purpose -- if yours is an ongoing team (as opposed to one that started out with an eight-week time frame, for instance), it's important to make room for occasional evaluations of where members are at, whether they want to continue, and how things are going with the group itself. Some members may move away or reach their goals before others. Decide together whether this means you'll invite new members or continue on with one less participant.
- Learn to give "good" feedback -- we all know that saying something critical in a constructive way is much more useful than simply appearing to write someone off as a lost cause ("You've shared stories before where I thought you handled that sort of confrontation pretty well -- what I heard as being different about this one was..." vs. "Wow, you really screwed up. I can't believe you actually..."). One nice method for doing this is the "sandwich" technique -- start by emphasizing something positive, then offer your less-positive observation, and top it off with another piece of positive feedback. A concept that works well for me is thinking about your critique as helping people improve by building on their strengths, rather than chipping away at their weaknesses.
With that in mind, go forth and try it for yourself! And don't forget to drop me a line to share your success!
Copyright (c) 2003 Judy Wolf
About
the Author:
Judy Wolf (www.judywolf.com)
is a world traveler, freelance writer, speaker, and whitewater kayak instructor.
She's taken numerous, extended solo journeys around the world, traveling
by foot, bus, jeep, camel, truck, boat, train, plane, elephant, and bicycle
to over 30 countries on five continents. She currently lives in upstate
New York with her husband and border collie, where she's working on a
book-length travel narrative about her most recent adventures…that is,
when she's not plunging off waterfalls or entertaining the dog.
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