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Building a Men’s Group That Lasts for Life · Evolutionary Men

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All right, and welcome back.
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So on this episode, I'm once again going to talk about men's groups.
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And in particular, I want to talk about a crucial component for creating a robust and
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lasting group that can be with you, frankly, for a lifetime.
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And what it comes down to is kind of one of those buzzwords we've been hearing about a
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lot these last couple years, which is the power of decentralization.
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So what do I mean by a decentralized men's group?
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All that really refers to is where does the locust of ownership for that group lie?
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Now, I'm a men's group facilitator.
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I run trainings.
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I run programs.
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I run men's groups, some of which aren't decentralized.
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But what I want to speak to here is the experience of having been in decentralized groups and why
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they're really the only lasting solution going forward.
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So a centralized group would basically come into someone like me paying me to sit in a
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men's group.
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I lead week after week after week.
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Now, the problem with that is what happens if you want to stop paying me or what happens
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if I don't lead groups anymore?
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Often they'll start to just fall apart.
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I've seen this time and time again.
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The structure isn't strong enough to keep the group going in time when there's a big change
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or something.
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And frankly, when you're just paying like a monthly fee and you're showing up and someone's holding
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all the structure, suddenly, I don't know, your job changes, a kid's born, something big happens
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in your life or maybe small, and you just stop paying the fee and you stop going, right?
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Because it doesn't really matter.
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The group's going to kind of keep going whether or not you participate.
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I've seen that a lot with guys I've worked with, some of whom have done my program, some of whom
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have done many other men's groups programs, many of whom the leaders of who, fuck no.
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That wasn't it.
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All right.
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And welcome back.
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So on this episode, I want to talk about one of the most crucial components to making a thriving
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and lasting men's group.
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This is something I talk about nonstop on the show and on other podcasts you've maybe heard
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or seen me on because my mission really is, I think every man should be in a men's group.
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Profoundly change the world in positive ways from where I stand and from what I've experienced.
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Now, what I want to dial into today is the importance and unique power of decentralized men's groups.
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So that word decentralized, it's kind of a buzzword these last couple of years with the web and crypto
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and all this different stuff.
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But all it really means is where's the locus of control and power?
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In a centralized system, often it's flowing down from the top.
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In a decentralized system, we're kind of keeping the reserves of power more locally.
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Now, in a men's group, why is this important, right?
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And this is coming from a guy who leads centralized men's groups, right?
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I'm a men's coach, group facilitator.
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I lead programs, many of which are led by me.
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So I lead the groups, guys come in, they experience what I'm leading, and then they're done.
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That is not a decentralized group in the sense I'm talking about here.
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And while there's some gifts to that kind of top-down centralized model, depth, structure,
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ease for getting things started, there are some real weaknesses as well, which really come
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to play for the long term.
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There's a model out there of kind of men's group by subscription, right?
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Where you pay monthly and you get to join a group, you have your little team, whatever
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that might be.
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I know many of the guys leading these and it's great, right?
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It really can create an amazing opportunity.
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But the downside is those kind of groups rarely have the type of buy-in that will keep a man's
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participation durable for the long run, right?
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Because suddenly maybe I lose my job or I get busy or I have a kid, my schedule changes
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and it's like, well, I'm just not going to go anymore, right?
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I'm going to cancel my subscription and it's fine.
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I can maybe come back to it sometime.
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It's really different in a decentralized groups.
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Now, I've been part of four fairly significant decentralized groups throughout my life.
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And some of them started as centralized and then actually that created the momentum where
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we could decentralize.
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And all that really means is we're not paying anyone to participate in the group.
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No one is requiring that our group keep meeting, right?
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It's not coming from the outside.
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The commitment of the group is coming from the inside.
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And that is really key and really, really important.
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Decentralized groups create real ownership.
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This is what's so key.
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When it's my group, when it's our group, when no one is telling us to be here, we have to
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step up and really own.
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This is something important to me in my life.
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This decentralized model is also key because it can break up, you know, something I've talked
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about before.
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And, you know, it's particularly sensitive to me.
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The whole kind of guru model of, oh my God, the guy leading the group, the teacher, the coach,
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whatever.
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They have all the answers.
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Oftentimes, yeah, those of us leading, we can have some answers, but we sure as shit
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don't have all of them.
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And everybody is a work in progress.
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A decentralized group kind of breaks that up a little bit.
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Instead of, oh my God, the leader's going to figure it out.
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They can handle the conflict.
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They're going to hold all the structure.
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Suddenly, the group has to own that.
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And that's really, really important.
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Sharing the responsibility for the group creates more of a buy-in and a sense of importance and,
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frankly, commitment.
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It really leads to a deeper personal investment in my experience of my own groups and what I've
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seen with other men.
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It's a shift from I'm just attending a group to I'm co-creating and building a group every
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time I show up.
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Flowing through that, again, the importance of a decentralized group, which doesn't necessarily
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mean a leaderless group.
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It means we're not just paying someone to hold that.
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The leadership is dispersed.
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And in most groups I'm part of that are decentralized, we actually rotate leaders.
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Right?
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So I might be doing it for a month or two.
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Someone else might be doing it for a month or two.
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And that really breaks the pattern of dependency, of just relying on one person to hold all the
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structure or have all the answers.
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And it can, frankly, be really good for continually kind of breaking up the family systems dynamics
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that often do occur when groups form and often do occur around leaders, right?
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Where sometimes, not always, we project our unconscious parent-child power dynamic kind of stuff onto the
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leader.
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When the leader is our peers rotating at different moments, it kind of prevents that from happening
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in some really powerful ways.
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What's also great about this, a decentralized model, is at some point, every man is asked
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to step into leadership and has to exercise that muscle of learning to lead.
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And I've led a lot of groups over the years, and I can tell you the best way to learn is to
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do it.
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We actually learn through the leadership.
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When I was first hosting groups on my own, out of my living room in Los Angeles, just posting
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them on meetup.com, the first couple of times, maybe three or four months, dozen meetings or
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so, I would get so nervous and I'd like structure out the whole night down to the minute and make
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them, was really obsessed with having a plan because I wanted to like give a good experience.
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It would sometimes take me a day to prepare.
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Now, I don't really need to prepare.
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Not in the same way.
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I have a toolkit that has come from experience.
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I've led enough groups to know how to work with a group, what might come up, and how to
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deal with it all.
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That comes through the actual process of learning through leading, which is something that's much
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easier to do when you have this distributed leadership model, right?
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It actually changes things to a relationship and we all get the experience of kind of holding
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the space for others.
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And what else is great about this is it trains us to then do the same out in the world, right?
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Many guys, I've encouraged many, many guys in my program to take the step and plant the
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flag and call some men together.
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And they're often extremely nervous when they do it.
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But once they do it, they actually feel happy.
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They feel proud.
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The men around them are often thankful and they've discovered a component of themselves, a part of
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themselves, a capacity maybe they never even knew they had.
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The other really great thing about a decentralized group that has rotating leadership is that
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it forces you to take responsibility for getting what you want and need out of the group.
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This is so huge, right?
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When it's someone else's group, if you're not getting what you need, it's often disempowering,
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right?
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It's like, well, it's not my group.
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I can't change it.
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I need this.
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I'm just going to complain, whatever that might be.
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And the leader may or may not shift.
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Actually, no, we don't do that in this kind of group.
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We do this.
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When you have a decentralized model, in particular, when you're coming into leadership, if there
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is something you're craving more of in the group or wanting, it is your responsibility
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to then bring it forward.
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So if you want a group that moves slower sometimes, or men can really slow down into their experience,
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when it's your turn to lead, you bring that.
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If you're in a group that you feel is too soft, it needs more fire, it needs more challenge,
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it needs more accountability and truth telling.
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Boom.
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When it comes your turn, that's what you bring into the group.
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So by every man tracking what they're wanting, what they're needing, and then taking responsibility
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to bring it forward in the group itself, the group becomes a lot more robust.
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Rather than that more standard top-down style of groups.
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The other thing about having a decentralized group is you're creating a culture, not just
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participating in a club, let's say.
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What does that really mean?
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Well, a culture is something that can outlast any one man.
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So again, I lead centralized groups.
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Some of you guys as listeners have participated in them.
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But what happens if I stop leading that group?
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Often, do-do-do-do-do-do.
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That group of men, it just dissolves away.
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Because the culture hasn't been created of shared leadership and ownership of,
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this is something we want to carry forward.
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That is important to us.
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This is so key because it creates something that outlasts any specific man.
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Men may come and go from an ongoing decentralized group.
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And the texture and nature and style and flavor of that group has room to adjust and evolve over time.
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And to be totally frank, the only way we can ever scale men's work fast enough is through this decentralized model.
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There are not enough facilitators to be leading groups all around the world.
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Particularly in local geographic spaces, right?
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Zoom is awesome and it really opens the door and it's incredible.
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But if you want to have local groups, we need men to lead them.
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And what I often tell guys is if you can't find a group in your local area,
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it may be on you to start it.
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And that decentralized model is really what will allow that of don't wait, right?
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Don't wait for a big organization to come through town and start leading groups.
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Get the tools and start creating the group yourself.
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Find the people that want to co-create a group with you for the long haul.
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I recently moved about a year ago back to somewhere I had lived previously in my 20s.
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And crazily enough, I got to rejoin the very first men's group I was part of.
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Those guys kept meeting every other Wednesday for 14 years while I moved away, started my own group in Los Angeles,
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grew into other groups, and they welcomed me back with open arms.
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That group started with someone facilitating us, giving us some tools, giving us some structure,
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so we could get the ball rolling and have that experience of how valuable it was in our lives to have this kind of space.
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And it's been just awe-inspiring coming back to this group who's really dialed into, as one man said,
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You know, we're to the grave, meaning we're going to run this group until everybody dies.
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And it's going to start to happen, right?
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At some point, a member will pass.
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And that will be a massive milestone.
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But the group will outlast that member.
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It may even start to bring new people in over time.
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Who knows?
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But again, decentralized groups are going to be the most powerful, sticky ones that you can possibly imagine
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because it becomes your group.
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When you own a part of it, when you are responsible for it, you have a much larger stake in it.
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And again, just to highlight, this is one of the issues I've seen with more of the centralized models of,
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Okay, just pay this much a month and come to drop into groups anytime.
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You lose a lot of that stake.
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Because at any time, you can just drop and it doesn't matter.
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In a decentralized group, it matters that you're there.
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It matters that you're showing up on time.
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It matters what you go off and learn and maybe bring back to gift to the group in your leadership.
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A new practice.
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A new emotional tool.
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A new structure.
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A new prompt.
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Who knows what it could be?
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It all becomes fodder, in a sense, to keep the group dynamic and keep the group growing.
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Decentralized groups are so important.
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And they can scale.
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Right?
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Once you have a framework, you can take your group wherever you want.
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And yeah, you can always go out, get more trainings, bring people in.
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You know, that first group I was talking about, when we were first starting, we had one specific
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facilitator who stayed with us about a year until we kind of had, yeah, we had land legs.
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And then since then, it's been self-guided.
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But occasionally, other facilitators we know would come through town who we knew were really
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deep, gifted, profound men and leaders.
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And we'd invite them in for an evening.
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Hey, take us deeper.
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Right?
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Take us deeper.
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But it's still our group.
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We're inviting them into our space in our group, which is really different from we are
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participating in their group.
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Right?
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Their vision.
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Owning a vision of your group, being part of a decentralized group is the kind of thing
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that can absolutely change your life.
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It has changed mine.
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And it's a big passion of mine to start, will help start and promote guys creating these types
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of groups that you own, not me.
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So the Heart of Shadow program, I lead with Dr. Luke Adler.
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This is one manifestation of that.
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We take guys super deep in about 10 or 11 weeks with a live retreat to just create a profound
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level of connection and intimacy with each other that often creates a terminal velocity,
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a liftoff capacity.
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And those groups all have continued meeting.
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After we wrap the program and we're not leading it anymore, we hand over the keys.
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We say, hey, we helped you build this boat.
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But it's yours now.
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It is yours.
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You can let it go away or you can keep tending, building, bringing it forward.
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And it's been profound.
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We've had many men share how life-changing it is to now have their group.
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We help top it up sometimes, offer some guidance, but we are not running those groups.
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Those groups are not paying us to be run.
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They are theirs.
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And that is a crucial thing.
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Now, my upcoming men's group experience program and men's group mastery, they are going to be
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versions of this as well, where I'm going to give you, if you're a man who's interested in
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starting a group or running a group or just experiencing a group, a framework to get going,
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some structure, right?
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Where do I start?
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How do I find people?
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Maybe I just want to come in and experience a group.
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I'm going to kind of lay the pathway, but then it's going to be up to you as men, those that
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decide to continue on after the program.
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It will be your group and nobody will own it except for you members.
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And that's really profound because then nobody can take it away from you.
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It's your asset.
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It's something that the more you invest in, the more you get to take the goods out of, so
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to speak, you will benefit in a reward.
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So all the energy you put in comes right back to you and your group becomes something you