Starting a Women’s Mastermind Group
A few months back, a friend of mine gave a presentation about unconscious gender bias and I was immediately intrigued. She has always been an incredible leader, very thoughtful and a passionate go-getter. So, I reached out to her because I was inspired by her motivation, curious about the topic, and impressed by her bravery to tackle such a difficult subject.
Our first discussion turned into several ideas about spreading her message of gender bias awareness to others. We also dove into our shared desire to grow as professionals, and specifically to grow as professional women working in traditionally male-dominated industries. We began to brainstorm how to harness our enthusiasm for developing women leaders - both in ourselves and others. One discussion led to another, and I soon found myself sitting with not just one but five other passionate, intelligent women.
We do not share similar backgrounds. Our family dynamics and demographics are diverse. We have varied experiences and traumas. And, we work in several industries at various levels. But, our common (and unfortunate) thread is that we’ve all experienced gender bias, limitations, and even discrimination while working in male-dominated industries.
While our group aspires to cultivate tools and guidance to develop women leaders, we decided to start our journey by working on our own leadership and interpersonal skills. We knew we needed to create a safe space where we could discuss our experiences of gender bias, discrimination and other difficult situations and then work through resolutions and recommendations to handle similar situations in the future. We want to hold each other accountable to our professional and personal goals, pushing each other to set positive examples for other women in our respective industries or age group. We aim to equip ourselves with the tools we need to speak up in the face of bias and discrimination as well as encourage other women leaders to step up.
To achieve all this, we settled on launching our own mastermind group. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a mastermind group is a selection of individuals that meet regularly for a combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability and support to sharpen your business and personal skills. Typically, members challenge each other to set strong goals, and more importantly, to accomplish them.
To get started, we sought out the mentorship of a common friend who guided us to the Moxie Exchange and its incredible founder and CEO, Mo. She provided us a framework to constructively and productively create our mastermind group including writing a charter and setting ground rules.
We’ve now met twice and so fare we’ve succeeded in creating a safe place to share experiences and teach each other. In our second meeting, we wrote a “5-Year Letter” to visualize, in as much detail as possible, what we hope to achieve five years from now. We then challenged each other to set short term goals that puts us on the path to realizing our best lives.
I’m thrilled to be surrounded by such smart and motivated women, who have quickly become confidants and trusted advisors. I look back on what I hoped to achieve when I first reach out to my friend and am inspired by the result so far. I can’t wait to see what this mastermind group of women accomplish!