Mastermind group activities and exercises aren’t that different from other team building activities you’ve seen or experienced. If your group meets in person, it’s always great to kick-off your mastermind group with an activity or teaching to get the team dynamic and creative juices flowing.

Mastermind Group Activities For Individuals

Retirement Speech: Imagine the last day of your career after forty years of hard work. Finally, retirement! Write a short speech outlining the value you created, the legacy you left, the lives you impacted, the growth you sparked and experienced, and the change you brought about in your organization(s), industry, and world.

Eulogy or 80th Birthday Toast: Write a eulogy or a toast to yourself from the perspective of your best friend when you’re eighty years old. Questions to consider include:

• What roles do I envision myself taking on throughout my life? (e.g., parent, community leader, entrepreneur).
• What do I hope to leave behind? (e.g., family business, lasting change, my art, legacy).
• What’s one word, belief, or quote that people will remember me for? Why? (e.g., honest, authentic, inspirational).

Vision Board: Vision boarding requires getting some magazines, glue sticks, and scissors and flipping through them until you see words and images that reflect what you want in your life. Cut them out and paste them on a poster board until you fill it up. You can cut out cars, houses, clothes, images of food or romance. And you can cut out words like health, creative, and happy. This will serve as a visual reminder of why you are doing everything that you are doing.

Mastermind Group Activities For Entrepreneurs

Get That Off My Plate: Have the entrepreneur write out all of the tasks they do inside the company vertically on a piece of paper. Have them put a happy face next to everything they love doing. Then have them put a star next to the things they are great at. Ideally, they should only be doing the things they love doing and are great at. Everything else should be delegated, outsourced, or automated. Give them time to choose a person to delegate to, a contractor to outsource to, and a system to automate with.

Future Forbes Article: Have them imagine being featured in a Forbes article 10 years from now. Give 15 minutes to free write what they would want that article to say about them and their company. Have them include new products, new services, revenues and revenue growth, team size, awards, partnership, rankings, team members, offices, team size, customer reviews, etc.

Customer Vision Board: The practice of vision boarding is great, but it is often selfish (in a good way). It’s usually about what I want. This is an opportunity to create a vision board that reflects what their customers want and/or what they want for their customers. Any company that is helping its customers get what they want will be profitable and sustainable.

Mastermind Group Activities For Teams

The Circle of Trust: I made this one up as well. It is the fastest way I know how to deepen trust among any group. First, on Post-It Notes, I have people anonymously write the things they fear, are ashamed of, been hiding, feel inadequate or insecure about, or hate about themselves. Example might be: my marriage is on the rocks, I’m a workaholic, I feel like a failure for laying people off, I feel so alone, My work and the stress has hospitalized me, I’m in more debt than I know what to do with, I’m on the brink of having to shut down the company. I put all of those in a bag, hat, or bowl and then we sit in a circle with our eyes closed. I pull one out and read it, then close my eyes, and everyone who can relate to what was written on that Post-It puts their head up, opens their eyes for 3 seconds, and then close them again and puts their head down. I keep going until I read every Post-It Note. From there, we debrief with a conversation about how they feel/felt. And then I invite people to hug because it can get really emotional (in a good way). This experience lets people know that they are not alone on this journey and that there are other people who can relate to them and their experience.

Process Recap:
1. Have people write 6 things that you think you have to hide but are really part of their authentic self. They could be challenges, stigmas, fears, physical disabilities, weaknesses, things they are ashamed of or hate about themselves, childhood events, ugly isms, etc separately on small scraps of paper. Examples are I was sexually abused, I am a foster child, I have cancer, etc.
2. Put all of the small scraps of paper into a bag
3. Have everyone sit in a big circle with their eyes closed and heads down.
4. The reader pulls a scrap of paper out of the bag, reads it, puts his or her head down.
5. The people who relate to whatever is on that scrap of paper open their eyes, put their heads up, and acknowledge one another, and then put their heads back down.
6. After a 10 seconds, the reader returns to step #4. This process goes on until the bag is empty. The reader skips any duplicates.
7. If people are willing, afterwards give them a chance to talk about their feelings, connectedness, or disconnectedness to the group.

The Art of Networking: This is a game I created that teaches people how to network with the mindset of giving first rather than trying to get first. It’s important to train your members how to contribute to lives of others members. In all honesty, most people join mastermind groups for what they can get from the other members…until you show them how much they have to give and the help them experience the joy of helping someone else succeed. This activity works best with larger groups. Essentially you make business cards for everyone in attendance. On one side is their job (e.g. gardener, high school principal, tailor, plumber, sports agent) and on the other side is a need they have (e.g. ripped my suit, daughter’s wedding in unfinished backyard, 9th grade foreign exchange student coming to live with us, want a toilet in the man cave, son is being recruited by Yankees). You make all of these up.  From there, you give them 5 minutes to network and try to help each other and see how many people’s needs get met. You debrief and ask questions such as How many people did you connect? What if the goal wasn’t to get your need met but to help everyone get their need met? It leads to a rich lesson in relationship building and community that will serve the group forever.

The Survival Game Simulation: I did this one is business school.  It teaches teamwork and communication skills. The scenario is that you and your companions have just survived the crash of a small plane.  Both the pilot and co-pilot were killed in the crash.  It is mid-January , and you are in Northern Canada.  The daily temperature is 25 below zero, and the night time temperature is 40 below zero.  There is snow on the ground, and the countryside is wooded with several creeks criss-crossing the area.  The nearest town is 20 miles away.  You are all dressed in city clothes appropriate for a business meeting.  Your group of survivors managed to salvage the following items that you have to rank as a group in order of importance. At the end, you compare your list to an expert’s list and get a score. You can see details here.