Leaders Gain Objectivity

The focus of the Ambition In Motion executive mastermind group is on helping leaders improve their performance leading their teams. We're a group of leaders from across the world from a variety of industries and sizes of companies. Although our technical challenges are unique, the human challenges of leading a team are pretty consistent and we lean on each other to work through our challenges and improve our performance.

We seek leaders that are willing to be vulnerable, challenge and be challenged, and experiment.

We believe that without vulnerability, we cannot make tangible improvements to our leadership abilities. We believe vulnerability is critical to self-awareness and introspection and without self-awareness and introspection, we can't be conscientiously aware that there is something about our leadership that needs to be improved. The ironic element to calling our group a `mastermind group` is that we aren't seeking somebody to be a `mastermind` - rather we are seeking executives willing to share their vulnerabilities so the other leaders in our group can share their experiences handling similar circumstances and how they have succeeded or failed in similar circumstances.

Most professionals in the western world have been conditioned since childhood to respect their elders or those in superior professional positions as them. Essentially, we have observed that the higher somebody gets in their organizational hierarchy, the less objectivity the receive from those in their company (e.g. for fear of getting reprimanded or fired, those who report to leaders are less likely to challenge their leader's perspectives). The executive mastermind group prides itself on challenging other leaders and encouraging others in the group to challenge us. We believe that there is no such thing as an intentionally bad leader but we do believe that the longer a leader, or anyone for that matter, goes unchallenged in their way of thinking, the more likely they are to make a mistake and negatively impact their team.

Being willing to experiment means that you currently lead a team and are willing to try new things to optimize your team's performance. We believe that leadership is a constantly evolving field of study and that to consistently be in front of leadership trends, we must be willing to experiment, and share the results of our experiments with those in our executive mastermind groups. The executive mastermind group brings together the culmination of experiments where executives can glean the knowledge from another leader's experiments to apply to their own team.

Horizontal mentorship means to leaders open to learning from each other. As opposed to traditional, hierarchical mentorship where one person is mentoring the other person in a one-way relationship, horizontal mentorship is a two-way transfer of knowledge between executives. We leverage this style of mentorship because we recognize that in order for leaders to get the most out of their executive mentor relationships, there must be a willingness to learn as well as teach in the relationship. When power dynamics become out of balance in a mentor relationship, the longevity and quality of those mentor relationships dwindles significantly.

9 months

After years of studying executive mastermind cohort lengths, with hundreds of executives, experimenting with 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, and 12-month durations, we found that the executives that participated in 9-month executive mastermind cohorts showed greater increases in engagement with their work when comparing their beginning engagement score to their ending engagement score as well as gave higher marks in terms of feedback for the program overall.

Executives in our mastermind group can choose to get a new mentor, keep their mentor, keep coming to group meetings, or stop if they would like to stop.

Committing to the 9-month executive mastermind group cohort is critical because both your mentor and the group is relying on you. The executive mastermind group is a community and your full participation is required throughout the 9-month cohort because you possess additional knowledge, experimentation, insights, and relatability that without you, and everyone else in the group, cannot fully thrive if everyone isn't there and committed.

3-4 hours per month.

Very flexible. The time commitment is broken into two core segments: mentor meetings and mastermind group meetings. Mentor meetings are scheduled between you and your mentor at times that are convenient for you (e.g. a lot of our executives book their mentor meetings on Friday afternoons because they generally have availability then). The mastermind group meetings are an hour and are consistent every month (e.g. the third Wednesday of every month at 2:00). We have multiple group meetings going on throughout the month so if you provide a week's advance notice that you can't attend a group meeting, alternative group meeting times can be provided to you for that month.

Yes. This is typically incorporated within a leaders' professional development budget.

Here is a link to a great article written by Mindy Honcoop, a Chief People Officer in our executive mastermind group, on how to approach your CEO or boss to get funding for a program like the executive mastermind group.

Yes. For example, we have some executives split their payments in the executive mastermind group to have a portion paid at the beginning, during one fiscal cycle, and then another later in the program during the next fiscal cycle.

Yes

All executives in the mastermind group schedule an interview with our founder, Garrett Mintz, to assess if the group is a fit. Then if fit is determined, Garrett will provide a link for the executive to sign up for the upcoming cohort.

By using Garrett's calendar link to find a mutually beneficial time: www.calendly.com/garrettambition

The executive mastermind group has cohort start dates of January 15th, March 1st, May 15th, July 15th, September 1st, and November 15th.

We pair executives together for Horizontal Mentorship using Work Orientation. {hyperlink to the Work Orientation page} Work Orientation is how you view your work. When an executive has an aligned Work Orientation with another executive, the likelihood that relationship lasts for 6 months and is considered productive and quality is 4 times greater than if the mentor match is strictly based on what industry and type of team that executive leads. Work Orientation is identified in the initial assessment all executives complete to participate in the executive mastermind group.

Yes. Ambition In Motion has spent over 10 years studying mentor relationships and what causes mentor relationships to thrive versus fizzle out. Ambition In Motion applies this research in their mentor and mastermind group pairings to ensure optimal matches between executive participants.

Dr. Kyle Bradley and Dr. Jake Oury

Yes - Lunch & Learns and Executive Symposiums.

Lunch & Learns are monthly interviews with thought leaders, typically best-selling authors or TedTalk speakers, on topics relevant to leadership. We provide the recordings of those interviews every month to our executives to learn from and review.

Yes. All of our Lunch & Learn speakers provide their contact information and ways to get in touch so our executives can reach out to them for further interaction.

Executive Symposiums are quarterly in-person gatherings held for our executive mastermind group participants where learning and networking take place. Past topics for Executive Symposiums include: How to Develop Leaders in your organization, How to Lead Multi-Generational Teams, and How to Lead During Times of Recession Uncertainty.

Yes. Starting with the December 8th, 2022 panel on How to Lead During Times of Recession Uncertainty, all panels are recorded for viewing at a later date.

Yes. We started hosting them in Austin, TX but plan to expand them to more cities starting in 2023.

Absolutely. The point of the Executive Symposium is to bring executives in our mastermind group as well friends of those members together for learning and networking.