The Mastermind: How Buffer's Co-Founders Grow Together

Key Takeaways

the way it works is that the way the Mastermind works is that um we both come without lists and it has it's it's generally three a three-part list the first one is achievements of the past week and that can be personal or buff related for example we were able to ship X or I was able to do this um like goal that I had around like meditation or gym or whatever it is or reading a book or like um and that usually takes 10 minutes for each of us so we take 10 minutes to talk about this so we come prepared and we have 10 minutes to to run through those and then 10 minutes to get the other person gets to run through their achievements and then we we we end up with some comments and the comments are usually trying to tie things together this like oh there's this pattern it seems like your last week was very much around um uh Fitness or like your last week seems you have been a lot more reflective or you've seen to make a lot made a lot of progress in in your interactions with people because you focus on the positivity part or like it seems like very buffer focused on uh hiring or like whatever it is like trying to to uncover patterns that because we have a list of one of things that we can't see and the other person can sort of help us see and then after that 10 minutes each we go into challenges and so that challenges is usually 30 to 40 minutes each and um the way we try to approach it is that you talk about your challenge and you you and the other person tries their best not to solve your challenge for you which is something we're really inclined to do is like I'm telling you Courtney like um Courtney how should I do this I don't know how to uh um get my gym routine back on track I've only been going once a week I want to go four times a week and the the usual thing that that happens is that the other person jumps in and says like oh yeah have you tried this and you could do this and you could do this and you could do that and uh and and and I certainly always often make make this mistake but the main goal of the master man is to actually ask questions to say like oh why have you been only going once a week or like what what would you like what kind of workouts would you like to do more or like oh what what do you feel like is the key challenge why you hav't and now I'm actually starting to solve my own problem it's like oh yeah so I've switched gyms and that gym is a bit further away it's like oh actually maybe I should try and get a bike because then it's like see now you're putting me on the track so of this Socratic Socratic method of just asking questions and not make giving advice or telling people how to solve it so that's s of what goes on for like 40 minutes and we do not always manage to do that and and I especially I think Joel is much better at that than me I'm much quicker to jump is like you should just do this and you could just do that and like it's even no matter how good the the the the the suggestion is and I mean I don't even know how good it is but like it's it's just you know creates this sort of like you're not coming up with the solution to your own problem situation which you know has a slight challenge in the terms of like the ownership or the the the the personal investment that you feel from like going on and actually fixing that um and so we tried to do that for 4 minutes each and to go back and forth and work through challenges buff related personal related and uh and and then make some time for a lot of feedback for each other where where um even even though Joel and I know each other for a long time and and I think we' we we pretty good at it it's still one of the toughest things to do where you want to word very carefully what you know what may be something that you noticed or you spotted and and and it's it's always a practice to not be defensive when you hear any of those things and then be sort of open-minded and and um especially because we peers on that level it sort of um makes it even harder to actually be accepting of it and and and and and not sort of say like yeah because you sort of coaching me on this I'm I'm taking your your feedback on board but because we're like it's almost more like a friend or like a colleague sharing that feedback it's actually requires even more I think like empathy and compassion to to take the