How To Improve Engagement Within Your Remote Team
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Start forming your first Growth Group
Learn more about how to form groups by reading the FAQs below. When you’re ready to get started, schedule a call with a member of our team or sign up to attend a live demonstration.
Here's how to start!
Forming your organization’s first Growth Group is easy! Here are a few questions that you will need to answer prior to getting those groups going:
- Who is our target audience? I.e. what community within our organization are we offering Growth Groups?
- Will we require an application?
- When will our groups meet?
- How often will our groups meet?
- How long (how many months) will the groups meet?
- Will our groups meet in person or remotely (via video conference system)?
- Will we pass any fees along to our Participants?
- Who will serve as our Organizer(s)?
Schedule a call or attend a demo and members of our Growth Groups team can help you answer these questions and get your Groups started right away. In the meantime, you can find answers to many of your questions via the FAQs below!
General FAQs
Growth Groups are peer advisory groups of 7-9 individuals that meet consistently to present their greatest business challenges and work through solutions in a focused and safe environment. Growth Group meetings can be held in-person or virtually, and use proprietary software to facilitate effective and focused sessions.
Growth Groups can work for anyone! Your organization may choose to offer Growth Groups to all or specific sections of your community.
Growth Groups are about humans interacting with humans. That being said, Groups may meet in-person or meet remotely via video conference system. In-person meetings come together in a space reserved by the client. Remote groups meet via Zoom video conferencing system (managed by the Growth Groups team) or a video conference system of the clients choosing (managed by the client).
Growth Groups use a proven, Gestalt methodology, providing your participants with the opportunity to have their challenges vetted via a rigorous process that “seeks first to understand, then be understood”. Challenges take 30 minutes each, allowing 4-6 members of each group to present a challenge in a 2-3 hour meeting.
No one has to run their group. Growth Group software keeps participants focused on business challenges and opportunities, while mitigating common group dynamic issues (interrupting, jumping to solutions, talking over one another, falling off topic, etc). The software cues participants to know when it is their turn to present a challenge, ask questions about a challenge, or provide feedback without any single member of the group having to become the “leader”.
Growth Groups are powerful because they do NOT follow any preset curriculum. The discussion is completely participant-driven, and everyone who has joined a Growth Group actively participates in every meeting. In fact, most participants even have the chance to present a challenge at every meeting (depending on group size).
Challenges are anything that is weighing on a Participant’s mind, and can be exciting or stressful, big or small and anything in between! Here are some actual challenges that have been presented by Growth Group Participants:
- How should I tell my boss about my big idea?
- How do I find more customers?
- How do I deal with a problem client?
- How do I stand out among my peers so I am ready for a promotion?
- Should we hire an employee or outsource?
- What do I do about my quarrelling employees?
- How do I find the right investors?
- I’m feeling very overwhelmed. How do you prioritize your efforts?
Every client must identify at least one individual that will serve as an Organizer for the Growth Groups program. Organizer(s) will work with the Growth Groups team to recruit, match and manage Groups to ensure their success and sustainability.
Organizations pay Growth Groups (a BGI Company) directly and may choose to pass fees on to Participants.
Forming a Group FAQs
Growth Group Organizers have complete control here, and have the option of requiring an application or selecting Participants directly. We recommend using an application for the purpose of determining interest, gathering initial data and to optimize the matching process.
We offer a customizable application software tool that includes several screening questions designed to help Organizers match groups who face similar challenges – leading to better outcomes for Participants.
A typical Growth Group meets once a month for three hours, but we are able to accommodate whatever meeting frequency and duration best serves your group.
Short answer: as long as you like!
Growth Groups may be offered for a finite duration (6-12 months) or ad infinitum. We believe that the rapport, trust and knowledge that make Growth Groups so valuable only gets better with time. Organizers may choose to allow Participants the option to join multiple groups, advance from one group into another, etc.
One of the most important aspects of a successful Growth Group is the matching process. It is important to match groups based on some thread of similar interests or affinity (professional aspiration, professional affiliation, gender identification, life stage, etc).
With that in mind, we recommend setting a goal of 20-30 applicants in order to form 1-2 well-matched groups. You can also “hand-pick” members directly into a group, which requires fewer applicants.
One of the most important aspects of a successful Growth Group is the matching process. In our experience, the more choices you offer your Participants, the more you bifurcate your pool of applicants (if you are requiring an application), and the more applicants you will then need to receive in order to establish well-matched groups.
It is our recommendation to keep as many options limited as possible when Organizers are forming their first groups. You can always add more choices as your Growth Group community grows.
Growth Groups can be curated for Participants within a specific organization or community exclusively and must be curated by designated Organizer(s) who ensure that groups are well-matched and set up for success.
At this time we are unable to offer Growth Groups to individuals that do not associate with any of our Growth Group clients.
