The Power of Peer Advisory Groups with Dwain Farley
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"If the best you ever get are best practices, then all you're doing is what your very best competitor is doing. That is as good as you're getting."
— Dwain Farley
Vistage - Where Leaders Learn And Grow
Vistage is a peer advisory group for business leaders to learn and grow together.
It has been in existence for about 65 years, founded by Bob Nourse and his peers.
The organization started as a way to replicate the impact of successful peer interactions on a larger scale.
Vistage creates groups where CEOs and senior executives come together to discuss challenges, opportunities, and solutions.
With around 45,000 members globally, Vistage provides a platform for business leaders to collaborate and benefit from collective wisdom.
Igniting Innovation with Guest Speakers
Vistage brings in speakers to address the specific needs of its members, enhancing leadership skills and decision-making.
Speakers provide insights on evaluating and enhancing leadership teams and other critical aspects of business.
The goal is to present information that CEOs should know but might have forgotten or need to see from a fresh perspective.
Speakers cover both existing and new information, such as AI's potential impact on businesses.
Building Powerful Professional Relationships
The dynamic in the group includes both owner-founders and professional managers with different leadership perspectives.
Owner-founders tend to be action-oriented, while professional managers often focus on analytical aspects.
Bringing these different perspectives together in one room leads to diverse and valuable discussions.
Facilitating the group sometimes involves letting members take the lead, and fostering organic interaction and mutual support.
Vistage's Key Executive Group
CEO groups include key executive groups with senior executives from member companies.
Key executive groups provide senior executives the opportunity to focus on strategic aspects of the business.
Senior executives benefit from interacting with peers and gaining different perspectives.
Key executive groups offer a less lonely environment for executives to share and learn from each other.
Exposure to diverse viewpoints helps senior executives develop a broader understanding of their roles beyond CEO directives.
Joining the Right Peer Advisory Group: Tips and Strategies
Look for a peer group that challenges and pushes you to be better.
Prioritize diversity within the group, including different industries and perspectives.
Focus on the experience and facilitation skills of the group's chair.
Seek a group where members are willing to engage in important and difficult conversations.
Emphasize respectful challenges and a spirit of continuous improvement in the group.
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Mike: So before I kick off this episode I've gotta tell everybody, and if you're watching on video, you will see this. If not, you've gotta trust me. My kids just got me a better leadership team show mug, so I feel like a late night host. So I'm excited about that, but I'm even more excited.
Now I'm gonna tell my kids I'm more excited about the mug, but you guys know I'm even more excited about my guest on this episode. Dwain Farley has been building small and mid-sized businesses for over 30 years. He recently sold his telecom company and now leads private peer advisory groups for CEOs and business owners.
These groups help leaders step out of their daily grind to think differently, gain insights, take bold actions, and generate spectacular results. His role is to select members, coach, mentor, and provide a rigorous forum for chief executives to accelerate their growth and their effectiveness. I first met Dwain back in, October of 21 was when I did my first workshop with one of your Vistage groups.
We met before that in preparation for that workshop. But, I wanna start off, I really want to thank you that Vistage Universe is one that has been very beneficial for me and I really enjoy spending time with, and that's because you introduced me to your group back in October of 21. So thank you for doing that.
Dwain: Thank you so much, Mike. I truly enjoy being here. I wanted to tell you that, I heard your name through one of my members. And who you've done some work with. And he said we were actually at one of our one-to-ones. One of the things I do each month with my CEO is it's coaching sessions. But he said, man you really need to take and read this book.
And it's called Breakthrough Leadership Teams. It's by this guy Mike Goldman. I read his book, I've worked with him. You gotta get to know him. I said, whoa. Okay. That's a great recommendation. And I read the book and then I was so impressed.
I actually went back and I got it on audible.com and I heard it again as I was driving my kids down to, I think we were going to Corpus Christi for something.
Mike: Your kids must have loved that.
Dwain: I had some ear earbuds on of course, there wasn't a whole lot of conversation going on. They were doing their earbud thing. I was doing mine, but yeah to all the listeners, I just, huge plug for Mike's book. It is, and I've had a number of my members read it and they love it. It's good stuff.
Mike: Thank you. Thanks, and thanks so much for coming on the show. So let's start with you, in the intro I said you lead these peer advisory groups. Let's start real basic. What is a peer advisory group?
Dwain: Fundamentally, it's bringing a bunch of really smart, ambitious business leaders, people who own their businesses, or they've ascended to the CEO seats or president, or they've got PNO responsibility for their companies and we bring 'em together each month to brainstorm, look at issues or opportunities that they have in their businesses.
This is very much a roll up your sleeves, get together and use the collective wisdom of the group. Now, everybody is from a different industry who are sitting around the table, and it's typically a very small group. My groups range from, we range about 15 or 16. So we come together each month and we're talking about the things that are most important to those CEOs, and it's an opportunity for them to work on the business, but not in the business.
And it just makes a huge, just makes a huge difference.
Mike: What do they get out of that now? You said you do some one-on-one coaching as well, so put that aside for a second. But from those group sessions, and I'll get, we'll get into detail on what those look like and the discussions there, but what do your clients get out of those group sessions that they couldn't get out of meeting with their leadership team or their own board of advisors or what is it that's different?
Dwain: There's a couple of aspects to that question. And by the way, I spent, as you mentioned, I spent 22 years in the CEO seat of several different companies. One of the things you learned really quickly is that it is in fact lonely at the top. But what does that mean? What it means is, look, there's some things that you don't tell your board.
Not trying to hide anything, but there's a certain level of thinking and things that are going on that they don't need to know about. They've got their own fish to fry. There are things that you don't talk about to your executive team, for a lot of different reasons.
And so really what this time together as a group is about is executive thinking time. Carving out a day, a month to do nothing but work with other executives and have that time to think. Now, cause some people will say I can do that. I can do that all the way to work. Or as I'm traveling to see a client.
Absolutely. You're right. And you're always thinking about, there's always some, there's always real, there's always this reel in the back of your head. You know where you're thinking about business. Even when you're at home, you're thinking about the business. The difference here is that all those things that you're thinking about, those really critical decisions or those opportunities that you're not sure you should take advantage of, here's a place that you can take and you can put it on the table and say, hey guys, I need some help thinking through this.
What are the pros? What are the cons? Should I do this? Should I not do this? If I'm gonna do it, how am I gonna do it? How am I gonna explain it? How am I gonna message this? How am I gonna present it to my board? How am I gonna present it to my, all of those things you can now take and have a conversation with other executives who are probably thinking through similar things themselves and can get some valuable feedback.
Mike: I find it so critical because a, as you said, some things you may not want to tell your board may not be the right discussion to have with your board yet. But, I also think just as importantly, And maybe this comes up more often. There are things you absolutely should not be discussing with your team yet.
There may be issues with your team that you need some outside advice on coaching, on experiences that, that you're just not going get anywhere else unless you've got some group of trusted folks that have been where you are. That you could share that stuff with.
Dwain: And to your point, it's all about, look, so much of what we're thinking about this executive thinking time, the stuff that we're working through is half baked. All right? Do you really want to take half baked ideas or opportunities to your team or to your board?
Probably not. Let's put it in the oven a little bit longer and let other people take a look at it and look at the recipe. I'm overusing the metaphor here, but the point is that's what these people around the table are there to do is to put another set of eyes on it that had the similar kinds of responsibilities and help you flesh it out.
Whatever that looks like. And some aspects of this like I said, are vetting opportunities or talking about issues. Sometimes it's about accountability. We've talked about the group has helped you through some process, through some thinking. You said, you know what, that's a great idea.
I think that's something I need to do. That's some conversation I need to have, you know, that's. And so now the group comes back around and says, okay, did you do it? What was the result? Was it a positive or negative? What would you have done differently? And so some pieces of it sometimes are accountability and CEOs, I needed it.
I needed it today. And it's getting a bunch, again of really smart people and putting 'em together. And give them, giving them a construct. And that's my job as a facilitator. My job as a former CEO, as the chair of this group is to make sure that we stay on track, that we get good work done. Now we have a lot of fun. We do, we laugh but in the end it's about how do we take and build our businesses and scale them to that next level, whatever it looks like.
Mike: And just so you know how important I believe this is, I'm actually a member of three of these types of groups and we'll talk about the specific we'll talk a little bit more about Vistage and what that group looks like. For mine, they were more more informally organized and we do some formal stuff, but it's, so I've got a group of other coaches that I talk to once a month and it's a couple hours on Zoom.
We help each other with our good ideas, our bad ideas client problem. Then I've got another group of speakers. I do the same thing with, and I just had this morning a group of me and 12 different CEOs that are locally. We get together once a month and all share challenges we're having with our businesses.
And let me be clear, it's not a networking group. Not that some business, not that some business might not be shared from time to time, but it's not networking. And it's important. It's not networking because I think when you're networking, you're always trying to put a positive spin on your business cause you're trying to sell to other people. Knowing it's not net networking means you can come in and say, man, I'm just not feeling really good about the business today. I'm not, I'm troubled by the level of service we're giving our clients. Wow. You're never gonna say that to someone you're networking with, but you would say it to your peer advisory group.
Dwain: And what's interesting is that people, people do business with people they trust. Over time that's exactly what you have in this group is you have a lot of trust and so yeah, you just naturally gravitate toward maybe wanting to do business with some of 'em.
If you've got a need. But to your point, this is a working group. We're there to solve challenges. We're there to scale our businesses. To pivot back to what you were saying about having multiple groups, as I'm talking to CEOs that are not, who are not familiar with the model of having a peer group, they'll say I'm concerned about my time.
I'm not sure if I'm gonna have enough time to do this, valid concern. And they'll say, right now I'm already part of a industry group. I'm in the refrigeration industry and I've got a hundred, I go to the conventions and I've got all these industry people that I work with.
And they said, isn't that basically the same thing? And the answer to that is absolutely not. By the way, I'm all for industry groups. I was part of industry groups and all in the couple different industries I was in. I think they're hugely beneficial. They give you a lot of exposure to best practices, and that's a good thing. But in the end, if everybody from, if everybody around the table is sitting in the same industry, everybody's asking the same questions and giving the same answers. That's pretty that's pretty simple. Best practices are a great thing. You want to take advantage of that as much as possible in your organization.
But in the end, if all, if the best you ever get are best practices, then all you're doing is what your very best competitor's doing. That's as good as you're getting. So that's one of the things that I that we talk about a lot is the importance of having more than one industry represented around the table is that you get lots of industry, you get lots of expertise.
From other people doing maybe radically different things than you are, and that's powerful. There's a lot of innovation that comes out of that. And so what's fun is as a chair, as a facilitator, I get to watch this going on and that's hugely fulfilling for me.
Mike: Love it. So tell us a little bit more, and I wanna get down into what happens in these meetings, but I've mentioned Vistage a few times. So for those, I imagine, a lot of people are aware of Vistage, they've heard of Vistage, but maybe they don't know a lot about it. Tell us a little bit more about Vistage and maybe what makes that different than other peer advisory groups or just saying, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start one myself.
What is Vistage all about?
Dwain: Well,let me start that conversation this way. I've been a Vistage chair now for going on five years. As I exited my last company and did my time with them. And then as I exited that, I was looking for my next equity investment. A recruiter calls me and asks me if I'd be interested in being a chair for Vistage.
I go first of all, I don't want, I don't know who Vistage is. I don't know what they do. But what you're telling me sounds intriguing. And they said, look, before you say no, you would go talk to some members in DFW, that's where I'm at here in Dallas. And and some other chairs that are in that metroplex.
I said, okay, I can do that. That's makes good sense. So anyway, about six weeks later after I did just that, talked to some members, talked to some chairs, they called me back and said where are you at? Do you think you'd have an interest? And I said, not only do I have an interest, sign me up, because I get to literally make a lot of difference in these other small to medium sized businesses.
So what is Vistage? Vistage has been around for about 65 years. I had no idea. Until I saw what happens here. A guy by the name of Bob Nourse up in the Northwest, he was a successful businessman. He and a bunch of his peers got together and it was effective, it was usually impactful to their businesses.
And they said why isn't there some, why wasn't there some mechanism to do this across the United States or, worldwide? Why not? And so they created a business model outlet, and that's where Vistage came from. So for 65 years, they've been starting groups all over the country and all over the world.
So right now there's some 40,000, 45,000 members worldwide. 80% of those are here in the US. Here in DFW there's some thousand plus CEOs and senior execs that are in multiple groups.
And again, we come together once a month to work on the business as opposed to in the business. What does a typical Vistage day look like?
Several times a year I'll bring in speakers, on a wide range of topics. So one of the things that I like to do as a chair, part of the model is that I meet with the members once a month as a coach, typically an hour to an hour and a half. And that's aside from the time we spend together as a group.
One of the things that comes out of those discussions are what are the concerns? What are the issues that my members are facing? What do they need to hear? Both new information as well as things that need to be reinforced.
And so I'll schedule speakers multiple times a year to come in for typically two to three hour workshops. They're typically experts in their industry. And they packaged this up in such a way that it's CEO, it's senior executive kind of information. This guy by the name of Mike Goldman at one point came in and did one, did a workshop for us. It was
Mike: I hear amazing things.
Dwain: It's an, yeah, you're right. It's an amazing thing, right? But you are a great example. What is it that Vistage members need to hear? And that is, how do you take and create, or enhance or add to their leadership team? How do you make them the most effective team possible? And so that's why I would bring in someone like a Mike Goldman to talk to them, and give them points.
And how are you gonna take and evaluate your employees? And so very often, as a CEO, there's a certain body of information that you, an expertise that you bring to that seat. And so sometimes they're things that we should know as CEOs, but maybe we've forgotten, maybe we need to see it and hear it in a little bit different packaging to spur our thinking.
Sometimes it's new information. For example a couple months ago we had a speaker on AI and not the lofty height AI that you hear in the press, but more along the lines of, look, there are some AI products out there and these are the kinds of things that they do, and this is kind of back office efficiencies and effectiveness that it can bring.
Something that for you to check into, put your IT people on and start thinking about it. Because at some point, if you're not doing it, your competition is. And so existing information, new information, we bring speakers in to spurse some thinking. But at every meeting typically the back half of those meetings are, we close the doors, it's members only, and we start drilling down.
We start talking about our companies and what are our challenges and our opportunities, and how are we gonna take advantage of them, or what is our thinking and what thinking can you get from the rest of the members of the group?
Mike: And give us a little bit more of a sense, Dwain, and I've seen some of that, but I think it'd be helpful to draw a picture of is that, now we've got two hours. Everybody spends five minutes on what's going on in their business. Or is it, hey, we've got a chunk of time. It's Sarah's turn and she's got, three hours to talk about it.
Like what? And certainly you're not gonna share anything that from any of your members, but if you can give us a sense of the types of issues and the types of conversations that spun from that.
Dwain: And again, that's where these one-to-ones that I have with the members each month come into play because we'll be having a coaching session, we'll be discussing some things. Maybe it's some issue of non-performance or with one of their senior execs or their CFO or COO, whatever.
And I'll say this in the one on one. I think you can use some insight from the group on this. How about bringing this to them? And typically it's like, yeah, okay, great idea. And so we'll flesh that out a little bit. And so as we get into the, what we call executive session portion of the monthly meeting, I'll say, look John has a, John has an issue and Mark has an issue.
That we want to take and process through. One of the things that is unique about Vistage is that they've got a process, they call it issue processing, but it's a methodology for working through a complex issue. How do you ask really good questions and let's not embed answers.
Let's fully understand what the issue is. Are we working the right issue? And then, and so it's a really effective methodology they've been using for years and years. And we'll take these issues or these opportunities or these brainstorming sessions and we'll put 'em through that funnel,through that process.
And at the end of it, it's okay, what did you hear? What can you use here that you're gonna take back to your company and give us a timeframe. And so it gives us as a group, something to get to hold them accountable to.
Mike:
Okay. So that gives us a sense of what happens in the meetings, in between meetings other than yes, you do your one-on-ones. Do you find that the members of the group are building relationships where they are supporting each other in some ways between those meetings.
Yeah,
Dwain: You'll find them going out to lunches or going out and having drinks both. Sometimes after the meetings, certainly they get to know each other. This. Is it's relationships, It's relationship building at its best. The other people around the table, you want to get to know them.
You want to get to know their industry because it's interesting and trying to figure out how you can take and leverage that in your industry and what you're doing and how you're building your company. And it's interesting to what you know, it was by design, but it wasn't.
You'll have a couple different dynamics going on in the group. You'll have the owner, founders, people who started their, maybe bootstrap their company. And you'll have those types of leaders, representative of the group. Then you'll also have those that are what I would call professional managers.
Those would be maybe people who were brought in by private equity or for whatever reason, their job was to come in and as a CEO and either turn the company around or take it over from the owner, founder, and take it to the next level. But again, different views, you'll find the owner, founders tend to be very, okay, let's stop talking about, let's jump in, let's get it done.
You'll have the professional manager sometimes will spend a lot of time on the analytical side and all the pros and cons. And, putting those two dynamics together in one room is fun and it's effective. Because, whichever side of the table you tend to work on tend to be most be most comfortable with.
You always get the other side and you get lots of perspective. And so I think to watch that process is really interesting and the members take a lot from it.
Mike: Yeah. And it's gotta be rewarding for you. I imagine there are times that you really have to work to facilitate the group, and other times the group just starts helping each other and you can just sit back and smile and say, look what I've created here.
Dwain: Most of the time if I'll just keep my mouth shut, everybody will take in it. it's like a snowball. It takes off, especially when you get to a certain place in your organization? We are the senior leaders in our organizations, right?
There's some things that if we don't do them well, they just don't happen. And I tend to have the conversation that it's vision, it's culture, and it's accountability. If we as these senior leaders in our companies, if we don't do those three things well, honestly, they probably don't get done at all.
Certainly not well. And as these senior leaders start to recognize that, you'd be surprised how the conversations almost automatically gravitate toward those things and helping people flesh those out and be more effective at it, and starting holding people more account accountable in their organizations. So.
Mike: What I love about that is very often what I see in CEOs is that, especially when they're a little newer on the job as CEO, they're an entrepreneur that's built something or they were a hired CEO is, and they'd never admit to this, but most CEOs think their job is to do everybody else's job.
Dwain: Absolutely.
Mike: Which is dangerous on so many levels. We could do a whole other podcast on that and actually did have an early episode. Someone come in and talked about the job of a CEO, Brad Giles, who was great. But what I love about Vistage is because you make sure those conversations are those strategic conversations. You're almost you know
forcing people, peer pressuring people, they've gotta get out of doing everybody else's job to have those kinds of conversations. Because I don't think the other seasoned CEOs would stand for a conversation down in the tactics of doing somebody else's job. It challenges you to be more than that.
Dwain: That is absolutely true and you'll see those conversations all the time and you'll hear them asking each other, What are you doing that you shouldn't be doing? Is that really a good use of your time? If I heard that, I've heard it a hundred times and you love it because?
Again, it comes back to that executive thinking time. What are you thinking about? Is it really worth your time to be thinking about that? What do you gotta get off of your plate on to somebody else who should be doing that? And that's gonna free up some thinking time. Then what really is important for you to spend those cycles on?
And so again, it comes back to how, you know Vistage has their tagline is, better leaders, better decisions, better results. And as you watch this process go on with these CEOs, it is absolutely true. I couldn't think of a better tagline than that, and it is about making better decisions.
But forcing those decisions. They're not just your decisions, it's forcing those decisions down through the organization, being confident that people are gonna make those decisions, giving them the authority to do that, and then, seeing that manifest itself in positive results. So yeah, it's about us being better leaders, but it's about allowing others to be good leaders as well and showing 'em how to.
Mike: Yep and in talking about that and getting it down, cascading it down through the organization, Vistage does something very interesting in that we've been talking about CEO peer advisory, but Vistage does something interesting and is that there's a key executive group as well. Talk a little bit about what that means and, and why that's important.
Dwain: Well, So right now I've got two CEO groups and I've got key groups. So I've got CEOs in those two groups that filter down that typically take and put their, most senior executives a senior executive in that group, in the key group as well. And so what's interesting about that is that gives them these COOs, CFOs, senior executives.
An opportunity to have the same experience, to get out of the day-to-day, get out of the weeds of the business, and spend a day, a month and talk about to work on the business instead of in the business. Think about things a little bit more strategically. And
it also gives me an opportunity to take and reality check what I hear from the CEOs, not that they would ever embellish.
But again, everything that happens there is happening from their perspective, but it's interesting to hear from their senior executives, maybe some areas that they need to improve or some issues in the company that maybe need a different perspective.
And so having all these senior executives working together in their own group is hugely impactful. And my key group was full because I had these CEOs realize how important it is, and so they can't wait to get some of their senior executives in this.
Mike: Yeah, and it's a different issue, but it's still, CEOs, as you said at the top of the show, CEOs, it's a lonely job. People complain up to you can't complain down. That doesn't work very well. So it's a lonely job. It's great to be around, other CEOs for all the reasons we've talked about as a COO or a CFO or that next level.
I think it may be less lonely because yeah you could, you can complain up and you can complain sideways, so it's less lonely. But I also think there's less of a chance for CEOs to learn from, build relationships with other CFOs, COOs, and other COOs. That's a rare thing, and it is super, super powerful.
Because very often someone was elevated to that CFO or CO position and unless they can open their eyes to what's going on in other organizations, they may not really have a sense of how to do that job and what the focus of that job ought to be. Anything over and above what the CEO's telling them to do.
So getting that exposure is incredibly beneficial.
Dwain: And there's two pieces of that I think that you just hit on, and one is, look, especially when you start talking about the C-suite. You put C in front of anybody's title, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief something that C automatically means you need to be looking three to five years out, at least three years in terms of what does the organization need to look like.
And so we spent a lot of time talking about that. In with your CFO or CHRO or COO, what does that look like? If you have to think out three years, what needs to change from what it is today? But the other piece of that is that you've got CFOs sitting at the table, COOs again from different companies, different disciplines within the organization represented.
Now you can start talking about how do we take and, and we, and we spent actually spent a lot of time on this. How do we take and make not only our piece of the organization more effective, but how do we take and work more effectively with other parts of the organization? How do we take the personalities out of it and make that more effective?
And then introduce the personalities back onto into it and then try to figure out how to work that out. And so it's breaking down those silos. How do the various parts of the organization work together more effectively?
Mike: Yeah and by breaking down the silos and by helping the CFOs and COOs and VPs helping them think more strategically, you're helping the CEO be able to step back and spend more time working on the business than in the business and think more strategically. So it's beautiful. And I will say part of the power of it is the Vistage groups.
At least that I've been exposed to and I've done between CEO groups and key executive groups over the last year and a half or so. It's probably 13 or 14 of them, and I've got, thankfully more scheduled, but the power of it is not just that there's a bunch of CEOs in the room or key executives in the room.
They're there because they wanna be there. They're there because they believe it's worth their investment of time. They're there because they wanna grow themselves and grow their business. So you're not just there with a bunch of other leaders. That's great, but you're there with a bunch of other leaders.
That are really trying to grow their businesses and themselves. So it just becomes a beautiful environment for growth and sharing and challenging each other.
Dwain: What I think is interesting in any Vistage chair will tell you this is that there's a whole different energy with the key group that there is with the CEO group. You know, We as CEOs we'll tend to show up and you know, we're kind of stoic and just have that CEO persona on our face.
Key groups are to totally different. They show up as sponges, they're so happy to be there, they just wanna absorb the information and to work together. it's a whole different level of energy. And I truly enjoy them.
I love my CEO groups. They're fun, but the key groups have an extra special place in my heart.
Mike: How would you recommend for someone listening to this who is saying, I'm not part of one of these groups but man, that sounds good. Vistage or otherwise, I've gotta find a group to be a part of. What should folks be thinking about when looking at different groups? How do, is it about, find a group that's got a great chair?
Is it about you gotta go visit, make sure you're, you could be best friends with everybody around the table. What should people be thinking about as they evaluate this?
Dwain: And to your point, I would absolutely. Whether it's Vistage or some other kind of peer group, and I get there's others out there, tend to be more regional and Vistage is nationwide. But what I would tell you is you don't wanna be best friends with the other people around that table.
You want everybody to feel comfortable enough to challenge you to have those important and sometimes difficult conversations in the spirit of respect, obviously. But maybe you want people who are gonna take and push you to be better every month, year after year.
For just as a side note, average tenure for a Vistage member is seven years. What's important about that is think about, that's monthly meetings, coaching meetings every month for seven years. That's the average, and so there's a lot going on there to turn, to take and create value.
The chair is a facilitator. Okay? You wanna have a chair that's experienced, but in the end, you want to find a group of very diverse individuals, different industries, and that are willing to take and push you. That's what you're looking for.
Mike: And is that within the Vistage world specifically? cause obviously there are a lot of other groups and people could decide to just create something themselves, which is something I've done. But within the Vistage world, do people have the ability to visit multiple groups before they make a choice? How does that work?
Dwain: Typically I'll reach out as I'm trying to fill a group. And if I perceive that for whatever reason, maybe scheduling doesn't work out or, I don't feel like that dynamics that's, that's part of one of the things that I do as a chair, because I know some of the other groups, for example, here in DFW and I know some of the other chairs and how they think about things and even some of their members.
And so one of the things that's important to me as a chair is I don't wanna revolving door in the group. And so I'm really careful about who I invite to be part of our groups. So I'm gonna take and have, several good conversations with a prospective member, somebody who's interested in being in part of a group and making sure that it's a good fit.
And if it's not, I'll try to help them find another group that is a good fit. Cause it's to everybody's advantage. Especially my groups, I wanna make sure that everybody feels like they're gonna get good value and that just, just kind of a right combination of personalities.
Mike: Again, it's important. In fact, I just. timing is interesting. I had a conversation within my CEO group this morning about a potential new member and the perspective we took, and I'm interested if Dwain you take the same perspective, is there were some people around the table who knew this person and had good things to say and we've got about 12 people around the table.
But there were two people who were very concerned. For whatever reasons they were concerned that this was the right fit, that this person was wanted in our group for the right reasons. And the perspective I took and the perspective the group took, and we've been, this group has been around for about 10 years now.
But, we've been around for a while, which is for Vistage, that's typical for groups that come together informally. It's not typical. They stick around that long. And our perspective was, if we bring on the wrong member, that can be toxic to the group.
And asking someone to leave is not easy.
The impact that has on the group is important. So we said we decided, even though there were three or four people that said, oh, this person might be great, there were two people who were really concerned. We decided against inviting this person to join us. The perspective was we would rather be conservative and not have someone in that could be toxic, knowing that by us being conservative, there are times we may miss out on someone who could have been great for the group.
We're willing to miss out on that person because we don't wanna take the chance on having the wrong person. That's how important the chemistry of the group is. That's how important having the right folks in the group. Is that a similar perspective that you take?
Dwain: Absolutely. And, and the other piece of this is
I don't know that I could count the number of people that I've had conversations with, CEOs that I've had conversations with that, cause I knew the dynamics of my group and I knew their needs and their personalities and just that it wasn't going to be a good fit for whatever reason. It wasn't gonna be a good fit.
And so there's been a number of opportunities that I had someone come in and I've said, no, this is, for whatever reason, it's just not gonna work. And on a couple of occasions I found other groups here in DFW to put them in. And
and again, it's not about good or bad people, it's just you wanna have the optimum.
And that's part of my job, it's part of my training through Vistage, is to try to figure out how do we take and create the most effective working group that, and that's the key here. We're not a networking group, we are a working group. How do we create that most effective working group? And it's a skill that you develop over time that you know who's going to be a good fit and who's not.
And it's always better to take and say, you know what? For whatever reason, this isn't gonna work, as opposed to just letting it happen. And then you're gonna have to have even a more difficult conversation later.
Mike: Absolutely. And if I'd say, if you are interested in finding a group, and I'm gonna ask you Dwain in a minute about how people could find out more about Vistage and those groups and what people should do if they're interested. But if you're looking for a group, Vistage or otherwise my coaching is it is critical to find a group of people who are gonna challenge you.
Dwain: Yes.
Mike: They're gonna challenge your way of thinking, and I've been parts of these informal groups where it starts out that way, but then in a group of eight or 10, two of us grow a lot quicker than the other eight, and then all of a sudden we're adding a lot of value, but we're not getting value back.
And part of the value of the Vistage is you've got Dwain, somebody like you that can manage that moving forward and make sure everybody's getting value, but just you've gotta find that room where you are gonna be challenged and that you feel comfortable challenging others where you feel like you could, that you're gonna get, but you're also gonna give.
So Dwain, if people wanna find out more about Vistage and if they are in the DFW area and they wanna find out more about your group in particular where do people go?
What should people do if they want to find out more and check it out?
Dwain: Best place to go is vistage.com. And it has a portal there that you can take and ask for more information. And Vistage has a really good team .I've worked with 'em, and they'll call you up. They'll have a conversation with you. Again, it's about fit and value, both for you and for the group.
Okay. One of the things that's important to me as a chair and to Vistage as well, is that you get you get an ROI from the time and the money because it's gonna cost you time to be in the group. And we're real clear with our with our prospective members, look, we want you showing up at the meetings.
We want you to be there fully present, and because we've got important work to do. And it's gonna cost you to be there. There's a membership fee and wanna make sure that for the time you spend at the group, you're getting an ROI, a return on that investment. And so about every six months, I'll have the conversation with my group members.
Let's talk about what's gotten accomplished. How has this group and Vistage made a difference to your company? Just to make sure, we wanna make sure we're on the right path here. And so, yes, first thing I would do is I'd reach out to Vistage. If you're in DFW, I would certainly love for you to give me a call.
Send me an email, we'll chat but regardless if it's Vistage or some other group that's regional or whatever, if you're a senior leader, you need to be in some kind of a peer group. No matter who what, no matter whose name is on it, but be around a group, to your point, who's going to challenge you, who's going to inspire you, who's going to push you to that, whatever that next level is.
You want some people behind you, and it makes all the difference in the world.
Mike: Absolutely.
And if you are thinking, I don't have enough time.
I will tell you that's exactly why you need to do it, well, if you don't have enough time to be spending time with people that are gonna challenge you, working on your business, thinking about if you don't have the time for that, there's something wrong that you need to fix that, that these folks could help you with.
Dwain: And what I tell people is I hear that one, it isn't the fee that keeps people from joining a group, it's that, oh my gosh, how am I gonna take a day out of the month? I go okay to, yeah. If you can't take a day out of the month to think more strategically about the business, you have some issues.
But try this on for size. Let's say that over the next six months, if you made an investment of that time with that group each month, and what if in six months you found that not only did you get that day back, but you got that day plus. Because now you are in fact being that you are making better decisions.
You are getting better results. You are pushing those things off of your desk onto the desk where it should be. What if that actually brought you that time plus? And that's what we see. You ask any Vistage member, that's what they see is that the investment of time that they made, they've gotten back plus.
Mike: And the average seven year tenure, I think you said that's proof right there. I don't know a lot of CEOs that stick with seven years of anything like that. So, as Dwain said, if you are a senior leader, CEO. CFO SVP. If you're a senior leader and you're not doing something like this, you need to prioritize it.
You need to find the right group, whether it's Vistage or another group, or you got a bunch of folks and you create a group. The value is incredible. Dwain, I appreciate you, helping get this word out about peer advisory groups, mastermind groups, whatever you want to call it.
This is great and Dwain, thanks so much for being on the show.
Dwain: Mike, I love it. I appreciate you having me.
Mike: Take care, everybody.
Dwain: All right. Thank you.