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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 847: Has BNi unintentionally created a culture where some members carry the burden of responsibility for others?
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We are back answering your submitted questions. This week we answer: Has BNi unintentionally created a culture where some members carry the burden of responsibility for others?
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Sam welcome back to B and I and the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again today. We are back with your social show submissions. Wow. Topics submitted@bni power of1.com continue to appreciate everybody continues to do this. It's been awesome that we've been able to do so many over the years now to really help make this show or this podcast yours and as helpful as it can be, hopefully for you. Today we are hearing from Carly out in Saskatchewan, Canada. Seems like we're getting some Canadian questions recently, which is awesome. And man, the names of these Canadian places are sweet. I love them. It's a really timely question. So I have moved this up a little bit from other ones. So if you've submitted them, we definitely are going to get to them. Just because we are in leadership training season across most areas we I know our first one is this week, so I know that's probably the case. August, September, very busy time for a lot of regions globally to be training new leadership teams. We start ours really early compared to many because we want to give time for communication. I'm kind of speaking to my members right now, but one of the downfalls for most for a lot of leadership teams is a lack of communication of the outgoing with the incoming. It's kind of just like a hard break and we start and then the incoming's like, oh, we're going to do all these things different and it could be very disruptive to the chapter and it's not very effective in achieving any type of goals or strategies for the chapter. So number one, if you're either on an outgoing leadership team or an incoming leadership team, or even if you're staying on but changing position, whatever, use this time to really be communicating and working together for a smooth transition and to be setting up your chapter for success this fall because we are quickly entering the second best growth opportunity of the year. So in the US we have Labor Day. That's kind of the benchmark I use, which is, you know, the first Monday of September from that point to Thanksgiving really is the second best market opportunity of the year for your chapter to see some pretty dynamic growth. It the other time, the best time is Spring. That's why we do member extravaganza during that time. This is the second time. So and we'll talk more about that as we get these couple of weeks. But in order to capture that, it takes real good communication and work between the teams now so that the new leadership team isn't trying to figure things out in October and by the time they do, it's Christmas and we miss that window. So anyways, we're in the midst of it. I think a lot of the topics over these, these couple times over these next couple months will be leadership based. There's been a lot of questions being submitted about leadership based stuff because of that. Today's is a long question, so bear with me. But I think it's kind of an important one as I read through it. So Carly asks Here's my core question. Has BNI unintentionally created a culture where some members carry the burden of responsibilities for others? I'll elaborate. I've been a BNI member for three years, have served multiple times in executive leadership and coordinator roles. Lately, I've found myself questioning some of the systems and policies that seem to shift disproportionate amount of responsibility onto certain members, even though we all pay the same membership fee in our theory peers, independent business owners, for example Renewal interviews why is it the role of the VP or membership committee to evaluate a member's participation, go over their numbers, and give feedback? Shouldn't we as business professionals be reflecting on our own activity in determining whether the membership is worth it for us? What qualifies a committee member to analyze someone else's business engagement better than they can themselves? And if the group wants to get rid of a member, it should be brought up immediately and not wait until renewal time. So I'm going to there's multiple questions here, or examples. I'm going to do each one. Okay, so let's start there. Is there a disproportionate amount of where's that question exactly? All right. Has B and I unintentionally created a culture where some members carry the burden of responsibility for others? No. This kind of a convoluted way of looking at things. The responsibility for your results in your chapter is almost entirely, I would say almost entirely, if not entirely, on you as the business owner. It is your responsibility to put in the activity that will drive the results you desire. It is your responsibility to invest in time, learning and implementing skill sets to become the best networker you can be, to become more efficient, to become more effective in your networking efforts so that you're producing better results. Is not any responsibility of another member to do that. So no member is carrying any kind of burden of responsibility for you. You. You are responsible for your own results. Now. You are a part of a team though. So based on your activity, based on your production, you are effecting the results of others. No matter what results you are seeing yourself, you could be negatively affecting the results of others. This is why we have the power of one report and all those kind of things. We talked a lot in detail but just to give you an example, there are a lot of members over the years who pass what seems like a high number of referrals and a significant amount of thank you for closed business but do so only with one or two people in their chapter of 25 because it's the, you know, their direct contacts your members and don't help anybody else in the chapter because of that. Those members sometimes get a self inflated, you know, view of themselves of oh, I'm the number one referral pastor in the chapter. I'm the number one thank you for closed business person in the chapter. But they're only really helping one or two other people. They're not actually the most valuable member for the team across the board. And if you left it up just to the member themselves to reflect on their own results and value of bni, that person could very well be like yeah, B and I is great for them. I'm making a ton of money or I'm passing a ton of money. But they're really not effective for the team. And you need a committee of peers and team members who can evaluate that members participation to the team and be able to review and give feedback on hey, we noticed, yeah, you're passing a lot of thank you for closed business but it's only going to one or two people. We need you to be more reengaged with the other members to see how you can help more members across the chapter because you seem to be only relying on your easy referrals you find for your direct contacts for your person and decide based on that conversation whether that person's willing to do that or not. So the responsibility is still on the member to do it. But as a team you need people who are looking and reviewing the participation level for the team during that renewal time. Now to your point, if, if you want to get rid of somebody, shouldn't it be done immediately? Depends on the circumstance that that could very well be true. I, I think there's a lot of chapters who, you know, hurt themselves by waiting for renewal time to take it to, to take action. But that's a whole nother subject and stuff. But yeah, no, I, I disagree with that part. I and while your peers and while you're paying the same membership, this is why we change leadership teams every year. It shouldn't be the there were the role shouldn't be carried by the same person over and over so that they are carrying this kind of like extra investment because others aren't willing to. So you need to change them each year. But I think you're thinking of it a little bit wrong, right? It's not the membership committee's job to determine the value of the membership to you as a fellow, as a member. It's not their job to be carrying the responsibility for what you should be doing. Yes, every member should be reflecting on themselves and what are they doing and how are they producing and what value are they getting from it. But there are many times where those two don't equate. There are also a lot of times where people will keep a seat solely to keep their competition out. And so if you just left up, like, hey, you decide whether you're in or out, we don't care, you will hurt, the chapter will hurt and suffer from that. And because that, that means you as a fellow member are hurting and suffering because of that. And so there needs to be this leadership in place that is overlooking what's best for the chapter, not each individual member specifically. You also don't want that to be somebody outside of the chapter. So I've heard. You know, and maybe you're getting to this, but there's others who are like, shouldn't be. And I do this for us. Not really, because again, we aren't in the day to day, week to week interactions that you're having as members at your BNI meeting. So if we would be kind of solely reliant on data. And that data in a POMS report doesn't tell you everything because it just is a accumulation. Right? It'll just say they passed 50 referrals. I don't know if that 50 referrals went to 50 different people or one person, etc. And we don't have the same level of investment in the relationship that your fellow members will have. So peer to peer leadership is important for that. All right, number two, absences and accountability. Why would, why must someone be tasked with reminding another member, hey, you have two absences. This, this seems obvious. If someone's missing meetings, they're missing value. Do we really need to assign people to point out the basics? You actually don't. BNI Connect does this for you. BNI Connect sends automated emails that let everybody know where they are every time they have an absence, where they are and when absences roll off. So as we know, it's, you're allowed three absences in a rolling six Month, period, because it's rolling, meaning every day, you know, it's a different six months by a day. The system will email members and say, hey, you're at your first absence, you're at your second. Hey, you just went from your second to your dad back down to one. So you don't need to do that. But you also are sharing the POMS report, so hopefully they're seeing that. Number three Tech literacy and mentoring. The amount of time spent helping people figure out how to access B and I University or download the app is baffling. These are fundamental tools in 2025. Shouldn't technical competence be a given or for any business owner? Why are we assigning mentors to handhold people through processes that should be responsible. They should be responsible for figuring out. As a manager of employees in my own business, I absolutely understand that sometimes people need to be taken aside and given guidance when something isn't working. But here's the key difference. I'm paid to manage employees and those individuals are employees, not business owners. And B and I, no one is paid to manage anyone else. Leadership roles don't come with fee reductions or compensation. Yet the system seems to put the burden of engagement accountability on those leader on those in leadership, as if they're responsible for managing the membership when we're all supposed to be operating under the same contract or equal foot. Okay, I don't know what's going on in your chapter and I bet others feel the same way. There's something else happening here just based on this term. Mentoring and managing are two very different things. Very different things. It's not the mentor's responsibility again to manage that you use the app and manage that you're entering your information and hold you accountable when you're not. But mentoring is a key element in the relationship building process and the community building process that is essential for the success you're going to see from any networking group, specifically a BNI chapter, and is essential in the overall retention of members, which you need in order to be to be to reach the level of success you really desire. Member retention is the key to your success. How long can you be networking with that person on an ongoing basis is the key to your success because it deepens the understanding, deepens the relationship, deepens the trust, gives you the additional time to train them on how to find and get those referrals. It deepens the knowledge base and that should be the focus of every leadership team. How do we increase member retention? And there's a lot of different levers to. That's a whole nother topic. But one of those levers that's vitally important is mentorship. You're taking one example of saying like, I don't know who pissed you off or frustrated you because they couldn't figure out the app. But that is not common. Okay. Most people are going to figure out the application. It's the first time they're ever seeing it. So the first time you show it to them and you explain it to them. A little bit of a learning curve, sure. But it's pretty intuitive now and it's getting better and better by the day. Mentoring is about explaining where the app is. How do you know this is the app we use? Here's how you enter certain things and yes, it's the responsibility of that member to use it. You're not managing them day to day to see if they are. You're not calling them into your office to discuss why or why they are not. You're just simply showing them how to and helping if they have any questions on how to. That's a good strategy as a community to ensure that. You got to remember you've been in BNI, you said for three years, I think something like that. Three years. Think about a highway. You're driving at 80 miles an hour on that highway right now. Your new member is just entering the on ramp. There is a time element and process to get them up to speed so that they're moving in the same direction in the same cadence you are as a three year member and some of your members are five year members of ten year members. That on ramp, just like on a highway, needs to be long enough that they can get up to speed safely. That's mentoring. You cut that part out. That on ramp is super short and you're just expecting them to get to 80 mile merge into traffic immediately. And so I don't know, I'm getting a little sense, Carly, that this might be just more of an internal frustration you're having or somebody did something then that frustrated you. Because I just don't agree with almost everything you're saying here. And so it seems like maybe there's a culture where people are relying on the leadership team too much. And that definitely happens in chapters. Maybe they're just putting too much burden on the same people. That can definitely happen in a chapter. You said you filed multiple times in three years. It seems like maybe you're burnt out from a little bit this. You need to take a break from leadership. But peer to peer leadership is important because Again, those are the ones who are in a day to day building the relationships as well, seeing who's being productive for the team, who's engaging, who's not. You need to have. One of our core values is accountability. You need to have a level of accountability to the other members of your chapter. So there's no burden of responsibility on any member. Whether you decide to do what you need to do to produce the results you need to produce for yourself, that's your responsibility. But when you join a BNI chapter, you have a responsibility to the other members to do those things as well. If you're not showing up to the meeting, not are you not hurting yourself, you're hurting me. You're not there to listen to my weekly presentation, right? So when you're just saying like, oh, it's on the burden, they don't show up, they're missing value. No, we're missing value. When you don't show up and somebody needs to be able to say, hey knucklehead, if you don't show up anymore, you're out. You can't put it on the member because they, maybe they don't care. Maybe like, yeah, whatever I joined, you know, that's locks out my competition. I go about twice a month because that's what I want to do that. Yeah, you're right. That means they're not going to get as much value. But maybe their point of value is different than how you're looking at the point of value. The more important thing is they're absolutely not valuable to the other members in the chapter who now don't have somebody else in that profession because we only have one seat. And you need peer to peer people to be able to have that conversation and make those decisions. Same with when somebody applies. You need a membership committee who's in place to be like, is this person absolutely the best fit for our chapter and what we're trying to do and who we're looking for or not. And when somebody comes in again paying attention, are they helping the entire chapter or are they just helping their one friend and then they're kind of riding on that and they're locking out somebody who could help more people. So it's not a burden of responsibility. It's a, it's a way to give back. Taking on leadership is an opportunity to do a couple things. It's a way, it's an opportunity to give back, to show, to give that giver's gain to invest your time and it shouldn't be a lot of time if the chapter works well together. But to invest your time in giving to the chapter, to help ensure the chapter as a whole is moving in the right direction, has the right culture, right is. Is the right environment for success and all the things that go with that. It's also an opportunity to increase your visibility and credibility by showcasing skill sets and showcasing yourself in these roles that will help build your profitability. They this is why we change them again. We change them every year to give people that opportunity. I think you've got a warp sense of what it's supposed to be. Be based, probably based on your experiences. So there's something else deeper than here. But yeah, man, I, I don't. You know, it says we joined BNI to grow our business through networking, collaboration and accountability to ourselves. No, that part is wrong. You join B and I to grow your business through networking, collaboration and accountability to each other. If it's solely just accountability to ourselves, it won't fully work. But over time, it feels like we've developed a culture where we're constantly nudging, reminding and chasing people to participate. Why? Unfortunately, because you didn't do a good job letting them in. And unfortunately, because that's kind of human nature a little bit. There's always going to be those people. You got it. You got to push them to participate and then push them out. It's coach them up and coach them out. And if you don't have systems in place that can do that, you will be stuck with a group that is highly unaccountable and highly un. And just not productive. Because everybody will just be like, ah, well, listen, I'm responsible for my own thing, you know, and we're all just responsible for our own thing. We don't hold each other accountable to anything else because you should be accountable to yourself. Well, then you're just gonna, you're gonna have a really, really. You're gonna have a bad chapter. You'd have a chapter that doesn't have a strong culture, thus isn't producing results. You want to see the chapters producing the most results. The ones producing millions of dollars a month, They, I guarantee you, are the ones with the highest level of accountability to each other. So I don't think we are unintentionally creating burnout among engaged members. I think the culture of the chapter, my guess is you have a. You have a cultural problem in this chapter that is making you feel that way. Because either the appropriate steps hadn't been taken in the past and it's there and it's Just kind of built on itself. I said multiple, multiple times in this podcast. One of the best things about BNI is one of the biggest challenges about being I or one of the biggest opportunities about BNI is also one of its biggest challenges is that it's a monkey see, monkey do organization and it creates a culture. And that could be a really good thing or a really bad thing. And so my guess is based on your frustrate, your clear frustration is that you guys have more of a cultural issue and that's creating this feeling of burden on leadership. Like, man, we got all these people we got to chase to do these things. They're just not doing it. If the answer is why do we have to chase them, let's just not chase them. Your results are not going to. Your results are going to get worse. They're not going to get better. So, yeah, no, this is a really important question. I really appreciate you sharing it. I really do, because I can tell through it. And I don't think you're alone in some of these feelings, but I fundamentally disagree with what you're asking or the way you're asking it. I think there's a misunderstanding there, probably out of that frustration and the experiences you're having. So leadership at the chapter level is essential to the success of any chapter. It's why it should be taken seriously. It's why we change it each year. It's why we invest so much time in training and support. And I can only speak to my regions. You know, I know there are some regions out there where leadership team training is. Yeah, do this online training and know you, you're good. We don't do that. We do online training. We do live training. We do ongoing training throughout the year because it's that important. But it's, it's not this big obligation. If you look at it as this big obligation, then you will half ass it. You won't want to do certain things. You'll kind of go like, wow, they're on their own. They'll figure it out. It's not my responsibility to teach them how to use the app. It's like, no, it's not your responsibility, but it's, it would be far more effective for you if they were using it. And so thus it'd be far more effective for you if you help them understand how to use it because it makes them, again, more engaged, more productive, more likely to retain, which all lead to results for you. So you have that accountability to yourself too. Like, you join this chapter and you're like, all right, I got this sales team and if you're just like, I don't really care what they do, well then don't care what results they produce for you either. So now I'm getting defensive. So I, I think there's a little bit more going to this. But as you're, you know, hopefully listening to this, don't look at leadership as this big burden. It shouldn't be. It's not meant to be. And in most cases it's not. Does it require more time than not taking a leadership team? Of course. Name the situation. When that's not the case. For many of us and many of you, you're probably on things like boards for non profits and stuff that. Does that require more time and effort of myself to be on that board for that nonprofit? Of course than not doing it. But there's a reason I want to do it and there's value in doing it. Same with stepping up in leadership of your chapter. And if you look at that and you look at the opportunities it provides and you take it seriously, it shouldn't burn you out. It shouldn't be a big burden and it will increase not only your success, but help you increase the success of your other members. So thank you. I appreciate the question. Hopefully this is helpful. Look forward to your feedback. Leave it at app. You know, leave us a review. Leave comments, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, however you might be finding it, I really do appreciate the engagement and we'll talk to you soon. Sam.