Having and being a part of a learning community or mastermind group can be a real power house to your trading. A community is positive and powerful in many ways. It fosters a common sense of direction, objectives and aims; and, it can be very helpful in supporting personal responsibility and accountability.   Community can also assist its members in forging a greater commitment to trade planning and following through with rules due to the team spirit and emotional bonding that takes place. One way that this can happen is the personal connections that are encouraged because they evoke a richer, more involved sense of “selves.” The ideas of “change and exchange” and “shared by all” are powerful precursors to personal and collective learning and development that are so important and necessary to the evolution of peak performance trading.

There are several core processes that can support a learning community or mastermind group; i.e., Capability, Commitment, Contribution, Continuity, and Collaboration.

Capability: A focus on members’ skills so that those strong in one area can complement those who aren’t and vice versa. The group also must encourage learning and improvement among its members as a “collective” undertaking. Everyone’s improvement is everybody’s business. They must care about one another and care about being the best that they can be. They must have or develop the capacity for dialogue; i.e., open and honest feedback and sharing of ideas.

Commitment: Commitment to the team builds when people are an active part of the experience of creating something they value together. Looking at common problems through the prism of positive feedback and support will not only empower the group it will also act as an emotional camaraderie to help bond the group further.

Contribution: It is imperative that all members be willing to contribute; i.e., time, effort, leadership, skills, intellectual and emotional honesty, and enthusiasm.

Continuity: Learning communities can’t survive without some measure of continuity. Memorializing through documentation and stories can help with this. In other words, the masterminds institutional memory must be both written and carried person-to-person. Mastermind is important business and as new members come into the fold they need to be helped to understand their responsibilities, and the practices of the learning community. In this way both continuity and sustainability can be addressed. If one person (perhaps a leader) moves on the others retain the history, vision, and values of the community. When a new leader emerges the community doesn’t have to start over.

Collaboration: Developing reliable interdependence is the essence of effective collaboration. “All for one and one for all” may sound storybook but this is the kind of attitude that will foster collaboration that is meaningful, purposeful, relevant and substantive. Effective collaboration means that there is a sense of interpersonal reliability…you can count on me and I can count on you. It is achieved through common goals, genuine relationship, a shared vision and a belief in the common cause that formed the initial impetus for the community’s coming together.

Across the planet some of the most stunning achievements in all manner of endeavors have had at their core a mastermind group, a learning community. Team efforts work across the board, not just in sports. Trading is a 100% mental game and if you have a caring, strong, effective and committed support community behind you and you behind them, then you become more caring, strong, effective and committed. It’s about doing what it takes to develop your A-Game and then bringing that A-Game to your platform and keeping it there during all of your trading session. This is a way to do just that.