Synopsis

Imagine that you got into an airplane and learned that the pilot didn’t complete his training. How comfortable would you be? A BNI chapter’s leadership team is its pilot. If they don’t complete their training, they’re going to crash the chapter.

Some years ago at a leadership team training, the leadership team from a not-very-successful chapter asked the leadership teams from very successful chapter what the real secret to a successful chapter was. The president of one of those chapters held up the BNI training manual and said that the secret to their chapter’s success was doing what it said in the manual. Engage in the system. That’s the secret.

To the complainer’s credit, he took that back to his chapter. They started following the program and turned the chapter around.

BNI’s system has been well thought-out and extensively tested. Use it.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of Episode 464 –

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:

Hey, I am on the road this week. I am actually at the Global Support Headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. We are doing some meetings here this week. As you know, I now live in Austn, Texas and go to headquarters from time to time and do some things in training with staff. I love to meet the new employees who are working for the company.

Priscilla:

Great. So what is this new topic? What is the real secret?

Ivan:

“What’s the real secret?” is a phrase that someone said at a leadership team training that I conducted many years ago. Let me set it up for how we got to that point, where it’s at. I had a chapter- this goes way back. This goes back before I had a lot of gray hair. I was doing leadership team training and managing a number of chapters.

I had a chapter that the leadership team always- you know, whoever they were, they always griped about going to leadership team training. They did not want to go to leadership team training. I had seen this happen and it was a few months before the transition of the leadership team.

I went to the chapter and said, “Remember leadership team, when you pick your leadership team, make sure that that leadership team is committed to going to training. Imagine that you get in a plane and you are flying in that plane when you discover that pilot did not complete their training. How comfortable would you be flying in that plane? Not very comfortable.

“The leadership team, these are your pilots and copilots of your chapter. If your chapter is run by people who aren’t trained about the best practices about being successful in BNI, they are going to crash your chapter. So make sure that your leadership attends the leadership team training. It is mandatory.”

That was the set up. As you might suspect, when they selected the leadership team, they were pretty much told they had to go. They didn’t want to go. It’s a small chapter. They were not very successful. They were a little bit cranky, the chapter was. You know what, I understand because they weren’t very successful. if the members were not getting a lot out of the program, then it is easy to feel that the program doesn’t work.

So the leadership team did go to training and they sat in the back of the room. As I was going through the material, they were a bit argumentative. They didn’t like this idea.