You've joined a forum. Over the next year, this small group of people will become one of the most important rooms in your life. Not because the conversations are always comfortable -- they won't be -- but because this is one of the few places where you can say what's actually happening and be met with honesty instead of advice.
This guide covers what forum is, how meetings work, and what to expect as you get started. Read it before your first meeting. Come back to it when you have questions. And know that every person in your group read something like this and felt the same mix of curiosity and uncertainty you're probably feeling now.
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What forum is
A forum is a confidential peer advisory group of eight to twelve people who meet monthly to share what's really going on in their lives -- business, personal, family, all of it. The meetings are structured, the commitment is serious, and the relationships that develop tend to be unlike anything else in a member's professional or personal world.
Forum is not a networking group. You won't be exchanging business cards or pitching each other. It's not therapy -- there's no clinician, no diagnosis, no treatment plan. It's not a mastermind where people brainstorm solutions to each other's problems. And it's not a social club, though genuine friendships will form.
What forum is: a room where people practice being honest about the parts of their lives that don't have easy answers. The business decision that keeps you up at night. The relationship you don't know how to fix. The question about what you actually want from the next decade. The members come from different industries and different chapters of life, but they share something: a willingness to go past the surface. Forum creates the conditions for those conversations to happen -- through structure, confidentiality, and a group of peers who are doing the same thing.
Where this comes from
The forum model comes from YPO -- the Young Presidents' Organization -- which has run confidential peer advisory groups for CEOs for nearly fifty years. The methodology -- the meeting structure, the presentation process, the experience sharing protocol, the language discipline, the roles -- was developed and refined across thousands of YPO forums worldwide. It works because it has been tested by tens of thousands of leaders across decades, not because someone designed it in a classroom.
Bob Halperin, the founder of HBS Alumni Forums, brought the forum experience to Harvard Business School alumni clubs after serving as Chief Education Officer at YPO. The members of your group are HBS alumni. The practice they're engaging in is YPO's, adapted for this community. It's a methodology with serious roots -- not a meeting format someone invented last year.
Three ideas that make forum work
Every forum operates on a set of principles. Three of them matter most, especially in the beginning.
Confidentiality: nothing, no one, never. Nothing shared in the group leaves the room. Not to your spouse, not to your best friend, not in a vague reference at a dinner party that someone might piece together. The standard is absolute because anything less creates a crack -- and cracks let the internal censor back in. The person deciding whether to share something vulnerable is calculating, in real time, whether it's safe. Absolute confidentiality is what lets that calculation come out in favor of honesty. (Read the full article)
The 5%. Most of your life is perfectly shareable. You can talk about your work at a dinner party, your vacation with a colleague, your kids' school with the other parents. Maybe 95% of what's happening fits comfortably into any conversation. Forum is for the other 5% -- the thing you haven't said out loud, the fear you haven't named, the question that doesn't have a clean answer. You don't have to go there in your first meeting. But knowing that the 5% is where forum does its deepest work helps you understand what the group is building toward. (Read the full article)
Experience sharing, not advice. When someone in the group brings a challenge, the other members don't tell them what to do. They share what they did when they faced something similar. First person, past tense: "When I went through a version of this, I felt..." The difference sounds small. It's enormous. Advice creates a vertical -- one person has the answer, the other doesn't. Experience sharing creates a horizontal -- peers, sitting together, each carrying their own version of the difficulty. The person with the challenge is the person with the solution. The group's job is to share experience and hold the space while clarity arrives. (Read the full article)
What a meeting looks like
Forum meetings run about three hours. The structure is consistent month to month -- the predictability is part of the design. Knowing what comes next lets people focus on what matters: being present.
Opening
The moderator welcomes the group, reminds everyone of the confidentiality commitment, and leads a communication starter -- a brief question that helps people arrive and shift gears from whatever they were doing before. Something like: "What's one thing you're carrying today that you'd like to set down?" One minute per person. The point isn't the answer. The point is the transition from the outside world into the forum space.
~15 minutes
Updates
Each member gives a four-to-five-minute update on what's happening in their life across three areas: business, personal, and family. This is not a status report. It's the moment you decide how much of yourself to bring into the room.
Same facts. Different act.
"Work is busy, kids are great, we went to Napa."
"Work is relentless and I'm not handling it well. The kids are fine but I barely see them. We went to Napa for our anniversary and I spent half of it on my phone."
The second version is what forum is built for.
Come prepared. Some groups use a structured format -- best, worst, what you dread, what you anticipate -- across each life area. Others open with a feeling: which of the four core emotions (mad, sad, scared, glad) is most alive in you right now? Your moderator will let you know the format. Either way, the update is your first act of participation each month. Make it count.
~5 minutes per person
The presentation (deep dive)
One member brings something real to the group -- a challenge, a decision, a situation they're sitting with. This is the centerpiece of the meeting. The presenter speaks uninterrupted for fifteen to twenty minutes: background, current situation, what they've considered, what they're feeling. The group listens.
Before the presentation, the coach (usually the person who presented last month) leads a communication starter that connects the group to the emotional territory of the topic. After the presentation, a brief Q&A -- clarifying questions and questions that open new territory, not advice wearing a question mark. Then three minutes of silence while each member searches their own life for what connects to what they just heard.
Then experience sharing. One at a time, each member speaks -- not about the presenter's situation, but about their own. First person. Past tense. "When I was facing something similar, I felt..." When six or seven people do this in sequence, the presenter doesn't leave with a to-do list. They leave having been heard, often for the first time on that particular subject.
~60-75 minutes total
Closing
The presenter reflects on what the session was like for them. Then each member offers a one-word close -- a single word that captures what's in the room. Start with the presenter. The word should be about what's inside you, not masked advice for someone else. Then the meeting ends.
~10 minutes
For a deeper look at each part of the meeting, the resources page has full articles on updates, the deep dive, and conflict and repair.
Who does what
A forum meeting has eight distinct roles, and most of them rotate. This isn't bureaucracy -- it's how the group distributes ownership so that forum belongs to everyone, not just the moderator.
The moderator holds the structure: prepares the agenda, guides transitions, reads the room, decides when to let a conversation run and when to redirect. They lead by example. If they want the group to go deeper, they go deeper first. Moderators typically serve one-year terms and are elected by the group.
The presenter is the member who brings a challenge for experience sharing. Presenting requires pre-work -- typically a conversation with the coach beforehand to clarify purpose, boundaries, and the core feeling underneath the topic.
The coach meets with the presenter before the meeting to help them prepare, then leads the communication starter during the session. Usually the person who presented at the previous meeting.
The timer keeps the meeting on track. The judgment call comes when someone is in the middle of something real and the time is up. The timer signals. The moderator decides.
The language observer monitors for advice-giving. When someone slips into "you should" or "have you considered," a gentle notice. This role is especially important in year one.
The scribe takes notes during experience sharing and gives them to the presenter afterward -- a gift, because the presenter is often too immersed to remember the specifics.
Some groups also designate a host (responsible for the meeting space and refreshments) and a social coordinator (who plans between-meeting gatherings or the annual retreat). Your group can add roles as it evolves.
And then there's the member -- the role everyone holds at all times. Follow the constitution, maintain confidentiality, attend consistently, prepare thoughtfully, and take responsibility for the quality of your own forum experience. If something isn't working, raise it. If you're holding back, lean in. Forum is not a service. Everyone is simultaneously giving and receiving. (Read the full article on roles)
The constitution
Within your first few meetings, your group will write a constitution -- a shared agreement about what you value, how you want to operate, and what members can expect from each other. It covers purpose, confidentiality, commitment (attendance, punctuality, pre-work), operating principles (the language protocol, how conflicts are handled), and governance (who serves in what role and for how long).
This sounds formal. It's actually one of the most clarifying things your group will do, and most groups find it energizing. The moderator will walk you through it over the course of a meeting or two. You'll discover where you agree easily, and -- more usefully -- where you don't. Someone will feel strongly about attendance expectations. Someone else will want to talk about what happens when a member isn't pulling their weight. Those conversations are the point. They surface the group's values before a crisis forces you to find them.
A finished constitution gives you a shared reference point when the hard conversations come -- and they will. "We agreed to 100% attendance" is a different conversation from "I feel like you're not committed." The document transforms hopes into promises, and promises hold better than hopes.
Your moderator will guide the drafting process. Sample constitutions from other forums are available on the constitution article page if you want to see what other groups have written. (Sample constitutions)
What to expect in year one
The first meeting will feel a little awkward. You're sitting in a room with people you don't know well, being asked to share things you wouldn't normally share. The structure helps -- it gives you something to follow when you're not sure what to do. But the first couple of meetings are largely about building the container. You're learning names, figuring out the rhythm, watching how others show up.
By the third or fourth meeting, something starts to shift. The group finds its voice. Someone goes deeper than expected in an update, and the room changes. A presentation touches something real, and the experience sharing feels different from anything you've done in a professional context. You start to notice who in the group sees things you miss, who asks the question that unlocks something, who carries a kind of quiet that makes the room feel safe.
Not every meeting will be a breakthrough. Some months are maintenance -- solid updates, a good presentation, steady connection. That's fine. The depth comes in waves, and the maintenance meetings are what makes the waves possible. You're building trust, and trust is built through small, consistent acts of showing up prepared and being honest about where you are.
A few things that help in the early months: listen more than you speak, especially during experience sharing. When it's your turn, speak from your own experience rather than reaching for the smart observation. Come prepared for your updates -- the five minutes of pre-work you do before the meeting are worth more than any amount of improvisation. And be patient with the format. The language protocol, the timing, the roles -- it may feel stiff at first. It loosens as the group matures, and by then you'll understand why the structure exists.
How to prepare
Before your first meeting: Read this guide. Familiarize yourself with the confidentiality and experience sharing principles. Think about what's actually happening in your life right now across business, personal, and family. Not the polished version. The real one.
Before every meeting: Prepare your update. Five minutes isn't long. Decide in advance what you want to share -- and notice what you're tempted to leave out. That's often the thing worth saying. Bring something to write with for the experience sharing round.
When it's your turn to present: Your moderator will help you prepare. The core of it is this: name the situation, name the feeling underneath it, and tell the group what kind of engagement you need. "I'd like the group's experience with making a decision that will disappoint someone I love" is a strong purpose statement. "I want to talk about my business" is too vague to be useful. The more specific you are about what you're carrying and what you need, the more the group can give you.
Practical matters
Your group meets once a month for two and a half to four hours, depending on the format and whether you're meeting in person or virtually. The meeting schedule is set in advance, usually for the full year. Attendance is not optional in the way that most calendar items are optional. When you miss, the group feels it -- not as an inconvenience but as a gap. The calculation every other member makes about how deep to go is partly based on who's in the room. Your presence matters more than you think it does, especially in year one when the group is still forming.
If your forum meets virtually, the structure is the same. A few things change: you'll want a private space with the door closed, camera on, and distractions genuinely off. The screen creates a slight barrier to reading the room; the structure compensates for it. Virtual meetings tend to run a bit shorter -- typically two and a half to three hours -- which means tighter time discipline on updates and transitions. For a deeper look at how to get the most from a virtual forum, there's a full article on virtual forum best practices.
Between meetings, some groups maintain a text thread or email chain for logistics. The content from meetings stays in the room -- no substantive follow-ups about what someone shared, no side conversations about another member's presentation. If you want to check in with someone about something they shared, do it one-on-one, and let them lead the conversation.
If you have questions, concerns, or something feels off, talk to your moderator. That's what they're there for.
One more thing. The people who get the most from forum are the ones who decide early that they're going to invest fully -- prepared updates, real presentations, honest experience sharing, consistent attendance. Not perfect attendance, not forced vulnerability, not performing depth you don't feel. Just the decision to take this seriously and to trust that the structure will hold what you bring to it.
Not everyone stays, and that's fine. Some people try it and decide the format isn't for them. The only thing we'd ask is that you give it enough time to experience what the group is building. Most people need three or four meetings before they can feel what forum actually is. The early meetings build the container. The depth comes later -- and it comes because the group kept showing up.
The room is built. The people are in it. What happens next unfolds over months, not in one meeting.
Welcome to forum.