Session 2 Facilitator Guide

WHYZMEN: REWIRE RETIREMENT · FACILITATOR GUIDE

Session 2 — Who Am I When I'm Not What I Do?

Identity Beyond Career

Navigating Transition · Building Brotherhood · Igniting Jubilee

Session at a Glance

The Facilitator’s Anchor Question

“What does a man need to feel, discover, or decide by the time he leaves this room?”

Hold this question over every segment. This morning the answer is: he needs to feel that he is more than his résumé, discover where he is on the map, and decide to name one loss honestly. If a segment doesn’t serve that, shorten it.

Before You Begin

•Confirm the room: no projector — the slides run over an HDMI cable from the PC to the large-screen TV. Test the hookup, load the deck, and arrange chairs so the threes can turn toward each other (and still see the screen) without moving furniture mid-session.

•Workbooks ready: the course is on paper. Each man brings his WhyzMen notebook; hand out the Session 2 Participant Workbook at the door, hole-punched, to file behind Session 1. Men write in it with a pen; the Harvest Charter is the last section of the notebook. Have pens and two spare workbooks. Bring the roster of threes.

•Assessment ready. Remind men to bring their completed Retirement Readiness Assessment, scored. Have a few blank copies and pens on hand for anyone who forgot.

•Have the Moynes video cued in case several men did not watch it.

•Remote men (if any): if someone joins by Teams or Zoom, open the meeting before start time and share the PowerPoint screen. Check that he can hear the room, not just see the slides — and that the men at his table have him on a phone or speaker in the circle.

•If a man misses: there is no recording. Give him the workbook and the Practice of the Week card, and send him the deck file the day after so he can page through it.

•Pre-assign threes if possible. A four is acceptable; a pair is not.

•Draft your own four §1.0 lines and your own strength-domain-experiment pairing before the session. You are the first participant — the men can tell when you have done the work.

•Cards: P · Practice of the Week (weekly “Tried it” tracker on the back) is already in each man’s front-cover pocket from Session 1; bring a few spares. At Slide 28, where the practice is introduced, have the men pull it out, and hand out the Reference tab for each notebook (the Communication & Relationships Toolkit r7, whose page 1 is Where Do I Start?). Know this morning’s practice by heart: Ask the second question.

Facilitation Principles

The room is an encounter, not a lecture. The depth lives in the homework and appendix; your job in the room is to make the men feel and name, not to transmit information. If you find yourself explaining a framework for more than two minutes, stop and ask a question instead.

•Curiosity, not evaluation. When a man shares, respond with a question that opens, never an assessment that closes.

•Listen before fixing. Advice only when invited. The covenant from Basecamp governs every breakout.

•Sharing is always voluntary. “Name your phase silently” means silently. No hands, no roll call.

•Debrief is What Surfaced, not advice. After a breakout, ask what surfaced — not what men should do about it.

•Protect the writing time. The Workbook is built so the thinking lands the morning it happens. If you run long, trim teaching — never the writing.

Run of Show

Times are guides, not gates. Protect the block in threes, the private writing, and the homework walkthrough — these are where Charter raw material actually gets made. If you run long, trim teaching, never reflection.

Re-clocked to 90 minutes (r13). The old run ended after 1:39. Thirteen minutes came from teaching and the threes, never from the §1.0 writing: Set the Stage 4→3, What’s Best and What Needs Work 5→4 each, Title 3→2, Avodah 6→5, Breakout 1 10→8, Two Summits 6→5, Five Losses 5→4, Particular 4→3, Rope Team 15→12. The per-slide minutes in the deck notes are the old ones; follow this table.

Rev 5 of the deck added four slides: 21 (Meaning Lives in the Particular), 22 (Your Knapsack), 27 (This Week’s Reading) and 28 (Practice of the Week). The nine minutes came from teaching, not reflection: Two Summits 10→6, Avodah 8→6, the Path So Far 4→3, the Five Losses 6→5, Looking Ahead 2→1. The Benediction still starts at 1:39.

Segment Notes

Reading the Gauges · Opening Block (Slides 1–10 · 30 min)

•Set the tone first. Low scores aren’t failures — they’re invitations to growth. Say it twice. Some men will be reading their first low number in front of other men and need permission to find that honest. Slide 2 first: four quick prompts — Haylett's losses, the Why, the pathway, and Names & Numbers: "Who from the Basecamp room did you reach this week?" (Session 1's one required relational item). A show of hands and one or two names; it fits inside the four minutes.

•Slide 3 — the Moynes phase poll is silent. Activation, not re-teaching. If many didn’t watch the video, walk the four phases in one sentence each and move on.

•Slides 5–7 — the dashboard moment. Walk the ten gauges quickly. The art is in slides 6 and 7: have men write in the Workbook (“My two strongest” / “My two lowest”) before any sharing. Then invite voluntary names — don’t poll the room.

•Slide 8 — the pairing is the hinge. Three blanks, filled before anyone speaks: one strength (the tool), one low gauge (the domain), one 30-day experiment. Two failure modes this slide exists to prevent: the man who leaves with a repair list and calls it a plan, and the man who leaves feeling good about his peaks and changes nothing. The experiment is a prototype, not a resolution — “Call Bill” beats “rebuild my friendships.”

•Slide 9 — the tree, briefly. Two minutes, not ten: roots (what formed you, strengths among them) feed the fruit (the domains) through tending (the daily work) into the harvest (the Charter). Land one line: “You just did in three blanks what the tree describes in four stages.” A map, not a second teaching.

•Slide 10 — land the bridge. “For most men in this room, Identity & Purpose reads low first. That’s exactly where this morning begins.” Let it sit before the title slide hits.

Welcome · The Path So Far (Slides 11–12 · 3 min)

•Anchor: “In Basecamp we saw two summits. This morning we ask who it is that makes the climb.”

•Name the three threads still live: the covenant, the Why, the second summit.

This Morning’s Arc (Slide 14 · 1 min)

•Two movements, ninety minutes, then we write. Identity first, geography second.

Block 1 · Avodah (Slides 15–16 · 6 min)

•Teach lightly. The one idea: avodah means both work and worship — so the calling never retired, only the job did.

•Make the distinction concrete: secondary identity is what I did (title, role, business card); primary identity is who I am (beloved, called, still becoming).

•Say: “The form of service changes. The calling does not.” Let it sit before moving on.

Breakout 1 + Debrief (Slide 17 · 10 min)

•Question: “Name one part of who you are that has nothing to do with what you did for a living.” In pairs or threes, 5 minutes.

•Debrief 5 minutes: ask what was hard about answering, not what they answered. Many men discover they reach for work first — that discovery is the point.

•Workbook prompt: “What I said — or what I heard in the others.” Make sure men actually write before moving on.

Block 2 · Two Summits, Two Halves (Slides 18–19 · 6 min)

•Braid, don’t list. Two famous men drew the same map: David Brooks’ two mountains and Richard Rohr’s two halves. The first builds; the second reveals.

•The hinge line, from Rohr: the fall between them is not punishment — it is the curriculum. Land it slowly.

•Close with Arthur Brooks: “design, not decline.” Fluid intelligence (raw horsepower) fades from the early 30s; crystallized intelligence (wisdom, pattern recognition) keeps rising. The brain is rewiring for the second curve.

The Five Losses (Slide 20 · 5 min)

•This is our common language — use these five words every time, in every session: Identity, Structure, Relationships, Mastery, Purpose.

•Frame it as honest, not morbid: “Name to mourn; mourn to bridge.”

•Watch for: a man who goes quiet here may have just touched a real loss. Let the silence stand; do not rush to comfort.

•Workbook prompt: “Which loss has hit me hardest — and have I let myself grieve it?” Private write — 2 minutes.

Meaning Lives in the Particular (Slide 21 · 4 min)

•Its job: men need this reframe alongside the Five Losses. Without it they only grieve; with it they see five places to practice meaning now. Open: “You’ve heard that your calling doesn’t retire. But something may be running underneath: I had a significant life back there. Where does meaning come from now? Meaning never left. It was always here.”

•Teach: Burnett and Evans call it the scandal of particularity: scandal means the surprising truth. Beauty, love and purpose are never found in general, only in particulars. Walk the three cards: not beauty in general, this sunset; not love in general, this conversation; not purpose in general, this act. Each is finite and leaves you longing for more. That longing is not evidence that life has failed you. It is the echo of the eternal in the particular.

•Faith: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Present, not achieved. You do not earn it; you get still enough to notice it.

•Land it: read the bottom bar. The Charter is a mirror, not an achievement; the Rule of Life clears the way; the practices train the eye. All of it serves being present to the particular moment, with the person in front of you.

•Bridge: “That is why those five categories are not abstractions. They are five places where you practice this. Not to recover what you lost; to recognize meaning in the form it takes now.” (The slide’s notes place it before the Five Losses and say “the next five categories”; in rev 6 it sits after them, so bridge back to them. Flagged for Dave.)

•Below the waterline: notice the moment (Burnett & Evans) and mark the moment (Chip & Dan Heath, The Power of Moments, 2017). Combine them; do not set them against each other. Most of a life is ordinary Tuesdays, and a few moments are worth marking. Keep the Heaths’ names in your notes, not on the screen. Callbacks later, one line each: S12 “write a day, not domains”; S13 the experiment is one particular piece of the Tuesday; every Practice of the Week is a particular moment with a particular person.

Your Knapsack (Slide 22 · 2 min)

•Point at the left column: what the first half filled the Knapsack (the pack) with: identity as “still working,” proving something to your father, a hobby collection, a second home, golf and church and a board seat. The problem is in red: you can’t carry all of it.

•Then the right column, one line each: Scripture (“Seek first his kingdom” is a compass, not a luxury item); the research (meaningful relationships are the essential warmth of the second half); David Brooks (a second mountain needs different tools than the first).

•Say the work ahead, don’t do it: this cohort will help you audit the weight of your story, ask what is truly valuable, and choose what goes forward. The Harvest Charter captures those choices across the ten domains. This picture returns all year; the whole pack is weighed at Session 13.

Your Rope Team — Work in Threes (Slide 23 · 15 min)

•Form or confirm the threes now. Name the why out loud — this is Bandura: men grow most by watching the man beside them attempt it, not by hearing a facilitator describe it.

•Each three picks the one question with the most pull: phase + evidence; loss + grief; one experiment in 30 days.

•Give a 2-minute warning before time. Workbook prompts at the end: what I heard at my table; what I want them to know before next week.

Looking Ahead (Slide 24 · 1 min)

•Preview without teaching: between the summits lies a valley — the messy middle. Next session we map it. Session 4 brings the marriage onto the trail — Three at the Table. The Story writing begins at Session 5.

Charter Advance — §1.0 My Threshold (Slide 25 · 8 min)

•Four lines, written privately in the Workbook, unread this morning — §1.0’s prompts in the Charter’s own words: what I am setting down; what I am carrying forward; what still deserves to be mourned; what I am asking Christ to carry.

•Protect the silence. This is the warm-up for §1.0 — My Threshold, the Charter’s first section; the homework sends each man to write the four lines into the Charter itself before Session 3 (about 20 minutes). Hold one question underneath all four: who am I becoming? It travels forward; it is not collected.

This Week · Homework Walkthrough (Slide 26 · 3 min)

•Walk the slide out loud — four items, minutes beside each, about 55 minutes this week; the Workbook homework page carries the same list. Most immediate: §1.0 into the Charter itself — four lines, twenty minutes, before Session 3. The man who has written anything into the Charter by Session 3 has crossed from “program I am attending” to “document I am building.” The 30-day experiment from the pairing (Slide 8) is now optional, in the Going Deeper box with Falling Upward Part One, identity moments and the text to the two men; Session 3 does not check it. The Three Markers are not assigned here: Session 3 assigns them (one owner).

•Also assigned: Falling Upward in brief, the WhyzMen book reference (10 min; one sentence that landed); Three at the Table, one question with your wife (20 min; readies Session 4 — The Marriage Retirement Lands In); Practice of the Week (5 min; card P, pulled from the pocket at Slide 28). Bring the workbook and the Charter to Session 3. Out of the pocket today: card P. Handed out today: the Reference tab (the Toolkit). The Going Deeper box and Slide 27 are optional and not counted.

This Week’s Reading (Slide 27 · 1 min)

•Point, don’t teach. Name the required reading and say where it lives (binder or shared folder). Mention Going Deeper once, lightly: optional, never assigned.

•Required: Falling Upward in brief — the WhyzMen book reference on Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward (Session 2 · Recommended Readings, “Falling Upward notes”), about 10 minutes. Bring one sentence that landed.

•Going Deeper, optional: Falling Upward, Part One or the whole book; David Brooks, The Second Mountain; Arthur Brooks, From Strength to Strength; James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life; Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Third Chapter; William Bridges, Transitions; Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, Designing Your Life.

Practice of the Week — One Skill a Week (Slide 28 · 2 min)

•Do: have the men pull out the Practice of the Week card, and hand out the Reference tab (the Toolkit) now.

•Say: “We hope WhyzMen will be known by how we listen, ask and encourage. Skills grow one at a time, with practice and feedback. So each session names one practice. Try it this week. Tick the one ‘Tried it’ box on the back of your card. Bring one moment to the next session.”

•Read the practice: Ask the second question. “Before you tell your own story, ask one follow-up about theirs.” Name its Toolkit skill and section: “It is section 2, Ask, in your Toolkit — the card is the menu, the Toolkit is the kitchen.” Rooted in Alison Wood Brooks’s research at Harvard on follow-up questions.

•One minute, in pairs: “Try it once on the man beside you right now.” One man tells something small from his week; the other asks one follow-up before saying anything about himself; then switch. If the session is out of time: “Name the one person you will try it with this week.”

•Opening check-in from now on: Session 3 opens with “Tell us one moment with this week’s practice.” Every session after that opens the same way, with that session’s practice. Tell the men this morning so they come ready.

•Below the waterline: Huang, Wood Brooks et al. (2017) found people who ask more follow-up questions are better liked. Ericsson: skills grow through deliberate practice plus feedback. Trying it is the practice; the men at your table are the feedback.

Benediction (Slide 29 · 2 min)

•Close with the Buechner benediction and a brief prayer. End on weight, not logistics.

Handling Sensitive Moments

•If a man becomes emotional: let it be. A steady “thank you for trusting us with that” is enough. Do not analyze or fix.

•If a man resists the ‘fall’ framing: welcome the disagreement. The point is not to win him to Rohr, but to give him language for what he is living.

•If the dashboard hits hard: a man may discover his lowest gauge is one he hadn’t admitted to himself. Honor that with silence, not a fix-it conversation. The program is the response.

•If a debrief drifts into advice-giving: gently redirect to curiosity — “what did you hear in that?” rather than “here’s what you should do.”

•If the room runs hot on grief: name it as normal and good, and remind them the losses are a passage, not a destination.

Homework Assigned (Reference)

1.Read — Falling Upward in brief, the WhyzMen book reference (Session 2 · Recommended Readings). One sentence that landed. About 10 minutes.

2.Write §1.0 — My Threshold — into the Harvest Charter itself: the four lines drafted this morning, in the Charter’s own words. About 20 minutes; a half page. This is where §1.0 is written. Session 3 checks it (done / not yet, and a reread of line three); Session 9 revisits it.

3.Three at the Table — one question with your wife: “What are you most looking forward to in this season — and most anxious about?” Listen before fixing; notes after. Readies Session 4. About 20 minutes.

4.Practice of the Week — Ask the second question (From the Toolkit: 2 · Ask). Tried it this week ☐ · bring one moment to Session 3. About 5 minutes. Total: about 55 minutes this week; bring the workbook and the Charter.

5.Optional · Going Deeper, not counted — Falling Upward Part One (the book); the 30-day experiment from the pairing (Slide 8), no longer checked at Session 3; noticing two or three identity moments; a one-sentence text to the two men from your table.

6.Today: card P came out of the pocket, and the Reference tab (the Toolkit) was handed out.

7.Moved — the Three Markers are assigned at Session 3, not here.

References

WhyzMen contextualizes the work of these authors for a population they did not originally write for. We cite openly and direct readers to the sources themselves.

•Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. Jossey-Bass, 2011.

•Brooks, David. The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. Random House, 2019.

•Brooks, Arthur C. From Strength to Strength. Portfolio, 2022.

•Moynes, Riley. “The Four Phases of Retirement.” TEDxSurrey, 2021.

•Haylett, Dan. “What You Will Lose When You Retire.” Humans vs Retirement.

•Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. Harper & Row, 1973.

•Clifton, Donald O. & Tom Rath. StrengthsFinder 2.0. Gallup Press, 2007.

•Bandura, Albert. Social Learning Theory. Prentice-Hall, 1977.

•Burnett, Bill & Dave Evans. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. Knopf, 2016. (The prototype standard behind slide 8.)

•McAdams, Dan P. The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. Guilford, 1993. (Background for the Three Markers exercise.)

•Huang, Karen, et al. “It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, no. 3 (2017). (Behind the Practice of the Week.)

•Ericsson, Anders & Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. (Practice plus feedback.)

•Heath, Chip & Dan Heath. The Power of Moments. Simon & Schuster, 2017. (Mark the moment; below the waterline for Slide 21.)

Facilitator note: deeper voices (James Hollis, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, William Bridges) now appear by title on Slide 27’s Going Deeper list. Name the list once and move on; don’t teach them this morning. They return in Session 3 and in the Reader's Companion. Burnett & Evans now appear on screen twice: the particularity quote on Slide 21 and Designing Your Life on Slide 27. Their prototype standard still shapes the Slide 8 framing without being named.