Triad Stewardship Facilitator Guidelines

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Triad Stewardship

Facilitator guidelines for forming, checking, re-forming and sending the triads

Companion to the participant reading Your Triad: A Formative Community (r1). Read both before Session 8, when the Sunday draft for Session 10 begins.

1 · Your stance: shepherd, not manager

Priya Parker calls it generous authority: someone takes responsibility for a gathering in order to protect it, not to control it. After Session 10 the triads belong to the men. Your job is to watch the edges.

Each facilitator shepherds one or two triads for the year. With nine men and three facilitators, that is one each. Write your assignments on the Triad Roster at the end of this guide.

2 · Where this lives in the program

Triads are introduced in stages. Each stage carries one piece, so no session is overloaded and the men meet each piece when they need it.

3 · Before Session 10: mix the tables

The cheapest insurance against a bad fit is evidence. If every man has sat with every other man before Session 10, he chooses from about sixteen hours of experience, not a hunch from the coffee line.

With nine men in three tables of three, there is a tidy answer. Number the men 1 to 9 (alphabetically is fine). Four seatings put every pair of men at the same table exactly once. Run the four seatings twice across Sessions 2–9, and every pair sits together exactly twice.

•Facilitators rotate too. Move one table to the left each session, so each of you sits with every man.

•Put the seating card on the table before the men arrive. Say once, at Session 2: “We mix the tables on purpose. By Session 10 you will have sat with everyone.”

•Keep a seating log, one line per session: who sat where, and who drew whom out. It becomes your Sunday draft.

•Other cohort sizes. The rule is the same: no pair repeats until everyone has sat with everyone. Ten men: three tables, one of four. Twelve: four tables of three.

4 · Session 10: forming the triads

The S10 deck and guide carry the forming process (Circle Selection, the tables, “stand up and go”, the unplaced get placed). Add three things.

Your Sunday draft

Before Session 10, draft likely triads from your seating log. Weigh four things, in this order:

1.Availability. A man away all winter sits best with two men who will be home and are good on the phone. Never put two snowbirds with one man who stays.

2.Willingness. Who has gone one level deeper at the tables, and who has deflected every question? Mix them; do not cluster the deflectors.

3.Chemistry, not similarity. Durable triads are often different in temperament. Look for warmth and curiosity.

4.The generous men. Place a man nobody named with two who have been generous at the tables.

The men’s own choices come first on the morning. Your draft is for the unplaced and for the swaps at Session 11.

Say the doubts out loud (2 minutes, before the tables)

Name it, and announce the check-in (1 minute, after the triads stand)

The charter additions

Cell 5 gets the focus question (“Each meeting we ask: who are we becoming?”). Cell 6 gets the empty-seat lines: what we do if a man winters away, moves or is ill, and who calls the facilitator if a seat empties for good. Both are printed in the participant reading, section 7.

5 · Session 11: the check-in

Each triad has met once, during the Wilderness Between. One meeting shows fit better than any amount of guessing, and Clearness Monday, a week away, needs triads that trust each other.

THE CARD · HANDED OUT AT THE OPENER, COLLECTED BEFORE THE BREAK

1.Read the cards at the break. Facilitators only. The cards are shredded after Clearness Monday.

2.“Keep” from all three men: nothing to do. Tell the triad at the end of the session, “You’re set.”

3.“Adjust”: one facilitator talks to the triad together, after the session, about the practical change. No names are attached to the card.

4.“Let’s talk”: the shepherd calls that man within 48 hours. Listen first. Most calls end with “I’ll give it till Clearness Monday.” Some end with a swap.

5.Swaps happen only between willing men, are settled by phone that week, and are announced as configuration, never as a reason: “We’ve reshuffled two triads. Here are your groups.”

6.Protect Clearness Monday. Every man must be in a triad of three or four that morning. If a swap cannot be settled, the man joins another triad as its fourth for the day.

6 · The monthly shepherd call

Two minutes a month, by phone, to each initiator. Ask three questions and listen.

1.Did you meet? Date and place.

2.Who was missing?

3.Is anything stuck? Then stop talking.

Log only the answers to the first two on the Triad Roster: met or not, who was absent. Never log content.

Warning signs, and what to do

7 · When life happens, and when a triad comes apart

Adding a man (a mentee, a church friend, a Cohort 2 man) is the triad’s decision, by unanimous invitation, and never past four. Your only job is to make sure he has read the charter and the participant reading.

8 · Commissioning: the recommitment

The first yes was a starting commitment for the season. The second yes, said out loud, blessed, and freely chosen, is what lets men go the distance. Allow six to eight minutes.

1.Each triad stands together. The initiator reads the triad’s purpose sentence (“Our triad exists not just for ourselves, but for…”).

2.Each man says one of two sentences. “I’m in for twelve months.” Or: “I’m stepping out, with thanks.” Tell the men beforehand that the second is honorable. A man who says it is placed again or released with a blessing, never shamed.

3.The initiator names the date of the twelve-month charter review.

4.The facilitator blesses the triad with Ecclesiastes 4:12, or Numbers 6:24–26 over the whole room once every triad has stood.

9 · After the program

•Quarterly shepherd call for the first year after Commissioning, the same three questions.

•First Fruits. Each triad brings one story, ninety seconds, about something it did or something it became.

•The Open List. One facilitator keeps a private list of men open to joining or forming a group: men whose triad dissolved, men met through mentoring, Cohort 2 men who want an older partner. Introductions are made by a person, by phone.

•Why not a bulletin board, yet. Franco’s research, taught at Session 10, is that men wait to be chosen. A board asks them to make the first move in public, which is the hardest move there is. A person making the introduction works better for men in their 60s to 80s. Revisit a board once there are several cohorts and alumni gatherings where men can meet face to face.

10 · Your own formative community

Facilitators who have been in a formative group lead the triads differently: they know what Month 3 feels like, they have felt the fixing reflex fire, and they have a true story to tell at Session 10. Form your own triad now, the three facilitators or three men from outside the program. Meet monthly, from card T1, with Engage → Reflect → Storytell and the soul question. Stay a few months ahead of the cohort, the way the program lead is doing the Charter himself.

Walk with the wise and become wise.

— Proverbs 13:20

Sources

•Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, How to Live a Meaningful Life (2026), ch. 7.

•Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering (2018): generous authority.

•Marisa Franco, Platonic (2022): waiting to be chosen.

•Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (1939). Full research sources are in the participant reading.

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Triad Roster

Facilitators only. Log whether a triad met and who was absent. Never log what was said.

Monthly log