This one’s a bit awkward to write, honestly.
I’ve written before about my journey with Andy’s Man Club – what it meant to me when I first walked into a session as a member, and then what it felt like to go through the training and come out the other side as a facilitator.
A big deal for me. Genuinely.
And in my last post on the subject, I talked about some of the positives from those early months of running our own group. But I also mentioned feeling like the spare part. The odd one out. The new kid who somehow hasn’t quite found where he fits yet.
That hasn’t changed much.
I’ve been invited to lead a couple of sessions. I think I do a good job when I lead sessions. But walking in each week, there’s still this nagging feeling that I’m the third wheel. A feeling I am all too familiar with in pretty much every situation I ever find myself in.
The other two guys who started this group with me are confident, naturally loud, easy in a room full of people. I’m not. I never have been. And that’s fine, for the most part. That’s me.
But here’s where I need to be careful with my words, because this is my blog, my thoughts, my experience, and it is absolutely not a character assassination of anyone. So please read it that way.
The way I experienced Andy’s Man Club as a member, before I ever thought about becoming a facilitator, was quite specific.
You sat in a circle. You listened. The ball went round. And when someone was talking, they talked. And the facilitators – and I mean this with full respect to the people who helped me – they listened too.
They didn’t fill silences with their own stories. They didn’t jump in the moment someone finished speaking, or to think for a moment, to tell a bigger, more dramatic version of what had just been shared.
The space belonged to the bloke holding the ball, not to the people running the room. That’s the way I experienced it anyway.
That’s the bit I’m struggling with right now.
Because in our group, it doesn’t always feel like that. One of us facilitators is a natural performer – always on, always ready to fill a silence. And look, in plenty of situations, that’s a genuine skill. But in Andy’s Man Club, I’m not sure silence is the enemy. Sometimes it’s the point.
And the other thing – and again, I want to be fair here – there’s a tendency to share. A lot. Personal stories, personal challenges, personal experiences. Which can be valuable. But when a bloke has just opened up about something heavy, the room should probably stay with him for a moment. Not pivot to someone else’s story.
I’m not a group leader. I’m far from a lead facilitator. That’s very clear and I’m not complaining about that – I know where I sit in the pecking order. But I did go through the same training as the others. I sat in the same sessions. I read the same guidance. And what I see week to week doesn’t always match what we were taught.
I don’t know what to do with that. Rock the boat? Raise it with the area coordinator? Or just keep showing up, keep listening, keep doing it the way I believe it should be done, and hope that counts for something?
For now, I think it’s the last one – just keep showing up. Keep listening. Keep my mouth shut when someone else has the ball.
Which, as it turns out, is pretty much what the training said to do anyway.
If you’ve felt like the spare part somewhere you genuinely care about, you’ll know it’s not a comfortable place to sit. It doesn’t mean the thing itself is broken, or that you are. Sometimes it just takes longer to find your footing than you expected.
I’m still there. Still showing up. Still here.
And so are you, whatever room you’re trying to find your place in.
This post is part of an ongoing series of notes and reflections I’ve been pulling together over the years – memories, half-formed thoughts, things I wrote down at the time and nearly forgot about. Some of them are rough around the edges. That’s the point.