Study the training. Pass the assessment. Lead your squad.
9 modules · ~45 min total
Begin Training →A squad leader is a facilitator — not a teacher, not a counsellor. Your job is to hold space, not fill it. You are not the smartest man in the room. You are the most present.
The moment you start thinking the group needs you to be brilliant is the moment you become the group's biggest liability. They need you to be honest and consistent. That is all.
Facilitating manages a process. It keeps things moving. That matters. But leading means being first through the door. It means going somewhere the other men haven't been yet and showing them it is survivable.
The demonstration card is where facilitation becomes leadership. When you deliver a Level 3 response with genuine weight — not performance, not a confessional dump, but something real and calibrated — you show every man in the room what is possible. You give them a reference point they did not have before they walked in.
Men are isolated and performing. Most of them have plenty of people around them and no one who knows what is actually happening in their life. The card session is designed to break that performance and replace it with honest witness.
Every element — the rules, the structure, the demonstration card, the silence — is engineered for the specific problem of male isolation. Nothing is accidental. When you understand why each element exists, you will protect it rather than work around it.
Men share at the level of the room. If the room is set at surface level, that is where they will stay — not because they are unwilling, but because no one has modelled anything different.
The demonstration card exists to solve this problem. By the time you have delivered Level 3 with weight and paused in the silence that follows, every man in the room has a reference point he did not have sixty seconds earlier. He now knows what depth sounds like. He cannot unknow it.
A charismatic leader creates a cult of personality. When he is absent, the group collapses. The structure is the load-bearing wall — not you.
A quiet man can lead an effective session if he understands and protects the structure. Your goal is to make the structure indispensable, not yourself. If the group could not function without your particular energy, you have built something fragile. Build something that outlasts you.
That 12-month mark is what you are building toward. It is not a metric. It is a culture. Your job is to model it consistently until it becomes the group's own expectation.
Most men do not share deeply because they are afraid. They share shallowly because the room has not yet told them it is safe to do otherwise. That is your first job as a squad leader — not to pull men toward depth, but to build the conditions where depth becomes possible.
Trust in a group of men forms in stages. Understanding those stages changes how you approach every session, especially the early ones.
Stage 1 — Calculative Trust (Sessions 1–4)
In the early sessions, every man in your squad is running an unconscious calculation: Is this room consistent? Does what gets shared here stay here? Does this leader do what he says? He is not yet asking whether the group is meaningful. He is asking whether it is safe. Until that question is answered, nothing else matters.
Your job in Stage 1 is simple: show up, hold the structure, follow through. Be exactly who you said you would be, every time. That is what builds the foundation everything else stands on.
Stage 2 — Knowledge-Based Trust (Sessions 4–12)
Once men have decided the room is consistent, they begin to let themselves be known — real stories, not just facts. This is when honest sharing becomes natural. The group starts to feel like something, not just somewhere they attend.
Stage 3 — Relational Trust (6–12 months)
Men begin to identify with the group. Accountability moves outside the room — they text each other about next moves without being prompted. The squad becomes something they belong to. This is the long game you are building toward from day one.
There is a biological dimension to this as well. Research on male bonding shows that men form trust fastest through shared challenge and side-by-side activity — not conversation about shared feelings. This is why military units, sports teams, and trade crews develop loyalty that is hard to replicate in a talking group. The structure of Contact Right — the shared ritual, the silence, the consistent format — is doing this work every session. Protect it.
Every card in your deck can be answered at three levels. As a squad leader, you need to understand these levels before you can model them.
To see the difference clearly, take a single card — Presence — and watch how one man could answer it at each level. The card never changes. Only his honesty does. That is the whole skill: same question, deeper truth.
Level 1 — Surface
The safe, socially acceptable answer. True in a technical sense, but costs nothing to say. Most men default here automatically. It is what a room sounds like when no one has been shown anything different.
Presence: "Yeah, I'm a present dad — I'm home for dinner most nights."
Level 2 — Honest
Something real. Something with edges. It names a specific tension or failure rather than a general impression. It is the answer that took a small decision to say.
Presence: "I'm in the house, but I'm not really in it. I'm on my phone, or my head's still at work. I couldn't tell you what my kids did today."
Level 3 — Deep
The thing that is actually true. The answer that requires the man to name something he would rather not. It is specific, present-tense, and costs something to say out loud.
Presence: "My boy asked me to kick the footy on Saturday and I said 'in a minute.' I never went out. He didn't ask again. I think he's learning not to need me — and the honest truth is part of me is relieved, because it's easier that way."
Here is the same climb on a different card — Self-Control — so you can see it is the depth that changes, not the subject:
Level 1 — Surface. "Yeah, I keep myself in check. I've got decent self-control."
Level 2 — Honest. "I tell myself I'm in control, but I drink more than I let on — it's most nights now, not just the weekend."
Level 3 — Deep. "The truth is I hide how much I drink from my wife. I pour one after she's gone to bed and tell myself it's nothing — but I've started planning my evenings around it, and I haven't said that out loud to anyone until right now."
Level 3 is not the most dramatic answer. It is the most honest one. A man sharing at Level 3 does not perform pain — he names what is actually happening. The silence that follows is the room receiving it.
In the early sessions, no man will volunteer to go first. So you do. The demonstration card is not a separate ritual bolted onto the night — it is you taking the first share of the round. You draw the card, and you answer it at Level 3 while the room witnesses, exactly as every man will when his turn comes.
You answer one question from the card — the one that has weight for you — not both, and not the definition in the abstract. One question, answered honestly, is what the men will do; so it is what you model.
You lead from the front like this while the room is still deciding whether it is safe — the early sessions, Stage 1. As the men warm and begin volunteering to go first themselves (Stage 2), you hand the opening share over. The goal was never for you to go first forever. It was to show the room what is possible until a man is ready to show it himself.
Without a reference point, the room defaults to whatever level men feel safe performing. They don't know the ceiling exists. The moment you go Level 3, every man in the room has a reference he didn't have sixty seconds earlier. He may not follow immediately — most won't — but he now knows what this room is capable of.
How to prepare:
How to deliver it:
If the word lands for another man, the floor is where that surfaces — not your share. You go first, you sit in the silence, and when the floor opens to the group any man it struck brings it then. You do not open your own card for discussion; you model, then the round takes its normal course.
One condition: it has to be real. A leader going through the motions of Level 3 — sharing the shape of vulnerability without the substance — produces the opposite effect. Men detect performance before they can name it. The card you choose, and the question you answer, must actually have weight for you that week. That is what makes it land.
You are not modelling what words to say. You are showing every man in the room that it is survivable to mean them.
Men trust faster through doing than through talking. Side-by-side activity — working, moving, making something, competing — activates the processes that build male trust faster than face-to-face disclosure. What happens around the session matters as much as what happens in it.
Do not announce these as trust-building exercises. They work better when they are simply part of how the group operates.
Before the session starts:
Outside the session — between meetings:
There is no substitute for doing the work yourself first. A leader who arrives without having worked through his own Level 3 response will not deliver it with the weight it requires. Do the work.
Four to six men is the ideal range. Fewer than four and there is too much pressure on each man. More than six and the sharing time becomes diluted.
Do not recruit the men you think would be impressive squad members. Recruit the men you believe will do the work.
Before the first session, brief every man clearly: "This is not a support group, not a Bible study, not a social club. It is a structured space where men do honest work."
In the early sessions you take the first share of the round yourself — no man will volunteer to go first until he trusts the room. That first share is your demonstration card. The full reasoning is in Module 03; here is how you prepare it.
Before the session, go through your deck and find the card that has real weight for you this week — not the card you have a clean answer for, the one that sits uncomfortably. Then pick the one question on it that bites. You answer one question, the same as the men will — not both, and not the definition in the abstract.
Write out your Level 3 response to that question on paper before the men arrive. Not to read from — to know what you are about to say when you get there.
The three levels are covered in Module 03. Review them before your first session and know the difference between surface, honest, and deep before you model it.
Preparing your response:
Take the first share, deliver Level 3 with weight, and pause after it. Mean every word. Do not rush past the silence — that silence is the room adjusting to what just happened. Then the round runs as normal: the floor opens, the next man goes. As the men begin volunteering to go first themselves, you hand the opening share over.
The warm-up is not optional. It is the twenty minutes where men shake off the week — work, the drive over, whatever they walked in carrying — and arrive present. Skip it and the first share pays for it. The format is your call; running one is not. Pick what suits the room:
In the early sessions you take the first share yourself — the demonstration card (Module 03). Once the squad is ready to carry it, you need a way to choose which man goes first that does not put anyone on the spot and does not let the same one or two men always volunteer. Do not use a fixed roster — men either dread their week or pre-load a performance for it. Pick at random, on the night. This sits at Step 1; the round's card is still drawn at Step 3 as normal. Two simple ways:
The spin. Lay a pen flat in the centre of the table — or the card box, or any object in front of you — and spin it. Whoever it points to goes first. Everyone leans in; it is fast, physical, and genuinely random.
The number call. No object to hand? Hold a number between 1 and 50 in your head, and have each man call one out. Closest goes first. Nothing required but the men in the room.
Either way, the point is the same: the choice is fair and out of everyone's hands — no man can dodge it, and no man can dominate it. And it carries a small charge. Going first stops feeling like exposure and starts feeling like the luck of the draw — exactly the lowering of stakes a room needs while it is still learning to trust.
Keep it to thirty seconds, then go. Do not let it become a game of its own. And it stays your call: any week the room needs a reset, or a man is plainly carrying something, you can still take the first share yourself. Picking at random is the default, not a rule.
Phones are a tool in the session, not a companion. Say it at the start, clearly:
"Phones are a tool tonight, not a companion. They come up to draw the card, write your thoughts, and send your next move. Every other moment — phones down, face up, in the room."
He fills space naturally. He is often the most vocal. Thank him and redirect — "Thanks for that. Who hasn't had a chance to land yet?"
He loses the thread. Interrupt with respect, use the time limit as your reason — "I want to give you time to land — what's your next move?"
He is present in body, absent in engagement. Call in, not out. Offer the pass — "You don't have to share, but I'd love to know if anything landed for you."
He redirects to counsel rather than story. Hold the line — "I want your personal story on this one — what's true for you?" Every session if needed, privately after.
A man is overwhelmed. Slow everything down. Do not fix it. Do not rush to the next man. "Take your time. We're not in a rush." Check in with him privately after.
A man gives you three words and stops — "Work's been heavy, that's about it" — and you can tell there's more behind it. Drawing him out is a real skill, but in this format it has a time and a place. Not during his witnessed share — Step 5 is pure witness, no questions — and not as a way to interrogate a man on the floor. You use it in the one-on-one check-in, with the Disengaged Man, and in the Round-the-Room arrival: the moments where conversation, not witness, is the point.
A few moves to have ready, so that when a man stops short you can extend the conversation without putting him on trial:
Two rules hold all of it together. One at a time — stacking three questions at a man who's just gone quiet hands him three exits, and he'll take the easiest. Ask one, then stop. And don't fish for the answer you want — "Don't you reckon you should just leave?" isn't a question, it's advice wearing a question mark. The point is to draw his thinking out, not steer him toward yours.
The Hero Story is an optional 10-minute block in which one man tells the story of a hard passage in his life — where he was, what broke him, what carried him through, and who he is on the other side. It is not a card share. It is a man handing the room his history, and the room receiving it.
Do not run this in the early sessions. The Hero Story asks for more than a man will give a room he does not yet trust. Hold it until the squad has reached knowledge-based trust — roughly Session 4 onward (see Module 03). Run too early, it falls flat or frightens men off. Run once the room is safe, it is one of the most bonding things a squad does.
Rotation, not volunteering. One man per week, on a posted roster, so that over five or six weeks every man takes his turn. This is deliberate. Volunteering means the same two men go every time and the quiet ones never do. Rotation means nobody opts out and nobody hogs the floor — and the man on deck knows two weeks out, so he arrives prepared, not ambushed.
The shape — 10 minutes, hard stop:
Where it slots: Run it after the card work and before you close the session — a discrete block, not woven into the card round. The 2IC holds the clock and the hard stop: he marks the beats and calls time at ten minutes. The discipline of the hard stop is part of what makes it safe — every man knows the shape and the limit before he begins.
A squad leader who is fully present with the men cannot simultaneously track the time, monitor each man's state, and hold the session structure. Something will give — and in a well-run session, it should be the logistics, not your presence.
Every squad should have a second-in-command (2IC). His role is not co-leadership. It is operational support — freeing you to stay fully present by taking on the structural work of running the room.
The role split:
Timekeeper:
The 2IC holds the clock for every step of the session. He signals the squad leader with a brief, agreed gesture — not a verbal interruption — when a step is approaching its limit. Agree on signals before Session 1: a raised hand for one minute remaining, a tap on the table for time.
Notes during the session:
The 2IC keeps a brief field log as men share — not a transcript. What the man said his situation is. What his stated next move was. Any sign of heightened need that warrants a private follow-up. These notes stay between the squad leader and the 2IC only.
Post-session debrief:
Once the men have left, the squad leader and 2IC debrief briefly — ideally within 30 minutes. Cover three things:
Selecting your 2IC:
Look for reliability, not personality. The right 2IC is consistently present, discreet with what is said in the room, and not a dominant personality who needs the floor. The 2IC is the most natural candidate to become a squad leader in his own right — give him increasing responsibility over time.
A man breaking down in the room is not a problem to solve. It is the room working. Your instinct will be to fix it, rush it, or move to the next man to relieve the pressure. Resist all three.
Slow everything down. "Take your time. We're not in a rush." Let it be present. Let the room sit with him. Do not close early. Do not redirect until he is ready to close. Check in with him privately within 24 hours.
Before your first session, you must know:
If a man discloses harm to himself or others, duty of care overrides confidentiality. This is not a grey area. Know your obligations before you need them.
If a man discloses something that suggests immediate risk:
The session format exists to serve the men in the room. When a man is in crisis, the session is over. That is not a failure. That is the format doing its job — creating a space where real things surface.
Two men in your squad in active conflict will poison the group dynamic if not addressed. Your job is not to adjudicate — it is to contain.
Once you are certified, you get a Squad Leader Portal — your command post for running the squad off the field. It carries the admin (building the squad, scheduling the rhythm, logging each session, flagging who needs a word) so you do not have to hold it in your head, and so the room itself stays about the men. Module 09 walks through the portal in full — here, just set the rhythm.
Fortnightly is the minimum. Weekly is better for the first three months. The rule is simple: fix the day and time, then protect it.
Men arrange their lives around fixed commitments. They cancel flexible ones. If the session is negotiated each week, it signals that it is optional. It is not. Set it. Hold it.
One man texts another directly about his stated next move. Not a group chat — that diffuses accountability into noise. Direct. One-to-one. Specific.
"Hey — you said you were going to have that conversation with your son this week. Did you?"
That is what you are building toward. Not a group that feels good in the room. A group of men who follow through between sessions.
The deck runs in one direction. A man tells the truth about where he is weak — where he is failing, slipping, carrying something heavier than he lets on. "I'm drinking more than I should at night." "I've gone cold on my kids." That honesty is the work. But it is only half of it.
The Call-Up is the other direction. After a man has shared something real, another man names not the struggle but the strength underneath it. He speaks one value over him — and calls him up into the man he is becoming. "Mate, I want to speak courage over you for this season." One word. No advice, no fixing, no story of his own. A value, spoken with weight, in front of the room.
Why this carries weight — and why it cannot be done lightly. Speaking a man into his identity is the oldest tool men have for making men. Across nearly every culture that has marked the passage from boy to man — the Maasai moran, the Xhosa initiate, the Jewish bar mitzvah, fraternal and military orders — manhood is not something a man declares for himself. It is conferred: spoken over him by other men, and only then is it real. In many of these cultures a man who was never called up is not counted a man at all, whatever his age. And the words spoken at that threshold do not describe a change — they make it. The naming is the event.
That is why we call it the Call-Up. A compliment describes a man; a calling confers something on him. You are not telling a man he is courageous — you are naming courage over him, in front of witnesses, and asking him to push off it. A man can carry a true word spoken over him for years: it becomes a stake in the ground he builds from. But the same act done lightly — a round of nice things because the format says so — is hollow, and a man feels the hollowness instantly. Done carelessly, it is worse than silence.
Three ways this fails. All three come from the same mistake — treating it as a round instead of a response.
"Mate — what you just said took something. I want to speak one word over you. Courage. Not because you've got it all handled, but because I can see you reaching for it. Carry that this season."
You cannot lead men into territory you have never entered yourself. If you are using the role to avoid your own work — if the sessions are where you go to feel useful rather than honest — the group will feel it, even if they cannot name it.
The most dangerous leader uses the role to avoid his own work. He is present for every man in the room except himself.
Name this person before session 1. It cannot be a squad member — wrong power dynamic. It cannot be your partner — different role, different load.
When you notice any of these: name them to your accountability person immediately. Consider stepping back for one session. Return to being a squad member before you return to leading. Burnout in a leader is contagious — the group will absorb it.
A squad that depends entirely on one leader is fragile. You are building something that should outlast you.
Who to look for: The man who shares at Level 3 consistently. Who listens without needing to respond. Who holds the rules without being prompted. Whom the other men trust.
Tell him directly. Give him increasing responsibility — read the rules, hold the clock, close a session. Let him lead a session with you present. A squad that grows its own leaders is a squad that will still be meeting when you are no longer there.
Once you're certified, you get the Squad Leader Portal — your command post off the field. Sign in at contactright.co/squad with the same login you certified with. It carries the admin so your head — and the room — stays on the men. Here's how to run it.
The top of the portal gives you the squad's vitals at a glance — who's in, what's coming, and how the men are engaging.
Invite each man by name, email and mobile. He gets an invite to join; once he's in the Forge app his activity links automatically. The roster shows every man — his status, his attendance over recent sessions (the dots), and his deck card numbers.
Green dot = present, red = absent, hollow = not yet in the squad.
The roster shows three numbers for each man under Deck Stats — recon, committed, and challenges. They're different things, and the gap between them is often where the real conversation lives.
Recon means the man opened a card and read it — the challenge, the questions, what it would require of him. He's looked at the ground. He hasn't committed yet.
Committed means he drew the card fully — wrote his honest response, set his rating, and committed to the challenge for that month. He's in.
Challenges means he came back after the month and marked the challenge as done. Not just drawn — followed through. This is the number that tells you whether the programme is actually changing anything for him.
Most men will have more committed than recon, because you typically draw a card and go all in. But occasionally you'll see a man with high recon and no committed — six or seven cards opened, nothing drawn. That's a signal worth paying attention to. And a man with zero challenges despite drawing many cards is a different conversation again — he's drawing but not following through on the challenge itself.
Pete Jones has opened six cards. He hasn't committed to any of them.
This is not disengagement — it's circling. He's curious enough to keep looking. He's just not stepping in. The recon number is actually a good sign; the no-committed is the question.
Don't raise it in the group. Catch him one-on-one and ask it simply: "I see you've been through a few cards — what are you finding?" Let him answer. The most common reasons are perfectionism (waiting for the right card), fear of what an honest answer would require, or just not yet understanding that you're supposed to draw the first one that makes you uncomfortable. Sometimes all it takes is: "Pick the one that scares you most and go."
High recon with no committed = a man standing at the door. Your job is to help him walk through it.
Book your sessions from the calendar — one-off or recurring (weekly, fortnightly, monthly). The men get a confirmation with the date, place and a calendar file, and reminders go out automatically before each one. The portal also auto-rotates the Hero Story (Module 05) so every man takes his turn without you keeping a list. Set the day and time once, then let the portal hold it.
This is the one rhythm to build. After each meeting, the portal prompts you right at the top to log the session you just ran. Open it and you do everything in one pass — tick who came, add a note for any man while he's fresh in your mind, and flag anyone who needs a follow-up. Each man's recent notes show right there, so you've got the context. Saving records attendance, saves the notes, flags the follow-ups, and completes the session.
Tick who came, jot the note, flag the follow-up — then Save completes the session.
The portal watches for drift so you don't have to. It automatically surfaces three signals — men Missing (absent the last two sessions), men In the Room, Not Drawing (attending but hasn't committed a card this month), and men Drew, No Challenges Done (has committed cards but has never marked a challenge as done). Underneath sits your own flagged worklist — anyone you marked while taking notes. One place that answers the only question that matters between sessions: who do I reach out to this week?
Every note you keep on a man is dated and permanent — a running record, newest first, showing when it was written and by whom (you or your 2IC). Nothing is overwritten. Over months this becomes the memory of his journey: what he's wrestling with, what you've followed up, where he's grown.
You don't carry the admin alone. Add a second-in-command (Module 05) and he gets portal access to run the roster, schedule sessions, take attendance and add notes — everything except renaming or deleting the squad. He's also the man you're quietly grooming to lead a squad of his own one day.
There is no single big exam, no essays. You certify by working through the nine modules above and passing the short check at the end of each one — four multiple-choice scenario questions that test your judgment, not your recall. Simple to take, but you'll need to have actually read the module.
The training is open to everyone — you only need an account at the very end, to claim the certificate in your name.
Pass the check at the end of all nine modules, then sign in and sign the declaration to claim your certificate.