Working Out Loud Circle
A peer group of three to five people meets for an hour a week for twelve weeks. Each person has a goal they care about. Following a short guide for each week, members build a list of people connected to their goal, make small contributions to them, share their work more visibly and reflect on progress. Members support each other; there is no expert or teacher.
Use for self-directed development in organisations, especially to build networks and habits across sites and teams that rarely meet.
Solves: People take courses on networking and visibility and change nothing, because there is no peer group holding them to small weekly steps.
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Step 1: Form a circle of 3-5 people from different teams and agree a weekly hour (once).
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Step 2: Each person picks a personal goal they want to make progress on (week 1).
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Step 3: Each week, open with a short check-in on what happened since last time (10 min).
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Step 4: Work through that week's guide exercises, such as relationship lists, small contributions or a letter from your future self (35 min).
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Step 5: Each person commits to one small step before the next meeting (10 min).
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Step 6: In week 12, reflect on what changed and decide how to keep going (60 min).
- Keep circles cross-functional; mixed backgrounds create new connections.
- Nobody leads. Rotate who keeps time each week.
- Goals that are personally meaningful keep people coming back better than assigned work goals.