The Power of a Circle

Successful people have a network that isn’t just broad, but also deep. In addition to many “loose ties,” they have a few people in their field who are their cheerleaders and who they champion whenever possible. Often you’ll see successful people bringing their past colleagues and teammates to new organizations, and you’ll also hear notable people speaking about the support they have gotten to fulfill their purpose.

A great way to develop relationships that can impact your whole life is through peer practice circles. Meeting regularly with the same small group of people can help you to stay motivated, figure out what you want to do, develop creative ideas for how to approach problems, and feel like you’re not alone when you run into rough patches.

Peer practice circles are underutilized, which is weird because why wouldn’t you want a group of people who support you, and who you can support and explore with? How can you get this started? Read on!

1. Career Stage

2. Key Values

3. General area of interest or work

4. Life Stage

5. Openings in your schedule

It’s helpful to be in a group with people who are roughly at the same point in their career. It does not mean you need to have the same job or the same level of seniority. What we are talking about here is whether you’re just getting into the job world, re-starting your career in a new area, experienced in your field, senior in your field, or executive-level in the field.

Similar values will help your group be cohesive and to be able to understand what you share in terms of priorities in work and life. If you deeply care about ethics and you try to make a group with someone most focused on making money, you will likely find it hard to support each other. You can use this list of values to pick ones important to you, and share your values with potential group-mates. They don’t need to have exactly the same values, but some overlap is very important.

You don’t need to be doing the same exact kind of work (in fact, it’s good to have some variety) but you do want people who can understand the basic contours of the kind of work you do, and ideally help you spot opportunities or network in the space. For example, broad areas might be things like non-profit, health, creative work, administration, government, design, or tech.

This isn’t about age so much as what is going on in life, so for example, it’s great if you are the type of person who goes out a lot to find others with similar lifestyles. If you have grown children, it might not be ideal to be in a group with people who have small kids, or vice-versa. If you are interested in part-time work and doing your own thing, it’s probably not the best idea to join a group for people who are 9-9-6ers.

Scheduling is generally the hardest part of peer practice circles. Make sure you can find a time that you can commit to weekly and that other folks in the group are also available at the same time. Consistency is critical when it comes to peer practice.

• Post on your LinkedIn

• Go to meetups and events and tell people you meet about the group you’re forming

• Join online groups and let people know about your group

• Ask your friends and colleagues to share with their network

• Create a form to”screen” people so you know you have good matches in terms of values, schedules, and stages. You might offer 2-3 weekly time slots that work for you to see which ones overlap for potential members

• Reach out to your potential members to confirm their commitment for a period of time

• Decide with your group whether to use email, Signal, or SMS as a communication channel

• Decide if you are going to meet in person or online (or a mix!).

• Create a calendar event with the members of the group

• The ideal group size for a peer practice circle is 3-6 committed people.

• Try commitments of 3 months at a time. It helps to know you can drop out, recommit, add new people, take a break, change your schedule, or whatever you need every few months

• Use a round or “hand over the talking stick” co-facilitation style.

1. Check in: how are you showing up? What is your mood? Are you hungry, tired, energized, sick, irritable, relaxed, caffeinated, etc?

2. Look at your calendar or journal for the past week. What happened that was notable?

3. What are your plans for the upcoming week? Anything you want to do or get done?

   1. Everyone take a couple minutes to add things to your calendar

4. Now, grab something to write with. Think about some things that are on your mind that you really want to happen in the next week or month.

5. Pick one thing to tell the group about and to say out loud what are the barriers to that outcome. Don’t just think about things you have control over, name the possible or real barriers you can think of.

   1. Other members of the group, consider each person’s barriers and consider if there’s anything you can do to help remove the barrier,

   2. Offer these possible ways of assisting, being careful not to insist on helping or trying to convince the person to do things your way.

6. Close with a breath, a hype song, or something else that can transition out in a connecting way!

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