Our Circle Season Is Here!
I’m happy to share the opening of our fall Circle Season! In this new era of teams, self-organized communities and remote work, circles are a fun and simple way to grow connection and well-being, learn organically, and build a new skill set for experiencing greater alignment around group coherence and shared purpose. See all our upcoming events.
Our first Heart Circle on Leading Change Together starts this Wednesday, September 6, 2023, at 8 PM - 9:30 PM (U.S. Eastern Time). It's free to join! Register here.
Circles Provide Many Benefits
Circles provide so many profound benefits and here are some of my favorites:
Circles reorient our default patterns. A great benefit of participating in group circles is that it positively disrupts our default patterns in how we organize at work, in community, and within self.
Circles don't require assimilation. Different than other past group experiences we may have had including committees, affinity groups, or caucuses, participating in a circle doesn't require us to change our attitudes, behaviors and cultural norms to fit in. There is no direct pressure to assimilate, adapt or change who we are to be accepted, which I wrote about in a previous blog on beyond belonging.
Circles are dynamic and their evolution depends on the group’s intent and interest. Each circle changes and grows over time and provides unique opportunities for building togetherness, shared understanding, and collective action. Types of circles can include listening and shared storytelling, deep experiential learning around specific topics, collaborative decision making, and action oriented for providing service or products to a community of stakeholders.
Circles provide a safe harbor for personal self-discovery. On a personal level, circles offer a safe environment for participants to self-reflect and become aware of their own habits, tendencies, and well-being needs so they can develop the skills, capacity and compassion to effectively move their group along the trajectory of change. The amount of change we can bring into the world is directly related to our willingness to change ourselves.
Circles are a training ground for leaders and change agents to test out organizational learning and transformation. For change agents and current and emerging leaders who are working within organizations and communities, circles offer a supportive structure to identify external group challenges, learn new future of work skills, and experience and pilot the new internal and external changes being rolled out into their work, family, and social environments. Circles are free from the organizational noise, hierarchical interference and other challenges that would normally be encountered in the workplace.
Circles are a natural foundation for heart-centered connection. I feel one of the most valuable benefits that circles offer is the opportunity to share, learn and understand each other with our heart. Based on my experience as a heart-centered leadership trainer, I have found that the heart is the key to bringing a group together in a way that naturally shifts us to a more relationship-focused orientation. From here, we are able to see ourselves and our connection to each other more clearly, realizing that we are not separate. This change in perspective is huge as people can feel when we have their interests and/or the larger community needs at heart and this way of relating quickly spread within a circle. And when a group's hearts grow together beautiful things happen--shared interest can blossom into shared understanding, belonging naturally becomes togetherness, and shared purpose can be discovered.
Join our first Heart Circle on Leading Change Together this Wednesday, September 6, 2023, at 8 PM - 9:30 PM (U.S. Eastern Time). I hope to connect with you soon!