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Saturday, March 25, 2017

My experience of being part of my 1st 12-Week Working Out Loud (#WOL) Circle


I was first introduced to WOL by Michelle (Ockers) in May 2016:

My first circle has been an amazing journey!

My first WOL Circle experience formally started with a first video call on Monday 9 January 2017 and will end next Monday 27 March 2017 with a 12th circle video call.

I have documented my experience under the following headings:-
  • Reflections on the process
  • My thoughts on me doing future circles
  • Highlights and deliverables
  • My next steps

Reflections on the process

  1. Firstly, huge thanks and gratitude to John (Stepper) for devising Working Out Loud and for the easy-to-use circle guides and for his ongoing building of the global WOL community. It is great to be a part of that gang.
    (as at 26 September 2017 the latest circle guides are v4.01)
  2. As the facilitator of this circle, the circle guides are easy to use and no one should feel intimidated or fearful in taking a group of 4 others through this material. This is even the case if you just plan a circle the week before that week’s circle. As Sonsoles (in the circle) asked me assertively and appropriately in a different context – in Dutch – “wat let je?” – “WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?”.
  3. I did not get sorted in my head whether the calls were the start of the circle week or the end. Towards the end of the circle, I got into the routine of doing the exercises etc prior to the relevant call. I came close to suggesting a 13th call to close us off.
  4. I did the vast majority of the exercises. The notes from a future self being problematic given that I was still sorting the “me now” self out!
  5. I am still not clear whether I would attempt to do the exercises in the circle meetings or not. The 1 hour duration is a challenge. I am not sure that doing none of them in the call or expecting people to do the exercises prior is ideal.
  6. If I was facilitating another circle. I would probably be more assertive in verifying whether people were doing the exercises.
  7. The move from following the circle guides’ agendas to the 10 minute/person format worked well for us. However, I note that the content of the meeting is then at the mercy of whatever the person wanted to say or discuss. I did provide steers on that latterly.
  8. The 10 minute/person approach was supplemented for me when I read a Slack blog post about doing away with parts of face-to-face meetings. This is achieved by people posting updates on progress in the prior week and then only discussing at the meeting items that were not just information sharing. I adopted this approach latterly. There are two issues with this. Firstly, if everyone does not do that, you will still get updates in the call that could have been read by the attendees prior to the meeting. Secondly, those that do not read others’ updates will not know what the others have been doing. I would now recommend this approach for all circles.
  9. I am in awe of the challenging goals that my fellow circlers set for themselves and this inspired me through the process.

My thoughts on me doing future circles

  1. I definitely will do circles again and I can see me becoming a serial circler.
  2. In terms of my contributions, I would definitely want to be more proactive in contributing to help me achieve my goal(s) rather than reactively contributing strongly and fearlessly to lots of other people as I see their public tweets etc.
  3. I am happy to lead/facilitate/coach circles and would be happy to get asked to. I believe I would be a good coach of circles and would envisage me not doing the exercises in that role.
  4. I would be happy circling with those new to WOL and veterans.
  5. My goal ultimately became one that probably was not totally consistent with the goal criteria laid down. I understand that I should set more appropriate goals in future (mainly around needing other people to help me!).
  6. The list of blog posts to-write that I collated during the circle could well become a series of circle goals for me.
  7. As a process person and a facilitator of different kinds of meetings/ events, I am intrigued to see other types and formats of circles in operation either by taking part or just hearing about e.g. onboarding and the like. I may experiment with this for my next piece of work which needs to be a virtual book club. However, this may be too much of a challenge to do when the priority objective is to read and apply the book rapidly.
  8. I note that all my views expressed in my “Call to Action" to all professionals to do at least 1 x 12-week virtual circle in a comment on a blog post (see below) remain totally valid and, if anything, I would make the same points now with increased intensity.

Highlights and Deliverables

  • Recruiting 4 people (complete strangers to each other) to join me (Bradford, UK) in a virtual circle via the WOL Facebook Group.
    • Adam (Boulder, Colorado, USA)
    • Kiki (Barcelona, Spain)
      • Kiki dropped out in Week 7 due to work changes involving moving countries
    • Sonsoles (Barcelona, Spain)
    • Tanya (Sydney, Australia)
    • Monette (Abu Dhabi, UAE)
      • We added Monette in Week 4 when she posted to the WOL FB Group saying “hi”. Sonsoles has a goal relating to the UAE so it made sense to have someone on the ground there. We rushed to recruit her. Seamless/ rapid onboarding
  • Setting up Zoom for video calls and Slack for all communications (we also used it for hosting the video files for the calls)
    • These were both free options.
    • Issue with Zoom on free is that you get half an hour per call only but you can just start a 2nd call straight after)
    • There is a 5GB space limit on free Slack option. I estimate that is enough for hosting the files from 8 x 1 hour calls.
    • I suspect there is a Zoom issue where if the host is not the first one on the call the host cannot then record the call.







I end this post with a tweet of thanks and gratitude to two people who, during two separate 1: calls during my circle experience, asked me direct questions and suggested actions to make me more truly me:
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