Circle Up: A Tool for Inclusive Insights
If you're preparing for a strategic planning session, leading a cross-functional retreat, or navigating a culture shift, you know the moment calls for more than just decisions. It calls for shared clarity. For listening before responding. For leadership that makes space before charting direction.
That’s where the Circle-Up Framework comes in—a tool we developed and tested at Untapped Leaders to support leaders and teams as they move toward trust, coherence, and forward motion together.
We designed it with two truths in mind:
Diverse teams carry invaluable insight, but rarely have shared spaces to surface it.
Great leadership is less about having the answers, and more about structuring the inquiry.
What the Circle-Up Makes Possible
In one recent application, we brought together coaches, facilitators, and advisors from across our ecosystem. We invited them to "circle up" around a central question: What do we see emerging in this leadership moment? And how should Untapped Leaders evolve to meet it?
But this wasn’t just a feedback session. It was a purposeful design—a model any team can use to:
Align across roles and perspectives
Reconnect with purpose and vision
Uncover invisible needs or tensions
Source solutions that feel both strategic and supported
Whether you're entering a new fiscal year, designing a new initiative, or resetting after a period of change, Circle-Up offers a format that fosters momentum without hierarchy.
How It Works
Circle-Up is built and expands around three simple but powerful prompts, offered in sequence:
Observations & Shifts
What are we noticing right now—in our work, sector, or culture?Offers & Contributions
What can we bring to this work? What’s already within reach?Needs & Requirements
What’s missing? What do we need to show up fully and move forward?
The design is facilitation-friendly. It honors lived experience and organizational complexity. And it can be held internally or facilitated by a partner like us.
Use it for:
Annual or quarterly planning sessions
Vision and culture alignment workshops
Leadership retreats
Post-change regroupings (e.g. post-merger, re-orgs, etc.)
The Results We've Seen
In our pilot sessions with partners and internal stakeholders, leaders walked away with:
Deeper buy-in—because they were part of shaping direction, not just reacting to it
Clearer energy signals—a map of where people were eager to invest, and where they needed support
Next steps grounded in real dynamics, not just assumptions
For us, the Circle-Up helped shape everything from curriculum pivots to community partnerships.
For Leaders Who Want to Lead With, Not Over
You don’t have to be in HR to lead inclusive, participatory conversations. You might be:
A department head hosting an annual strategy offsite
A cross-functional project lead kicking off a new initiative
A senior leader inviting feedback after a major shift
A CEO looking to reconnect culture with mission
If you’re trying to align your people around purpose, insight, and action, a Circle-Up can help.
Circle Up with Us
We offer Circle-Up as both a standalone facilitated session and as part of our broader leadership development and consulting engagements. Whether you’re testing the waters or designing a yearlong culture shift, we’d love to partner with you.
Want a sample agenda or facilitation guide? Contact us. We’ll share what’s worked and help you adapt it to your context.
