Address Skills Gaps With Skill Circles

L&D teams continue to face a persistent challenge: How do we build skills at scale while strengthening engagement, increasing connection, and—most importantly—driving lasting behavior change?

Despite significant investment, much workplace learning still falls short. Online courses, webinars, workshops, and even multiday programs often don’t translate into sustained performance improvement. Employees complete training programs but struggle to apply what they learned. Leaders report that development experiences feel disconnected from day‑to‑day work or include content that lacks practical relevance. At the same time, businesses need learning models that build capability without adding unsustainable workload or pulling employees away from critical work.

Skill circles are a response to that challenge. They are structured, peer‑driven learning cohorts—typically eight to 10 participants—who meet consistently over several weeks to build a specific skill tied to business priorities.

The approach is grounded in the AGES learning framework, a neuroscience‑based model developed by David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute.

Together, those elements create optimal conditions for learning to stick and generate meaningful behavior change.

Participants meet in small groups to practice, reflect, and experiment with new behaviors in a supportive environment. Each skill circle rallies around a shared skill goal, creating purpose and accountability that traditional learning often lacks.

Cohorts comprise staff in similar roles who face the same challenges. Participants build their skills incrementally, with individuals practicing on the job between sessions, reflecting on results, and adjusting approaches based on feedback.

A learning partner and a business partner co-lead each skill circle. Sessions typically last 55 minutes and take place weekly or biweekly for 8–12 weeks. Leadership plays an essential role by modeling behaviors, sharing real stories, and reinforcing why the skill matters to the business.

The focus is always on application: Participants try something new at work, bring insights back, and refine together.

A typical skill circle session follows a structured but flexible flow designed to reinforce learning, encourage engagement, and drive application:

At my employer, an insurance company, skill circles emerged as a powerful way to bring peers together for real practice, real conversations, and real workplace application. Shortly after joining the company, I supported two different verticals, both led by vice presidents who were deeply focused on skills gaps and readiness.

In a member‑facing business unit where most employees handled a high volume of calls, leaders had identified a clear need to strengthen coaching skills among managers and senior roles, yet there was no formal coaching program in place. Compounding the challenge was that leaders had limited ability to step away from their phones for extended periods, making traditional classroom training impractical.

The question became: How do we upskill leaders, create space for practice, and enable learning from peers facing similar challenges—without disrupting core business operations?

Skill circles would meet that need. The short, focused, peer‑based sessions emphasized immediate application. Managers learned specific coaching skills such as goal setting; applied them directly with their teams; and then returned to the group during the next session to share outcomes, challenges, and best practices. Learning became iterative, contextual, and immediately relevant.

Once managers completed the experience, we expanded the program to senior roles who were already supporting coaching efforts and represented a key internal leadership pipeline.

Visible involvement from the senior vice president and other leaders reinforced the program’s importance, while participants consistently reported that immediate application and peer feedback made the learning practical and productive. In addition to sponsoring the learning, leaders provided context, reinforced expectations, and modeled the behaviors themselves.

A second opportunity emerged through my work with the vice president of underwriting. The underwriting talent strategy emphasized developing internal experts who can influence outcomes, make sound decisions amid ambiguity, and communicate effectively across the enterprise. Although the underwriters were technically strong—with deep expertise in guidelines, pricing models, and risk factors—leaders identified a significant capability gap in storytelling.

The gap was not in assessing risk, but in synthesizing complex analysis into a clear, concise narrative that executive leaders could quickly understand and act on. That limitation affected cross‑functional alignment, slowed decision making, and reduced leadership visibility for high‑potential underwriters.

Skill circles offered a structured solution. Underwriters practiced telling the risk story with peers, received feedback from leaders who understood the business context, and ultimately presented a five‑minute narrative to the vice president of underwriting and her senior leadership team. The experience strengthened judgment, clarity, and confidence while directly supporting enterprise decision‑quality goals.

The design positioned storytelling as a core leadership capability, which directly supported the company’s goals of disciplined risk decision making, internal talent development, and sustained member trust.

We intentionally designed the skill circles to align learning with business execution. Several characteristics distinguished them from traditional cohort‑based programs.

Senior leader sponsorship and participation. For each skill circle, a senior vice president who sponsored the program actively championed it and attended the final session. Such visible leadership involvement reinforced strategic relevance and signaled to participants that the skills they were developing mattered to the business.

Peer learning around shared problems. We grouped participants with peers doing the same work and facing similar challenges. Learning was grounded in real issues rather than hypothetical scenarios, accelerating insight sharing and relevance.

Business‑savvy facilitation. Rather than use external facilitators unfamiliar with the operational realities, leaders who deeply understood the business context led the skill circles. That ensured discussions remained practical, focused, and credible.

Immediate application. Every session required participants to apply the skill on the job between meetings. We measured learning not by completion, but by action.

Skill circles succeed when rooted in real business needs. Begin by identifying a clear skills gap and a senior leader who will champion both the time and the model.

When setting up a skill circle, keep the technology simple. You don’t need complex platforms to make the experience effective; low-tech tools work best because they reduce barriers and keep the focus on connection and practice.

We used everyday tools: Zoom for live sessions, Slack for group conversation, Mural for collaborative exercises, and platforms such as LinkedIn Learning to supplement the experience with curated learning resources. The simplicity made the initiative easy to launch, uncomplicated to scale, and accessible for every participant.

Consistency matters. We rarely canceled sessions. The skill circle leader sent Zoom meeting invites so all participants had their calendars blocked to attend.

Prior to each session, I set up weekly meetings with the leader to answer questions, help plan activities, and review content from the learning plan.

We evaluated the initiative’s success using a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures focused on capability growth, application, and participant experience.

Formal methods included pre‑ and postprogram surveys to assess changes in skill confidence, readiness to apply learning, and perceived value. In addition, a follow‑up survey conducted approximately 30 days post-initiative measured sustained application and behavior change.

To assess overall participant advocacy and experience, we also tracked the Net Promoter Score. Across skill circle cohorts, NPS consistently met or exceeded 90 percent, indicating exceptionally high satisfaction and strong likelihood of recommendation.

Informal methods provided additional insight into impact. Demand for skill circles increased organically, with employees asking when their turn would be. In addition, other business units and verticals adopted the model as a repeatable upskilling strategy. Engagement data from collaboration tools, particularly sustained activity in Slack channels during and after the program, reinforced evidence of connection, relevance, and continued learning beyond the formal sessions.

Together, those measures demonstrate that skill circles built skill confidence and readiness and delivered a consistently positive learner experience that employees actively endorsed.

Skill circles illustrate several lessons for organizations seeking stronger alignment between talent development and business outcomes:

When you embed learning in work—and leaders who care about outcomes support the program—development becomes a performance lever rather than a separate initiative.

When employees learn together, they grow together—and that collective growth drives organizational success. The future of work is collaborative. Learning should be as well.