My view on following-up to the emotional spring-cleaning: making more space for objections and honesty

I made a very long post about How to manage power and responsibility in a collaborative group.

In that post I tried to limit myself as much as possible to reporting what I know about it, based on the books that I have read. In this one I would like to offer my personal view on the way forward.

I personally see three issues where we could try to do things differently to re-balance power and responsibility, all of which are linked to more talking.

1. Making more space to dissect objections

A first issue I see is an observation from Ted Rau’s book ‘Collective Power’, which surprised me by the amount of time and energy some groups invest in objections. Examples include “I object because he touches his glasses too much” and “are you sure you are consening, because your “consent” didn’t really sound genuine”. This is something we are missing out on a bit in The Reef, mostly because … we are only half-sociocratic. It’s easy to unearth and dissect objections in a circle of five people, but in a plenary meeting with 15 people it becomes a bit more difficult.

One way of solving this, which is also suggested in the book, is to spread decisions over several meetings. This way everybody gets the chance to reflect, and in The Reef’s context it should also be possible to meet up in a small group with the people who feel strongly about the proposal on the table. Maybe something for @reef-governance to have a look at?

2. Making more space for feedback and accountability

In a collaborative group, we take away the “power-over” that provides the central steer and control. Power and responsibility are thus distributed, but that doesn’t mean they should go unchecked. What sociocracy suggests is to do regular circle and performance reviews, and also that the circle leader provides accountability in a power-with way to the members of the circle.

Beyond that, I also think there is something to learn from what ‘Many Voices One Song’ says about internalised patterns of inequality (p. 244):

Consent is not a guarantee for shared power. There are always power dynamics: priviliges of all kinds are either on the the surface or very close to it. We all carry our experience of power. Most people, especially those who have had less-than-average access to privilige, carry internalised powerlessness. It is hard to work through that and impossible to just “strip it off”. We can start noticing it. For example, there are circle members who, in a round, will add preambles or postscripts to their contributions: “well, I do not know, my ideas are always not as good as yours,” or “yeah, that’s just what I think, this was probably not useful for you.”

A combination of awarness, communication skills and practicing equivalence can do a lot. If we hear circle members making their own contribution small, we often speak up and let know how we appreciate their contributions. That is probably not going to change their internalized patterns immediately but it might be a step toward awareness.

The opposite is true as well. If we notice that someone is speaking with a sense of superiority, it might be useful to bring it up. Some people are not aware of it and might be grateful for that to be brought to their attention. In general, we find that most people want to talk with a sense of equivalence but they lack the awareness or skills to do so.

Sociocracy requires people to claim their power. Sociocracy does not address internalized experiences of privilege! A way to address that is by doing personal work on awareness and privilege and power. What sociocracy does is to provide a space so everyone can speak as equals. Rounds are crucial here because rounds embody the sense of everyone’s voice mattering. As we get to know each other more, stereotypes and power-over / power-under patterns recede.

3. Making more space to talk about appreciation and frustration

Feedback and accountability are also the expected counter-balance for informal power. In a healthy group, feedback can and is given, so that nobody needs to feel frustrated, and nobody needs to worry about whether other people are frustrated. One thing we could do here is walk the talk, and invest more time and energy in NVC practice sessions. If there is an interest for that, I’d be happy to take that on. Another thing we could do, is use the Full Member dinners as moments of genuine connection, where we are all invited to speak our hearts?

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Thanks again @Lee, for the effort you’re putting towards all of this !

With regard to your three “issues” in order to 'rebalance power and responsibility:

I think about this from a facilitation perspective a lot. It’s easier to do with the big decisions that involve many discussions, but less so with a proposal that arrives and is consented to in the same meeting. I like the idea of spreading decisions over several meetings, but I suspect that there may be decisions in the future where there is not enough time to do so. Perhaps we could make more use of Edgeryders as a means of engaging with proposals beforehand, which might lead to the small group discussions that you envision.

Couldn’t agree more! Constructive feedback and criticism (of which we are sometimes averse to) is essential to collective intelligence. One of the things that dropped off my to-do list was to instigate team reviews with the help of Team Facilitation. I’m going to put it back on the list…

I hope that we have made a start towards bringing this back, and prioritising our connection as an important part of the work we’re all doing to realise this wonderful project :slight_smile:

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