Dear Advocates, I have three roles in one circle

Hi Three Hats. Thanks for your question.
Here’s what fellow Advocates have to say:

  • In terms of multiple roles, facilitator and leader roles go together better than facilitator and secretary. Facilitator and secretary roles demand a lot of focus in meetings. Best to have different people hold those roles when you can!

  • Keep in mind the benefits of developing and sharing skills. While you meet the demands of not having many/enough members to fill roles, how can you encourage leadership in others? For instance, can you invite meeting members to co-facilitate an agenda item or two in meetings so they gain the experience and hopefully take on facilitating in the near future?

  • Be cautious about taking on more than you have bandwidth for! As a community, ask what absolutely has to be done now, and only form more circles when there are more members to run them. People who have time and take on lots of roles can be in danger of burning out.

Any more recommendations, please share them here.

Are you a member of an intentional community and have questions and experiences you’d like to share? Come to our next Advocates Community of Practice gathering on May 8th.

2 Likes


2023.02.13-03-Ce-facem

Having more people with facilitating knowledge and skills will be useful for the activity of a circle or for the overall development of a sociocratic based organization.


This is an important issue, as there is no sociocratic meeting without a facilitator, I mean a person who actively facilitate the meeting. Having more people with facilitating knowledge and skills will be useful for the activity of a circle or for the overall development of a sociocratic based organization.


When the circle has more people with facilitating knowledge, skills and experience, the meetings tend to has less tensions and the facilitation process itself tend to go on more smoothly. I guess a good understanding of the sociocratic facilitation process could become a collective knowledge power of the circle and all the circle members would benefit from it.


Double linking is very useful not only by the roles responsibilities, but also to be sure there is at least one link available when the other link become unavailable. In sociocracy, circles have to be linked to ensure that no circle overpower another circle. Links has full membership and full consent rights in both the child circle and the parent circle, remember?


Now, what if the circle facilitator suddenly or unexpected become unavailable? What if the circle facilitator decide that he cannot or don’t want to fulfill this role anymore from various reasons? Wouldn’t it be useful to have more members skilled in sociocratic meeting facilitation? Just think about this …


Also I guess that facilitation knowledge and skills are acquired in time, by theory learning, by practicing the facilitating process going through many situations and circumstances and also by sharing real life situations related to facilitation. Wouldn’t it be wise for any organization to be prepared early, before there is an urgency for a (good) facilitator?


My question is: Is there a place where interested people could practice meeting facilitation, increase their facilitation knowledge, enlarge their facilitation understanding and acquire the basic or advanced skills that a facilitator need? My answer is: YES! I know at least one of such a safe place to practice facilitation and I invite any interested people to join us in the:


Community-of-Practice-for-Facilitators-CoP-F


In the Community of Practice for Facilitators (CoP-F) no one teaches anyone, but we all learn from each other by practicing and sharing real life experiences.

We welcome your presence and contribution. It will enrich all of our sociocracy knowledge.

Next meeting is scheduled for May 8th, 2023, from 14:00 UTC (CoP-F East) and from 18:30 UTC (CoP-F West). We are abailable to schedule any other meetings, as necessary.

Best wishes to all of you!

2 Likes

Great resource, Adrian. Thank you for sharing this!

1 Like