How does a GC leader go about creating an agenda for the general circle: do you solicit topics from the leader/delegates of the child circles? From Many Voices, “it is where the information gets shared. What are you working on? What does Department Circle 1 need to know about Department Circle 3? How can we support each other? Although the roles can blend into each other in reality, the idea is that the delegate reports from the department circle into the General Circle” Do you ask them to only share things they think would be relevant? Or do they share all of their decisions? Do they share things with the leader of the GC before, or is it rather free-flow at the GC meeting?
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Reporting from the delegates is critical to information flowing between circles. I can share some of what I see happening in SoFA’s GC. Report content is up to the delegate, and anyone could go to the minutes to find more information. So far, we’ve put reports in a spreadsheet and commented on them at meetings. Asking questions and reacting to reports helps the circle to create a deeper understanding of the perspectives, decisions and needs of the other circles.
As to agenda preparation, some of the agenda is determined by reviews of policies, budgets, roles, etc. on a term limit. I’m also tracking overall needs of the organization in its development as well as what is on the backlog generated by the circle. Any department delegate or leader could also request an agenda item be added. All of this comes together to for any given agenda.
The last thing I’ll add, is that I have aimed to have leaders of the circle come together semi-regularly for a meeting to share. I’d like to institute the same for a circle of delegates. These meetings created a sense of shared leadership and operational work that supports the larger General Circle. I also did this as part of Ecosystem Circle; we found it beneficial to organizational culture there as well.
At Treehouse Village (TVE) we’ve had different leaders of our GC (now Coordinating Circle or CC) create the agenda in different ways. Most often, several days ahead of the meeting, once the template has been copied into the agenda, the leader flags each department circle delegate (in Google Docs using @) and leader and asks them to put in their report in the appropriate agenda item. Some have left the form of the report very loose, some have provided more structure (we’ve used Rose/Thorn/Bud plus any decisions made, for example). Delegates usually enter their report and leaders add any additional comments. The idea is generally that everyone will have time to read the reports before the meeting so that the delegate only highlights anything of particular importance at the meeting before clarifying questions and feedback. It doesn’t always work that way in practice, but we try.