(this is the forum post repeating content from a newsletter)
How do you handle visitors in your circle meetings in your organization? Do you encourage them, allow them, or not allow them?
In the cohousing community where I have spent a lot of time, we had three sorts of guests, and I notice it’s the same 3 types of guests I experience in Sociocracy For All circles. Maybe you have a similar
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Some are invited experts bringing in expertise. For example, we might have a person or a helping circle that is visiting a circle to present something or bring their perspective on an issue talked about in the circle.
Those would typically only attend the part of they meeting that their piece is relevant for, but of course, they might stay. -
The second group is people who attend a circle meeting in a self-driven way, typically because they are upset about something the circle is doing. Let me call them self-invited guests. In the cohousing community, there was a desire to reign in this energy a little because of a worry of outsiders hijacking circle meetings. There was a policy that any visitors of that kind could attend a meeting and spend the first 15min of the meeting but then had to give the circle time to attend ot their regular topics.
It was, in a way, a pressure valve – assurance that everyone would be heard by the circle holding the issue they care about, while also protecting circle time. -
Thirdly, explorers. Those might be people checking out the organization or your use of governance (I call those “sociocracy tourists”).
We invite them to be a part of check-ins and check-outs and speak to “their” topic if that’s why they’re there, but otherwise we expect them to be silent observers. If we don’t draw a boundary, I’d worry that we water down the principle of defined membership, and people come once because they have opinions, and all of a sudden, they’re regular attendees, without an intentional process. I personally also have a particular hesitation when it comes to “single issue circle members” - people who join a circle because they want to lobby one particular thing, but have no interest in stewarding the whole domain of the circle with a longer term responsibility.
Visitors in meeting can be a sweet way to have cross-pollination, invite extra perspectives, and have an extra way of letting information flow. Yet, the dynamics around the topic can be tricky. How do you do this?