Facilitation in sociocracy

“Hey, my name is Ted and I teach facilitation in sociocracy. Good meetings are core and center because skilled facilitators can help the group be equals and move forward. Being heard and understood matters and creates a healthy and safe team culture.

Whether you’re preparing the agenda for a board meeting, your community or your team meeting, meeting facilitation is essential for any group.”

Facilitation sheet!

A sheet for facilitators

– everything on one page!

Open in full resolution (color)

Open in full resolution (black/grey)

See a real meeting

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Opening round

ca. 5 min

Check-in round. Everyone shares how they are entering the meeting

(A good chance for people to get to know you better!)

ADMIN

ca. 1 min

Making sure the circle is ready for the meeting:

Attendance (Who is here/absent? Roles filled?)
Duration (How long is this meeting?)
Minutes (Last meeting’s minutes ok?)
Info (any announcements outside of the circle’s domain?)
Next meeting (When are we meeting next? Or, who schedules?)

Consent to the agenda

ca. 1 min

Understand the agenda proposal
(Asking for reactions/additions if desired)
Consent/integrate objections to the agenda proposal

Agenda items

All agenda items, falling into one of the below categories

Reports →
e.g. reports from sub-circle or parent circle, reports on metrics
Explorations →
e.g giving feedback, brainstorming, generating proposals
Decisions ↓
e.g. policy decisions, selections processes, possibly significant operational decisions, policy reviews

(examples)

Update backlog

ca. 2 min

What needs to be added to the backlog for future meetings?

Check-out

ca. 5 min

Meeting evaluation, e.g. with regard to

content of the meeting
interpersonal dynamics
process

Facilitation classes online!

Online facilitation classes on a regular basis.

You can also book a facilitation class exclusively for your organization (online or in person).

Find a facilitation class

For people with experience, or for those who would like to observe sociocracy in practice. Join us to play with facilitation scenarios. Find an upcoming session!

Find a playground practice session

Meeting Posters

These posters are useful for meeting rooms to remember the basic patterns of Sociocratic meetings.
The transparency of a visible poster creates shared understanding and accountability to an agreed-upon format.

Magic phrases: clarity, more ideas, forward motion, encourage rounds

If you’d like to print them all at once, use this pdf: high resolution posters.
Oh, and you can say thank you with a little donation.

Do you want to translate them? Send an email to info@sociocracyforall.org and receive a no-text image to add your translations.

Integrating objections

1. Understand

2. Explore

3. Synthesize

Ask the objector to state the objection
Allow for clarifying questions

Reaction round(s):
How do you relate to the objection?
Do you have ideas for amendments?

Possible strategies:

modify the proposal
shorten the term
measure the concern (more info)

Synthesize amendments into the proposal
and go back to consent round

Fictional examples
(full process)

Featured Resources on Meeting Facilitation

The myth of natural flow

Why we can’t pretend “just talking” will not be oppressive. Let’s talk about structures that truly liberate us.

Keeping meetings short

Long meetings are a pain. Let’s make them shorter. Here are the tools that sociocracy has to offer.

Sociocracy Handbook: Many Voices One Song

The practical sociocracy handbook written by the co-founders of Sociocracy For All. 300 pages full of real-life support!

Everyday sociocracy

How can we use sociocracy in everyday life? How is it useful to interactions, for example, with your kids, your partners, your neighbor?

Sociocratic elections of a epresentative

Sociocratic elections of a class representative

A booklet for teachers who want to try out sociocratic elections with children. By Lisa Praeg

Making of the agenda: past, present and future of the circle

Preparing the agenda with all aspects of the circle. Diagram from the handbook Many Voices One Song.

Diagram: Understand – explore – decide

Understand, explore, decide: different forms of agenda items.

Performance reviews: step by step

A schematic few of performance reviews

Preference, range of tolerance and objection

Difference between unanimous and consent decisions

Diagram: different kinds of rounds

Different kinds of rounds.

Policy process

Policy process, step by step

Operational meeting

Operational meeting, schematically.

Selection process diagram

Selection process, schematically.

Meeting sheet from Many Voices One Song

Meeting sheet from the handbook Many Voices One Song.

Decision making sheet

Click to open a high-resolution sheet!

Range of tolerance overlap

Different ranges of tolerance overlap and give more room for common ground.

Range of tolerance

An infographic on preferences, range of tolerance and objections based on the aim

Meeting poster: meeting format

A poster showing the sociocratic meeting format

Meeting poster: consent

A poster on the consent process for policy

Meeting clip: Generating a proposal

A recording of an improvised demonstration of the entire process of picture forming/ proposal shaping, consent process and integrating an objection looks like.