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!
Spanish | Chinese | Danish | French | Polish | Swedish | Hebrew | Portuguese | Italian
Want to translate it? Contact info@sociocracyforall.org for an editable version.
See a real meeting
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
- 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
Check-out
ca. 5 min
- content of the meeting
- interpersonal dynamics
- process
Facilitation classes online!
Online facilitation classes (3 x 2 hours).
Join an open class or book a facilitation class exclusively for your organization.
The same level but in a video-based, self-paced format for groups. Groups of 4-8 people can practice together with a variety of scenarios and practice tips.
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.
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
Allow for clarifying questions
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)
and go back to consent round
(full process)
Featured Resources on Meeting Facilitation
A facilitator’s guide to keeping meetings on track
Stop overthinking. Start doing. Improve from there.
Decision-making methods: a comparison
The way we come to a decision has a lot of influence on how people behave, how many voices can be heard, how they feel about the group they are a part of and what quality decision is going to be made. The pros and cons of autocratic decision-making, voting, consensus and consent.
The sociocratic meeting format
The sociocratic meeting format
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 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.
Meeting clip: check-in round
A clip from a real-life meeting: check-ins
Meeting clip: objections
Recording from a practice session on integrating objections. This is a fully improvised example.