 | 5.6. Virtual meetings | |
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| ↢ | Chapter 5. How To Run A Sociocratic Meeting | ↣ |
We find that sociocratic facilitation is particularly useful in virtual meetings. For the authors, the majority of the sociocratic meetings we attend are virtual meetings!
In synchronous virtual meetings, we hold a meeting in a video conference. The meeting is online but everyone is there at the same time. The advantages of sociocratic meetings for online contexts are:
Clarity of talking turns. Especially rounds work well in virtual meetings. Most people can mute their microphone until their turn comes. Since we do not want to engage in cross-talk, being on a muted computer actually supports rounds. Rounds even make it doable to have meetings where some are online, some are in a room together. We do not risk leaving out the ones on the screen because they have their turn in the round.
It is easier to show real-time notes in a virtual meeting. We always have two windows on our screen during video conferences; one window shows the people, the other shows the agenda and real-time minute-taking. That way, if a circle develops content or someone makes a proposal during a meeting, that content will be visible to everyone. We always have full transparency and full access to information. We find ourselves missing that option in offline meetings! (One might choose to use a projector to show the real-time notes in an in-person meeting but then people are looking at a screen instead of each other.)
We also find that rounds make it fairly easy to be present with each other in virtual meetings even with reduced information. We might not be able to read the other people’s energy as easily as in an in-person meeting but rounds slow down and condense the meeting enough that we can work confidently with the cues we are getting.
One side note: when having a meeting with members in different time zones, the easiest thing to do is to keep the time information on the agenda as neutral as possible. We always start the meeting information with zero because we work in conference calls with people in different time zones – 0:00 marks the beginning of the meeting, whatever time it might be for individual members in their time zone. We can see at a glimpse how many minutes into the meeting we are at any moment. Also, it helps for not putting the facilitator’s time zone as the “standard”.
Asynchronous decision making is very different from synchronous virtual meetings. Asynchronous decision making is when a proposal is approved by each circle member consenting to it at a different time. This can happen, for example, by email, or on given online platforms.
Our experience with asynchronous decision making is mixed and we avoid it and only use it for very defined decisions in circles that know each other well.
Before addressing this, let us review the distinction between (policy) decision making, operational decisions and giving feedback. Policy decisions are made by consent and we need everyone’s consent in the circle. Feedback is just content that might be input for a decision in the future. Operational decisions are small decisions that apply to a particular situation.
It is very easy to give input in an asynchronous way. For example, we would ask everyone in a circle (or beyond a circle) to give their input on an issue, a needs statement, a proposal draft or similar content. People can add their information over time, and they might build on each other’s input (if it is visible to everyone what others have already written).
Operational decisions can be made very easily in an asynchronous context if we have a good sense of who needs to be asked/informed.
It can be hard to make a good consent decision asynchronously, especially when the decision is complex. For consent, we need to hear from everyone. We want deliberation to happen. Deliberation by email or in online platforms often turns into ‘‘decisions by those who spend the most time writing on their computer’’. Asynchronous decision making can work but it can very easily miss out on the advantages of consent decision making that create and nourish connection: equivalence (for example, how much we hear from every circle member), dialogue and deliberation, moving forward as a group, working through objections while being connected. All the advantages that rounds and connection bring to decision making can be lost in asynchronous decision making if we do not design and use it with a lot of care.