Holacracy is a significant power for good in our world. It is paradoxical but breathtaking in its elegance and power.
An Impersonal Process
May 26, 2010 - 12:54pm
Holacracy™ Governance Meetings use a structured decision-making process to rapidly integrate multiple perspectives, called the Integrative Decision-Making™ process (you can find the mechanics of the process in a handout in our Resource Library). Despite the simple look of the process, learning to facilitate it effectively is quite a challenge. It often takes building new and counterintuitive habits, while unlearning current habits that made sense in the past but no longer serve within this new context. I think much of this counterintuitive shift stems from three factors: the impersonal nature of the process, the rules embedded in the process for the sake of dynamic steering, and the need to understand the process in the context of other Holacracy™ systems and processes. Let’s explore the first of these challenges a bit further: the impersonal nature of the process.
Done well, the process has a profoundly impersonal feel to it. This stands in stark contrast from most facilitation techniques; we’re used to facilitating the people, but to be an effective Holacracy™ facilitator you must shift to facilitating the process. You hold the process as sacred, and invite the people to take care of themselves. You don’t try to evoke input, and you don’t try to get to agreement. As long as the process is honored, you really don’t care how anyone feels, at least not in your role as facilitator. When someone violates the process by talking out of turn, you ruthlessly crush the out of process behavior without emotion or judgment, and you do it before they finish a single word. As far as you’re concerned, the process is all that matters – it will take care of everything else.
The process also supports this impersonality: An "objection" is about workability from the perspective of the Circle as an entity and its purpose; it is not a personal objection. The process helps people speak from this space about what is actually needed and workable; it acknowledges and honors whatever emotions are arising via the reaction round, and then shifts the focus beyond them. Once we’re no longer stuck in our personal perspective, we can use our emotions as clues to why a proposal may really be unworkable given the purpose at play. Personal emotions become sources of valuable information, but not decision-making criteria in and of themselves. No one’s voice is crushed, yet egos aren’t allowed to dominate.
Facilitating this kind of impersonal process can be extremely counterintuitive, especially for us facilitators who are used to working at the personal level and have learned to do so to good end. Yet it’s equally as transformative once we’ve built the capacity to hold this impersonal space and allow an evolutionary process to work its magic. It’s difficult to go back once we’ve experienced the power and embrace of this impersonality, and, ironically, once we’ve found a deeper and more authentic intimacy on the other side.
If you liked this post, share it:
About the Author
Brian Robertson
Brian is an experienced entrepreneur, CEO, and organizational pioneer. His work with Holacracy™ has found international support within both the conventional business world and cutting-edge movements and thought-leaders.
Other Recent Posts
Connect with Us
Join Our Mailing List
Receive updates about Holacracy-related content, events, and news.
Permission to share, publish, or distribute this blog post is granted under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States license. For details or for a summary of key terms, please see this page.
Add comment