Holacracy Election Process 101: Common Mistakes & Tips

Common Mistakes

• Skipping the objection round and just accepting the nomination after votes are counted
• Failing to allow people to change their votes (i.e. a second nomination round)
• Allowing the nominated person to express their unwillingness to fill the elected role before the objection round
• Saying why you’re NOT voting for someone else (you can only share why you ARE voting for your nominee)
• Not doing elections FIRST in the governance meeting if asked (however you only have to do them first if asked)
• Facilitator failing to stop all comments and discussion about potential candidates or nominations before and during the first nomination round
• Trying to abstain from a vote or nominating multiple people in the same round
• Failing to ensure first-round nominations are “locked-in” before they are shared. To surface the best data, everyone should nominate individually without reference to other’s nominations
• Not sharing a reason why you are nominating the person (it’s fine to say “no reason”); the Facilitator should ask everyone, “who do you nominate and why?”
• Failing to ask the nominated person last during the objection round
• Electing ineligible people: Lead Link role-filler as Rep Link or Facilitator, or someone who is not a core circle member (simply raise an NVGO objection to fix it)

Tips

• Only “core circle” members are eligible for election. However, the Lead Link can invite someone outside of the circle to be a core circle member as a “special appointment” (2.3.4). So, for example, this could be used to elect an experienced Facilitator if no one in the circle has the experience. HOWEVER: The Lead Link’s invitation must be done BEFORE the meeting (and with reasonable notice) in which the election happens.
• During the election process, the Facilitator will specify a term for each election. After a term expires, the Secretary is responsible for promptly triggering a new election for that Elected Role. However, even before a term has expired, any Core Circle Member may trigger a new election using the process defined in Article III (2.5.2).

Read “Introducing the Holacracy Practitioner Guide” to find more articles.