Holacracy Assessments

Certify your Holacracy expertise.

The Holacracy Facilitation Assessments are designed to both assess and reinforce your ability to facilitate and coach a circle learning the new habits required in a Holacracy adoption. There are two assessments, the Governance Facilitation Assessment and Tactical Facilitation Assessment, which evaluate your ability to facilitate and coach during simulated Governance and Tactical Meetings.

Depending on your performance, you may be able to obtain the Holacracy Facilitator or Holacracy Coach credential for a period of 2 years. Passing both Governance and Tactical Assessments at the appropriate level is required to obtain either credential.

A Learning Opportunity

More than an assessment, these simulations are also a great opportunity to practice your facilitation and coaching skills in a safe environment. You will receive ample feedback to help you hone your facilitation and coaching skills.

How it Works

  • For the Governance Assessment, you will facilitate a 2-hour online Governance Meeting for a simulated company. The full assessment lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes to allow time for feedback from the assessors.
  • During the Tactical Assessment, you will facilitate a 1.5-hour online Tactical Meeting for a simulated company The full assessment lasts 1 hour and 45 minutes to allow time for feedback from the assessors.
  • You may take the assessment either following Constitution v4.1 or v5.0.
  • Two certified Holacracy Coaches will role-play as circle members and will follow a standard script. The two assessors will score your facilitation & coaching during the assessment and will provide feedback.
  • Each assessment costs $895, so the combined cost of the Tactical and Governance Assessments is $1,790.

Currently, the assessments are delivered in English, French, and German, but may be made available in other languages in response to demand. If you would like to take an assessment in any other language, please let us know.

How to Prepare

The best way to prepare for an assessment is to get lots of experience facilitating real people in real-life situations. In addition:

  1. Review the official scoring criteria for the Governance and Tactical Assessments.
  2. Review this list of 15 ways to attain the knowledge, experience, and skills to become a Holacracy Facilitator and Coach.
  3. One of our Holacracy Master Coaches has these suggestions for how to prepare for the Governance Assessment and Tactical Assessment, with lots of expert tips on facilitation and coaching in Holacracy meetings.
  4. If you still have specific questions, then post your questions on the Holacracy Community of Practice.
  5. You may want to join or set up an online practice group to exercise your facilitation and coaching skills live. Examples can be found on the Community of Practice, and here’s some guidance on setting up a practice group.

Book Your Assessments

Tactical Assessment

You will facilitate a 1h30 online Tactical Meeting for a simulated company.

The full assessment lasts 1h45 to allow time for feedback from the assessors.

Governance Assessment

You facilitate a 2h online Governance Meeting for a simulated company.

The full assessment lasts 2h15 to allow time for feedback from the assessors.

Please note before booking:

  • If you would like an assessment sooner than one is available to book, you may pay $50 for priority scheduling. (Available for English assessments only.)
  • Payment plans are available on request.
  • If you do not reach your desired level after taking any assessment, you may take the assessment again after a 1-month wait. There must be at least a 1-month gap between any assessment and retakes of the same assessment.
  • There is a retake discount of 15% after taking a full-price assessment, as long as another booking is made within 3 months of the first attempt.

To request priority scheduling, a payment plan, or if you have any questions or feedback about the assessments or the Holacracy Certification Program, please contact us.

How to prepare for the assessments…

Prepare for the Tactical Assessment

The Tactical Assessment is designed to measure your Holacracy facilitation and coaching skills during tactical meetings. You’ll facilitate and coach a circle through a simulated tactical meeting, which we use to evaluate different levels of facilitation skill.

The Tactical Assessment is more than an assessment. It’s also a learning tool that fills a gap our public trainings are not designed to satisfy. Therefore, in order to provide candidates the most valuable feedback possible, it is an intentionally difficult assessment.

What to Expect

The assessment is a 1.5-hour simulated tactical meeting that you will be simultaneously facilitating and coaching — as you would for a client organization. The meeting will be virtual, but the simulation will not begin immediately upon joining the virtual meeting. Instead, it will start with some open space for questions and framing.

We will have 2 assessors (Certified Holacracy Coaches) role-playing as if they were members of the client company. At different points during the simulated meeting, the assessors will notify the candidate to pause the simulation and switch into a real discussion about the candidate’s performance.

Please note that this is the very first meeting of the circle (i.e. a “launch” meeting), which is different than facilitating an experienced group. You will be expected to orient the participants to the process (and Holacracy) as you go through it, but you must balance education with your ability to get through the process smoothly and help the team process their tensions.

This assessment is also a learning opportunity, and there will be dedicated time for feedback. However, we will stay in the simulation as much as possible to replicate a real meeting. Feedback will be provided in two parts: the first about halfway through the assessment, the second at the end. During feedback time, we will start by asking you, “How did it go?” Use that opportunity to ask for specific feedback on something. It also helps the assessors understand your thought process.

The participants will be expecting you to “run the meeting”; however, they are familiar with Zoom, and to a lesser degree, Glassfrog. Feel free to call “timeouts” as you would normally. The assessors will call a “Real Timeout” when it’s time to debrief.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. You’ll also be able to ask the assessors questions before the assessment starts.

Scoring

Scoring for the assessment covers 6 criteria (in no particular order):

  • Mechanics – Holds to the rules of the tactical meeting process.
  • Support – Appropriately balances processing and learning.
  • Powershift – Appropriately addresses powershift issues.
  • Differentiation – Appropriately addresses role/people distinction.
  • Involvement – Appropriately balances involvement in the triaging of items.
  • Explanations – Appropriately communicates rules, mindset shifts, and pathways.

Each dimension will be scored on a scale from 0 to 2:

  • 0 – Missed: Misses the mark, or introduces significant inaccuracies that outweigh the benefits of the response.
  • 1 – Useful: Provides useful information, and the benefits to the client outweigh potential inaccuracies or lack of nuances. (Level expected of a Certified Facilitator)
  • 2 – Empowering: Accurate and well-articulated coaching that enables the client to move forward in their specific case. No inaccuracies. (Level expected of a Certified Coach).

There are three possible final scores:

  • Coach-level: 9 – 11
  • Facilitator-level: 4 – 8.5
  • Novice-level: 0 – 3.5

NOTE: Unlike the Governance Facilitation Assessment, we will be scoring introductions, check-ins, etc.

Setup for the Tactical Meeting Session

You have accepted a last-minute request from a colleague to “launch” a new client by facilitating their first tactical meeting. You have the following context:

  • The company, Healing Homecare (a Hygean competitor), has recently decided to adopt Holacracy.
  • Taylor (a certified Holacracy Coach) has been working with Jan and Susan (HR) to craft their initial governance. Others were consulted, but the effort was owned by Jan and Susan. It’s expected that this will be completed just in time for their first Tactical Meeting and you will be emailed a link to view their Governance Records an hour before your assessment starts. (If you don’t see it in your inbox, you may need to check your junk folder).
  • Only two people can make the meeting. One of them is Charlie, the founder and former CEO. It has been extremely difficult to schedule this meeting, so, even though much of the staff is missing, Charlie wanted to have the meeting anyway.
  • You are not aware of what previous exposure the participants have had to Holacracy (e.g. a taster, a Discovery Day, a Practitioner Training, read the book, etc.)
  • You have not had any previous contact with the client.
Technical Setup

Here’s what you need to set up ahead of time:

  • A high-speed internet connection (suitable for video/audio conferencing like Skype)
  • A webcam
  • A good microphone
  • We will use GlassFrog. Please make sure you’re familiar enough with GlassFrog to facilitate a tactical meeting remotely.
  • Headphones. If you don’t wear headphones, we will likely have echo, which will make it impossible to conduct the meeting.
  • Install the Zoom Plugin: https://zoom.us/download (choose “Zoom Client for Meetings”).

Preparation Advice

The following is advice from previous Tactical Assessment candidates:

  • “Practice with others and prepare a scenario for yourself on how you would do a real client Tactical meeting for the first time.”
  • “Spend some time the day before doing the recommended reading and reviewing the meeting design. Pay attention to what is supposed to be happening at each stage.”
  • “Schedule time an hour before the assessment to review the governance of the circle you’ll be facilitating.”
  • “Do not try to relate to the people in the simulation emotionally, because this will bring you off track.”
  • “Practice as much as you can first. It’s important to build facilitation “muscle memory” and that can only be done with lots of actual practice. Practice on total newbies.”

Prepare for the Governance Assessment

The Governance Assessment is designed to measure your Holacracy facilitation and coaching skills during governance meetings. You’ll facilitate and coach a circle through a simulated governance meeting, which we use to evaluate different levels of facilitation skill.

The Governance Assessment is more than an assessment. It’s also a learning tool that fills a gap our public trainings are not designed to satisfy. Therefore, in order to provide candidates the most valuable feedback possible, it is an intentionally difficult assessment.

What to Expect

The assessment is a 2-hour governance meeting that you will be simultaneously facilitating and coaching — as you would for a client organization. We will have 2 assessors (Certified Holacracy Coaches) following a script as if they were members of the client company.

This assessment is also a learning opportunity, and there will be dedicated time for feedback. However, we will stay in the simulation as much as possible to replicate a real meeting. After each proposal, the assessors will review your facilitation with you and provide feedback. During feedback time, we will start by asking you, “How did it go?” Use that opportunity to ask for specific feedback on something. It also helps the assessors understand your thought process.

The participants will expect you to “run the meeting”; however, they are familiar with Zoom and, to a lesser degree, GlassFrog. Feel free to call “timeouts” as you normally would. The assessors will call a “Real Timeout” when it’s time to debrief.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. You’ll also be able to ask the assessors questions before the assessment starts.

Scoring

The facilitation/coaching for each proposal will be scored primarily on the following criteria (in no particular order):

  • Demonstrating knowledge of process mechanics
  • Guidance of participants so that they feel well-supported
  • Neutrality of energy throughout the assessment
  • Balance between providing timely and effective coaching to seize learning opportunities, and allowing participants to learn by following the process

Each criterion will be scored on a scale from 0 to 2:

  • 0 – Missed: Misses the mark, or introduces significant inaccuracies that outweigh the benefits of the response.
  • 1 – Useful: Provides useful information, and the benefits to the client outweigh potential inaccuracies or lack of nuances. (Level expected of a Certified Facilitator)
  • 2 – Empowering: Accurate and well-articulated coaching that enables the client to move forward in their specific case. No inaccuracies. (Level expected of a Certified Coach)

There are three possible final scores:

  • Coach-level: 7 – 8
  • Facilitator-level: 3 – 6.5
  • Novice-level: 0 – 2.5

NOTE: The assessment is NOT scoring any initial introduction you may do as a guest Facilitator, nor the check-in, administrative concerns, and building of the agenda. The focus of the assessment is on how candidates help the participants process their governance agenda items. You will be given the choice of whether you want to do the introductory steps to ‘warm up’ or just go straight into processing agenda items.

Setup for the Governance Meeting Session

There will be 2 Assessors and 1 Candidate.

  • We will use GlassFrog to capture the governance proposals. Please make sure you’re familiar enough with GlassFrog to facilitate a governance meeting remotely.
  • The Zoom platform will be used to conduct the live virtual meeting.
  • The Secretary will be played by one of the assessors.
  • Simulation backstory: Hygean has recently adopted Holacracy, and they’ve hired your company to help them make the transition. You’ve just been added to the coaching team, and you don’t know the members of Hygean personally. They have already had 3 governance meetings, so this is their 4th one.
  • Viewing the Governance Records: Sometimes Coaches are asked to facilitate meetings without much notice and time to prepare. So to keep the scenario as realistic as possible, you will be emailed a link to view their governance records an hour before your assessment starts. (If you don’t see it in your inbox, you may need to check your junk folder).

Technical Setup

Here’s what you need to set up ahead of time:

  • A high-speed internet connection (suitable for video/audio conferencing like Skype)
  • A webcam
  • A good microphone
  • We will use GlassFrog. Please make sure you’re familiar enough with GlassFrog to facilitate a governance meeting remotely.
  • Headphones. If you don’t wear headphones, we will likely have an echo, which will make it impossible to conduct the meeting.
  • Install the Zoom Plugin: https://zoom.us/download (choose “Zoom Client for Meetings”).

Preparation Advice

The following is advice from previous Governance Assessment candidates:

  • “Internalize the process, familiarize yourself with the framing of each round, be sensitive to the energy flow, and be alert and relaxed at the same time.”
  • “Don’t over-coach.”
  • “Practice online facilitation – it is a special setting!”
  • “Prepare very well!”
  • “Integrate in each round the feedback provided by the assessors in the previous round.”
  • “Practice…”
  • “Treat it as a standard facilitation, try to not think as if they’re there to trick you.”
  • “[Thoroughly] study the Constitution, and [get] practical facilitation experience.”
  • “You don’t need to know every function of GlassFrog, only basic functions needed in the assessment.”