Lead a Team
The goal is to help you:
- Lead the team's work
- Make decisions collectively
- Gain simplicity and autonomy in a concrete way, with joy and good humor
While waiting for the "How to bring a team to life" method sheet, we suggest the following steps.
1. Take a moment to begin
Is your team set up? Great! First, we invite you to come together around one key word: friendliness :)
Take some informal, relaxed, festive time to get to know each other, introduce yourselves, and chat. Your first meeting can be dedicated solely to this!
Continue celebrating the formation of your team and discuss your motivations: why are you here? How do you see the future in the short, medium, and long term? Both globally and locally. What role do you want to play in the team? This can be done informally, and roles can be assigned after several meetings.
Also share what you expect from the team, as the goal of teams is to gain simplicity, mutual support, and autonomy in order to face the turbulence of our century as calmly as possible. Together, set a team goal—one that will not be set in stone and will certainly evolve over time.
2. Distribute roles
We recommend the following roles to begin with:
- a coordinator who plans and organizes meetings,
- a mediator who organizes discussions and decisions during meetings,
- a timekeeper,
- a scribe who records what is said and done and fills in the REGISTER: the paper and/or digital tools where decisions are recorded,
- two buzzers who are in charge of communication with the buzzers of other teams, particularly for the creation of tribes and the organization of assemblies.
All these roles can be assigned by vote without candidates and renewed every 6 months.
3. Organize meetings
This is the role of the coordinator, based on everyone's wishes and requirements.
We recommend at least one face-to-face meeting every month and a half in order to maintain the team's connection and momentum.
To set the date and location, we recommend creating a group on Signal and using the poll function (or Doodle on the internet).
- The coordinator sends the agenda to all participants, specifying, if the team has decided to deal with several topics, the person responsible for each topic within the team.
- Each participant can request to add items to the agenda.
- Each participant can contact a topic leader for more information or details.
- The day before, if necessary, the coordinator sends out the final agenda.
4. Choose the topics to work on
You can choose to:
- Discuss one topic together and then move on to another,
- Choose several topics, divide them up, and discuss them gradually, at the same time.
Not everyone has to be involved in the same way in all topics. There may well be some specialization, but the goal is for everyone to share a minimum level of competence in all topics. And for the work to be fairly distributed.
EQUIPMENT
💦 Water supply: drinking water, sanitation, agriculture
🥕 Access to healthy food
🔆 Access to energy
🌡️ Heating and cooling
🥋 Safety - Protection
RELATIONAL
🎉 Friendliness
🍻 Health - Care (preventive + curative + well-being)
🎭 Arts and leisure
⛑️ Sustainability of the living environment (anticipation of fires, floods, etc.)
🤬 Anticipation and resolution of conflicts
SOCIAL
📻 Access to Information - Communication
🐥 Welcoming Newcomers to the Territory
🧒🏻 Passing on Knowledge to Children
🏘️ Local Cooperation
🚀 Mobility
5. Lead meetings
A specific sheet for this part of the Team's life will soon be available, because facilitating a meeting is an art! In the meantime, we are laying the following foundations:
- Reminder of the agenda (ODJ)
- Definition of roles for the meeting: scribe, timekeeper, circle keeper (to stay on topic and not get sidetracked)
- Weather report: how is everyone feeling?
- Discussion of agenda items and decisions (see section 6)
- Celebrations
- Set the date and time of the next meeting and decide on the next facilitator.
- Closing check-in
6. Make decisions
For this phase, which is also fundamental in the life of Teams, we will soon be offering a dedicated Method sheet. In the meantime, here is a process derived from holacracy:
- Announcement and expression of the proposal
The proposer clearly states their idea or request without interruption, in order to fully share their feelings or desire for change.
Clarifications
Team members can ask questions to better understand the proposal. Clarification questions are essential; they are not criticisms but allow for clarification of the elements.
Round of opinions
Each participant takes turns expressing their opinion on the proposal, without interruption or back-and-forth debate, allowing all voices to be heard, including the less assertive ones.
Detecting and Formulating Objections
Participants are specifically asked if anyone has an objection to the proposal (rather than seeking consensus). An objection is only admissible if it could cause harm to the organization.
Handling Objections
Valid objections are discussed with the person who proposed the idea in order to incorporate adjustments or counterproposals. This process is repeated until there are no more valid objections.
Adopting the decision by consent
The proposal is adopted as soon as there are no valid objections remaining. The decision is therefore made by consent of the parties (no one is against it) and not by consensus (everyone agrees), facilitating quick and efficient decision-making.
Progress and connect
As you move forward, other Teams will also move forward.
Option A's mission is to build a Network, enabling nearby Teams to connect with each other (in Tribes of 12 Teams), but also to share each other's experiences on a global level.
Until the sharing tool (Option A platform) is complete, your contribution to the project will be crucial.