Chances are you’ve been in a meeting where someone “made a motion” or “seconded” that motion, “called a meeting to order”, etc. That language and how it’s used in a meeting is from Robert’s Rules of Order. I was first introduced to that way back in grade school while in 4H and in student council.  Chances are that’s where you first learned about it, too.

Holacracy has a certain format to its meetings that follows the same thinking as Robert’s Rules. There is a certain structure and some particular language that is used when you are in a meeting. So today we dove into how to facilitate a governance meeting. In the morning Brian introduced us to the concepts, then we broke into our groups and had a work session. But the real learning for the day came in the afternoon when we had a meeting for the entire afternoon. Each person in the group got to take a turn acting as the facilitator of the group, then after each person took a turn we would provide them with feedback on how they did. It was like we had 8 meetings since we had 8 people in the room.

In my group, I was the only “Holacracy Virgin”. Everyone in the group works at a company that is already using Holacracy, so I had the most to learn. My first time facilitating felt awkward, but I got through it and was able to easy process through the items we had on our agenda.

At the end of he day the entire group got back together and we shared insight into what we learned. The day absolutely flew by – it felt like it was still the first day.