Sociocracy for Communities, Part One

“A visitor said she’d never seen a community meeting be so effective, efficient, and fun!”
— Hope Horton, Common Ground Ecovillage, Chapel Hill, NC

Sociocracy is an especially successful self-governance and decision-making method that instructor Diana Leafe Christian, community consultant and author of Creating a Life Together, now highly recommends instead of consensus. Because of its mutually beneficial, mutually reinforcing parts that provide checks and balances against “power over” behaviors, Sociocracy can reduce conflict in communities and offer four powerful benefits:

• Better meetings
• Getting more done
• Being better organized
• Creating more harmony and connection in the group

“We’ve made more decisions in the past two months than we have in the past two years!”
— Davis Hawkowl, Cherry Hill Cohousing, Amherst, MA

1. Proposal-Forming, a rewarding, participatory, visual way for people to create proposals together (including Evaluation Questions to later measure and evaluate each proposal’s effectiveness),
2. Consent Decision-Making, a harmonious, inclusive way to consider and decide proposals. (Unlike consensus, there is no blocking. Instead, concerns about the proposal are resolved during the meeting, often by adding relevant new Evaluation Questions), and
3. Organizing Effective Meetings of Teams and Committees, with Sociocracy’s unique methods of agenda planning, meeting facilitation, and transparent sharing of information among all group members.

The class is for people who no longer want to endure long, painfully ineffective, or even conflict-ridden meetings, and yearn for effective, enjoyable, good-will meetings instead. Participants will receive videos and handouts to watch and read ahead of time and practice these first two Sociocracy meeting processes in each class.

“Our meetings just rock. . . . people tend to have more energy after a meeting than before.”
— Hope Horton, Common Ground Ecovillage, Chapel Hill, NC

Diana has taught Sociocracy to ecovillages, cohousing communities, and other kinds of intentional communities and member-led groups in person and online, in the US, Canada, France, Sweden, England, Russia, Mexico, Columbia, and Brazil, since 2012.

“I would never have joined our community if we didn’t use Sociocracy. It’s our saving grace.”
— Kreel Hutchison, Baja BioSana Ecovillage, La Paz, Mexico

Part Two of this class, later in 2024, offers the remaining four significant parts of Sociocracy: the Circle Structure, Selecting People for Roles, Role-Improvement Feedback, and Consenting to Circle Members.