99RISE OBT SLIDE NOTES
Team Building
I. Team Building Presentation SLIDE: Session 4: Team Building ● The topic of this session is how to build strong teams , the heart of our movement: small groups of people committed to working together to win. This is where the bulk of the actual grassroots, decentralized organizing gets done. ● In 99Rise, we have a National Coordinating Committee and nationallyfocused working groups that make up what we call the National Support Center (NSC), which is responsible for things like providing training, managing our website and social media accounts, and offering strategic guidance. But the vast majority of the work of our organization is done by local teams. And the NSC itself is made up of local team leaders, working together in national working group teams. ● In short, our organizing model is all about building and maintaining strong teams. ● We have all been part of teams at different points in our lives and we can probably remember some team experiences that were great and some that were really unpleasant or ineffective. ● 99Rise aims to cultivate an exceptional team experience so that we can we produce strong, effective, stable, supportive small groups to wage and win this nonviolent struggle. SLIDE: It All Starts With... Leadership ● The foundation for strong teams is effective leadership. ● Leaders form and build teams. But just like our different experiences with different kinds of teams, we probably all have had some good and bad experiences with different kinds of leadership. ● What does good leadership look like? SLIDE: What Makes Good Leadership? ● There are a couple views on leadership that in our view are extreme and dysfunctional. SLIDE: Poor Leadership Model 1: “All Me!!”
● The first bad model of leadership is what me might all the “All Me!” Leadership model. In this approach, one person takes responsibility and control for everything, doesn’t involve or listen to others, and doesn’t invest in developing others leadership, and who uses their leadership primarily to benefit themselves. ● A lot of our negative experiences with leaders who made us feel disempowered or pushed us away were examples of this approach. Often but not always, more traditional and very hierarchical organizations with large paid staffs operate in this mode of leadership. For volunteer organizations, it often leads to burnout and conflict that prevent organizations from really growing. SLIDE: Poor Leadership Model 2: “Everybody Right Now!!” ● The second bad model of leadership we might call the “Everybody Right Now!!” approach. In this approach, very strong values of participation and inclusion and equality lead us to deny a lot of functional and developmental realities and insist that we have no leaders, that leadership is bad or to expect everyone to take leadership on everything and often independently. This usually leads to confusion, even chaos, lots of conflict and can make it harder for people to actually grow and be supported in taking greater responsibility because there is no clear path of development or people with responsibility to enable that development. ● Some of our negative experiences around leadership or the lack of it sometimes in movement spaces, in small group teams that didn’t communicate or coordinate well or in many of the occupations inspired by Occupy Wall Street were examples of this model. SLIDE: Good Leadership: Responsibility, Interdependence & Development ● What is a healthy and effective model of leadership? ● In our view, a good model of leadership begins with affirming the act of taking responsibility to achieve something and help others to do the same and then supports that initiative with practices that enable that many more people to do so over time. In this model, leadership is interdependent we rely on each other and have clear commitments and roles. In this model, we lead as an act of service for the benefit of others (not for our own profit or power) and we focus always on developing the leadership of others to expand our overall capacity. SLIDE: 8th Principle Text
● In 99Rise, we are very explicit about our orientation to this model of leadership. ● Our 8th Principle, “ Leadership as Service”, states that “We affirm and respect leadership not as dominance or profitseeking but as an act of service and responsibility and a process of development and empowerment.” ● Our goal for everyone who joins 99Rise is to support them in developing as a leader in this model. That’s what we hope this training is doing for each of you. We hope that your growth as effective servant leaders will drive everything that you do, as you take responsibility to bring others together, form community with them, and support and empower them to work together in order to achieve your shared goals. SLIDE: What Do Bad Teams Do? ● What about teams? What makes good and bad teams? ● Bad teams are marked by several key dynamics. Think about whether you might have experienced any of these. SLIDE: Bad Teams Don’t Get Anything Done ● If you observe or participate over time, you’ll notice not much concrete is actually accomplished. If you’re trying to win a nonviolent revolution, that won’t do. SLIDE: Bad Teams Don’t Engage Others ● Second, bad teams don’t engage others they’re insular and aren’t actively connecting with more people to bring them into the work of the group. If we are trying to build a movement that needs the active participation of millions of people to ultimately win, that also won’t do. SLIDE: Members of Bad Teams Don’t Learn & Grow Over Time ● Next, the members the individuals in bad teams are not growing and learning over time. Their participation in the group is not supporting their development. This is a sign of poor leadership and a lack of a focus on training, sharing skills, encouraging others to step up. If we are trying to build a decentralized nonviolent army of civil resistance ninjas who can take on some of the most
highlyresourced opponents in the history of the world this won’t work. We need to be growing and developing all of our capacity consistently and quickly. SLIDE: Bad Teams Don’t Coordinate ● Finally, bad teams don’t coordinate with one another and collaborate in ways that maximize people’s participation, investment, and impact. They aren’t on the same page and able to take on complex tasks that require combining resources in specific ways. The task we have chosen requires effectively combining and leveraging very limited resources on a massive scale. SLIDE: Overall, Team is Less than the Sum of their Parts ● Bad teams, ultimately, are simply less than the sum of their parts which, in a way, defeats the purpose of forming a team. SLIDE: Might as Well Work Alone ● Members of bad teams might as well grind away as atomized individuals suffering the common delusion of supermanlike power in isolation… which is not good. ● Instead, we need to build good teams. SLIDE: What Do Good Teams Do? ● Good Teams meet goals they get stuff done they engage others and build, their members learn & grow over time in their skills, confidence, knowledge, and commitment, and they coordinate effectively to combine their resources. We need to build teams with these characteristics. ● So how do we build good teams? What are some of the keys to do that? SLIDE: 5 Elements of Team Success ● In our experience, these are some of the key elements of team success. 1) Relationships 2) Clear Purpose 3) Agreements 4) Roles 5) Rituals
SLIDE: Relationships ● Relationships , our personal connections with each other, are the foundation of everything we do as a team. In order to succeed as a volunteer fighting force that sticks together through challenges we need to really love, understand, appreciate, and care about each other as people. We need to party together, spend time together, be more than just coworkers but friends or fellows in a community. For leaders who are building teams, investing in 1:1 time with those you are bringing in is critical and intentionally creating opportunities for everyone to get to know each other outside of business time. SLIDE: Clear Purpose ● Strong teams have a clear purpose that they can articulate. In 99Rise, this purpose is established as part of our DNA. So our shared commitment to that common purpose and ensuring that everyone has a clear understanding of it is essential. It can be helpful to make that explicit, to build on the established goal of our organization as a whole and articulate it fully in relation to your own context by noting that you are working together to build 99Rise and achieve our objective by supporting each other’s growth as leaders and engaging and recruiting others locally and nationally. SLIDE: Agreements/Norms ● Strong teams need clear agreements norms and explicit expectations that define our commitment to each other. In 99Rise, we establish much of this framework within our 10 Principles. Two of the Principles that establish key Agreements that we identify as essential to successful teams fighting for progressive change in our country are Principles 5 & 6 Democratic Cooperation & Inclusion.
SLIDE: Principles #5 and #6 ● [Read and review principles.] ● These Principles orient us around the values that make for effective collaboration and communities that can enable all kinds of people the full diversity of the 99% to participate fully in our movement.
● There are practices connected to these values that we recommend and in time train our members in. For example, using a modified consensus process for developing proposals and making decisions ensures broad input and buyin while still allowing us to move forward without unanimity by a 2/3rds vote when necessary. We also use what we call Basic Empathetic Practice , an adaptation of nonviolent communication that can be very helpful for managing and transforming conflict, especially around deep issues related to identity, privilege, power, and culture. ● Beyond the 10 Principles, t here are additional agreements and norms you might want to establish. For example, you might want to have clear agreements around time timeliness, managing time or around followthrough, communication and how you collaborate. Being clear about these things helps us all invest more with confidence and feel more supported by and trusting of the team community. SLIDE: Roles ● We need to have clear Roles to succeed as teams. Roles enable us to have clear accountability, expectations, and better support. There are many kinds of work and different responsibilities involved in building a nonviolent civil resistance team. Taking these on explicitly in very helpful. SLIDE: Possible Roles ● There are many different possible roles and models of distributing responsibility among team members. Below are some common examples that often work well. ● Team Leader(s) : bottom lines meetings/events, holds people accountable, helps drive overall local organizing, etc. ● Online Organizer: manages local social media pages (FB, Twitter, Instagram), group Google Drive, local email lists, sends internal reminder emails, etc. ● PR Point: manages press list, drafts/sends press releases, makes press calls, cultivates local media relationships, etc. ● Recruitment Point: leads local recruitment effort through existing networks, checks in with team members about ongoing recruitment efforts, 1:1s, etc. ● Arts & Culture Point: creates and trains others to create graphics, signs, songs, chants, pins, shirts, props, etc. ● Treasurer: manages local funds and donations, develops local fundraising plan, budget, etc. SLIDE: Rituals
● Finally, Rituals are another element of team success. Chants, songs, and stories, and little regular practices are powerful ways of building a sense of community, shared culture, and identity as a team. They honor our relationships, our contributions, our growth recognizing these things and celebrating them regularly deepens and nourishes our teams. SLIDE:
Q+A
II. Team Building 1:1s SLIDE: Exercise: 1:1s ● A key skill and practice of building a team is doing 1:1 meetings, which function to recruit members, develop leaders, and to navigate problems or challenges. SLIDE: 1:1s ● 1:1s are intentional meetings to explore, build, and develop relationships for a purpose. ● 1:1s are just a more intentional and systematic form of something very natural, something basic to being human. We all have experience talking with someone for a specific purpose to help them deal with a problem, to ask them to do something, or to work on our relationship. ● With 1:1s as a relational organizing practice, we are engaging in this natural behavior with the intention based in our urgent work of building a mass nonviolent movement to end corruption and win the real democracy that can ensure a future for our people. SLIDE: 1:1s: During a 1:1… ● In 1:1’s we want to do a few things: establish trust, share & explore narratives with appreciative inquiry, and make clear asks for commitments with plans for followthrough. ● There are different contexts in which our approach will vary: an initial recruitment meeting might result in you deciding that a person isn’t a good fit or a leader you should invest in so after exploring you thank them for their time and say goodbye. If you do think they’re a good fit then you make an ask for them to commit to join the movement in a specific way. If you’re meeting with someone to resolve a
problem or strengthen trust for better collaboration then you’re more focused on exploring related experiences and building agreement around solutions and plans. SLIDE: 1:1 Exercise ● [Brainstorm a list of people you could set up a 1:1 with in order to talk about 99Rise and to ask about joining the movement.] ● [Narrow that list down to the three people you think are your best targets.] ● [Call, text, and/or email those people now with a proposed meeting time and place. Be transparent about what you want to meet about.] SLIDE: 1:1s Q+A
III. Team Building Exercise SLIDE: SLIDE:
Team Building Exercise Team Building Exercise Report Back
IV. Closing SLIDE: You Did It! ● Congratulations! You completed the 99Rise Online Basic Training! We covered a lot: our Theory of Change for civil resistance, the Grand Strategy, our 10 Principles, Public Narrative, Action Planning & Execution, and finally, Team Building. ● SLIDE: Next Steps & FollowUp SLIDE: Imagine ● So, to close, we want to invite everyone to take a deep breath and slow down, let it all this sink in, and reflect. Please take a deep breath and relax and don’t worry, we are serious, hardnosed nonviolent revolutionaries even if we do exercises featuring deep breathes and relaxation.
● I want you to think of someone in your life that you love that you’re fighting for, who needs the change that we are fighting for or someone who inspires you to do this work. Now think about what it will be like on the day when we win the 28th Amendment and legislation that fills it out, and that first election afterwards. Imagine going to the polls and seeing that so many more people are joining you. Imagine going with that person you’re fighting for and with the memory of that person that inspires you and imagine how it will feel, in their presence, to know that you’re exercising a power equal to anyone else in society in choosing the leaders who are dependent on the People alone who and will serve us and make our government truly of, by, and for the People; who will make government a tool to solve the urgent problems we face as a country and bring us nearer to the vision of more perfect union, a democracy of liberty and justice for all. How does that feel? Now, I want you to hold that vision, believe in it, and never let it go. Together, if we rise to the occasion with all the strength that is in each of us, we will make it a reality. ● Thank you for joining. 99Rise!