13 - 27 Sep 2023
Deciding together: tools for everyday life
4 EPISODES | LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Series Overview
Do you care about the people in your life, might they be family, friends, or colleagues? This series is for everyone who wants to be more intentional in their relationships, be a better person to be with.
Group decision-making happens all the time wherever there are people: at home, at work, with friends. While many of us study governance for organizations - Who decides? How do we decide? How can we be transparent? - it doesn’t even occur to think how we can use those concepts for everyday life.
Yet, those concepts are immensely helpful to make things smoother and clear, and to improve our communication and relationships in all aspects of our lives.
A self-governance trainer and consultant, Ted Rau has been teaching groups for 7 years, in particular teaching consent-based meeting facilitation. It becomes a mode of operating… which is incredibly helpful for any kind of conversation.
That said, our examples will come from all over: teamwork, home life, parenting, volunteer work, co-living, and everyone will have the opportunity to weave these frameworks into their specific context.
No particular expertise is required, besides finding joy and interest in recognizing patterns, communication, and self-improvement.
Who should join us
- Decision makers who want to broaden their perspective around the art and craft of making effective decisions.
- Parents, partners, team leaders, volunteers, educators who wish to explore how to bring clarity of who decides what and how in their context, and why this can be a life-changer.
- Anyone wishing to make a powerful contribution to the system they are part of, starting by being more intentional in their communication and relationships.
All episodes details
EPISODE 1
Deciding together: breakthrough concepts
This warm-up session will give you an overview of the two big frameworks that this series is built on: Sociocracy and Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Sociocracy brings the clarity of “who decides what, and how?”. NVC brings the clarity of what is important, why, what we can do to ask for what we need, while increasing our connection and understanding for others.
These concepts changed my life 10 years ago, and their depth continues to amaze me. I’m excited to share them!
DATE: 28 January 2022
TIME: 14:00 – 15:30 CET
FORMAT: WEBINAR
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TOTAL SEATS: 50
YOU WILL USE: ZOOM
EPISODE 2
Who decides what?
A lot of our confusion in every-day life (and in organizations) stems from lack of clarity of who decides what. “Who decides this?” is a powerful question that puts us on the right track for everything that follows – in family life, relationships, and in organizations.
Who decides whether the kids have to do homework before dinner, or after? Who decides where we go on vacation? If we decide alone, we can step into our own power. If we decide together, we need to coordinate. If someone else decides, we need to let go and not waste our time wishing things were decided differently.
During the session, we will gather examples from our lives where lack of clarity of “who decides” makes it harder to decide, and what strategies apply to the contexts where we decide alone, together or not at all.
Bottomline: Clarity helps!
DATE: 4 February 2022
TIME: 14:00 – 15:30 CET
FORMAT: WEBINAR
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TOTAL SEATS: 50
YOU WILL USE: ZOOM
EPISODE 3
How to decide together (with or without a meeting)
In our organizations, we know how to make decisions together: we call a meeting and talk. And then we vote, or ask for consent from everyone. Consent-based decision-making improves group decisions dramatically by introducing several phases: (1) making sure the proposal is well understood, (2) giving everyone a chance to respond, and (3) asking for objections.
In every-day life, we typically operate without formal meetings. And yet, we can still improve our collective decision-making if we bring the mental clarity of that process to our informal decisions. Let’s practice deciding! This session is full of practice of group decision-making, both synchronously and asynchronously.
DATE: 11 February 2022
TIME: 14:00 – 15:30 CET
FORMAT: WEBINAR
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TOTAL SEATS: 50
YOU WILL USE: ZOOM
EPISODE 4
Letting other people make their own choices
On my fridge, there’s a magnet that says “give me coffee to change the things I can change, and wine to accept those that I cannot change”. There’s a lot that is out of our control.
This episode is about acceptance – but also about how we can be cheerleaders for the people around us, support them with our presence and knowledge while empowering them, instead of giving unsolicited advice that they will ignore anyway. The two magic keywords here are feedback and requests: two innocent-looking but very powerful tools for every-day life.
While the previous sessions are about us as decision-makers, in this session, we will practice active listening and useful and empathic reactions when others ask us for feedback. We will evaluate together how empowering the responses feel so we can become better allies to the people around us.
DATE: 18 February 2022
TIME: 14:00 – 15:30 CET
FORMAT: WEBINAR
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TOTAL SEATS: 50
YOU WILL USE: ZOOM
What participants say
Ted is a gentle and witty facilitator and teacher that makes you feel safe and listened to and is great at running participatory exercises, even online. He is able to ground his teaching in his own personal experiences of applying sociocracy in both his work and personal life, living in a sociocratically run community. These insights bring a lot of colour to real world application!
When you meet Ted Rau you know you are in the presence of a keen mind and a large heart.
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