213 - Unleashing Autonomy: Facilitating Self-Organising Systems with Bob Dick
Apr 18, 2023
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Experienced Bob Dick delves into self-organising groups, hierarchy removal, and the path to self-organising systems. Discusses honesty, empathy, storytelling, and the Australasian Facilitator Network. Explores the role of a facilitator, autonomy in education, and community building. Touches on virtual meetings, structured vs self-organising facilitation, mystical practices, and embracing autonomy and effective facilitation.
Facilitating self-organizing groups requires honesty, empathy, and storytelling as a foundation for success.
Balancing control and autonomy is essential for enabling self-regulation within organizations and communities.
Encouraging curiosity over defensiveness in facilitation leads to a culture of consent decision-making and partnership dynamics.
Deep dives
The Role of a Facilitator in Self-Organizing Systems
Facilitation is discussed as a vulnerable set of tools that educators and consultants use to help individuals achieve desired outcomes. The importance of the facilitator's mindset and the balance between making tasks easy without removing obstacles for growth is highlighted.
The Ideological Aspects of Facilitation
Facilitators often focus on making the implicit explicit to foster open communication and understanding within groups. The reluctance to adhere to strict labels like 'facilitator' stems from the belief that it may constrain the facilitator's ability to navigate various roles and ideologies.
The Challenge of Balancing Control and Autonomy
Balancing control and autonomy within organizations or communities is crucial to enable self-regulation. The concept of providing freedom within limits and clear boundaries for self-organization is emphasized to maintain agility and collaboration.
Community Dynamics and Self-Regulation
Lessons from self-organizing systems like the Australasian Facilitators Network showcase the effectiveness of smaller self-organizing groups within larger structures. The importance of clear boundaries, loose structures, and community enforcement mechanisms is highlighted.
Promoting Curiosity and learning in Facilitation
Encouraging curiosity over defensiveness and ego in facilitation leads to learning and growth. The ability to shift perspectives, embrace wonder, and practice in-profit acceptance fosters a culture of consent decision-making and partnership dynamics.
What happens to a group when there is no leader, no subordinates, and no sense of hierarchy at all? Bob Dick believes this is the optimal approach to group structures — to be self-organised, not instructed or commanded.
Quite how we can consistently achieve this is another question; one that Bob has been experimenting with for as long as he can remember.
Bob has rich experience in creating self-organising groups, facilitating their development, and knowing what not to do.
Find out about:
Why control — in all directions — is uncomfortable for Bob
What happens when we remove the hierarchy from group settings
How to initially facilitate a group to then adopt a self-organising system
How Bob separates facilitators along a spectrum from sceptic to mystics
What a self-organising group — the Australasian Facilitator Network — looks like in real life and how it operates
Why the path to self-organising starts with honesty, empathy, and storytelling
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