Congratulations to your circle for having you as circle coordinator! You make sure that the circle is achieving its aims - not by doing everything yourself - but by supporting your teammates and keeping everyone working towards a shared goal. Often, you’re the person people both inside and out come to first for feedback, help, and understanding.
Role Description
Aims: What you do
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Basics
- Plan for the future
- Clarify who is doing what and by when
- Check-in with people
- Notice when items are not getting done and deal with them or bring them to the circle
- Attend both the circle’s meetings and the meetings of its next broader circle
- Act as the circle’s spokesperson to the outside community (this role can be broken out and held by a different person)
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Advanced
- Actively recruit new members
- Train others in the coordinator role
Domains: What you manage
- Overall circle strategy/plan
- Member growth and development
Related Circles, Roles, and Policies
- Collaborate closely with the facilitator and secretary role holders to plan meetings
The First 30 Days
1. Share your new role
Let people know about your new role as circle coordinator. This helps folks know who to go to for help and makes leadership transparent.
YPC Specific Directions
- Update the members and roles section of your circle’s meeting notes
- Post in #announcements (or make sure another member of your circle, does!)
2. Join Circle Role Holder Groups
Get to know other coordinator role holders! We learn so much from the community.
YPC Specific Directions
- Circle role holders group on Discourse. As part of this Discourse group, you become a forum leader. Read Understanding Discourse Trust Levels “Trust Level 4 - Leader” to understand your new forum powers.
- Circle role holders Google Group. As part of this Google Group, you get permission to do things like change the YPC Admin Calendar and manage Shared Drive members.
#governanceon Slack to have a community of fellow role holders to learn from and support
3. Become an expert in the top how-tos and policies related to your role
Your project/team/organization will have how-tos and policies related to your role. Learn and follow them, then make them better!
YPC Specific Directions
- Understand Youth Power Coalition’s Grand Strategy - every circle’s work contributes to it!
- Understand YPC Member Roles so you can help members find their YPC homes
As you grow in your skills, check out all the docs
4. Ask your circle to give you feedback after you’ve been a coordinator for about 3 meetings.
- How am I doing with attending meetings of both our circle and the next broader circle?
- How am I doing with following up, tracking tasks, and checking in?
- How well am I reporting what’s going on in the rest of the organization?
- How well am I supporting the creation of the agenda?
- How well am I supporting the circle’s effectiveness?
- Anything else? Anything I need to do more or less?
5. Update this post to make it even better for future coordinators.
Learning Resources
There is a lot of information out there on how to be a good coordinator. Here are some favorites from Sociocracy for All, which calls this role the leader role.
- Leadership in Sociocracy video
- Leadership without hierarchy - how to be a good leader article
- On interpersonal feedback article
Improvements
Add tips
Credits
Please share this guide with credit to Sociocracy for All and Youth Power Coalition. Sociocracy for All trained us in sociocracy and we adopted their content for our youth-led context. You can add or change it all you want, just keep your work free for everyone to use.
The legalese
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.