AN AGREEMENT TO NOTICE AND MOVE POWER

Every community has a way of being, a set of behaviors that are acceptable or not--the culture of the community. These ways of being are their “community agreements.” Whether explicit or implicit, they are either enforced through coercion and dominance or affinity and collaboration. At Colibri, we think that a team’s agreements about how you meet or work together can tell us a lot about their dynamics. Agreements are also a powerful tool in creating a space for being together that can either feel liberating or oppressive.

Only about half of the teams that we work with have agreements. Of those that do, many don’t use them regularly. Although not all teams have explicit agreements, they have a culture, and their culture shows up in their personal and professional interactions. Meeting agreements, when defined and used regularly, create clarity, commitment, and accountability. As Lisa Delpit explains in her writing, Delpit in Power and Pedagogy:

There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a ‘culture of power’. The codes or rules I’m speaking of relate to linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self; that is, ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting.

Our Agreements

We at Colibri defined these agreements. In ours, we make a commitment to: Take care of ourselves, Listen Deeply, Bring Our Leadership, Create Partnership, Notice and Move Power, and Be Brave.t The agreement that I am most proud of and reflects our dedication to Notice and Move Power:

We notice how power moves (Who speaks and how often, who is listened to, who doesn’t speak, whose words move the conversation). We help direct power toward those most impacted through our words, actions, and silence.

We bring a power lens to our work and declare our commitment to notice power, unpack our relationship to power and move away from a model of power-over, towards a model of power-within and power-with. And we are grateful to partner with organizations and leaders who welcome a power analysis as they radically accept and reckon with interpersonal and institutional oppression that perpetuate white supremacy and dominance. One of them recently reflected:

“The conversations about power really challenged me in that I want to create more power-with. As a director, I have power. That is something I need to remember...Being a leader means trusting in the unknown and trusting in others and that when you don’t know, that’s okay, someone else in the team will.  We all  bring different types of leadership and it all blends beautifully. ”

Agreements are not difficult to define. We wrote ours by reviewing our values and identifying ways we can live into our values everyday. We practice using them by beginning meetings with, grounding ourselves in them and choosing ones we will commit to that day, ones that we struggle with or ones that are needed for the topic of the day. 

Our agreements are aspirational, we don’t expect everyone to follow all of the agreements all of the time. They set the tone for who we want to be.  We consider agreements and a practice of using them as a radical tool for the transformation of relationships, power, voice, and collaboration.

*There is a black and white close-up drawing of mushrooms and flowers growing in a field of grass.