Season 2 episode 7 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about maintenance meetings: a meeting you hold for the overall health of your group.
'It's a space to focus on the maintenance of your group, rather than waiting until the car breaks down. It's like a regular MOT'
Show notes, links
Some example elements of a maintenance meeting:
Doing a capacity check, to see how much time people have to put into the group over the next chunk of time
Invite difficulties - “one thing you want to raise with the collective / a person”. To give it some structure, you could ask for difficulties across a few different areas e.g.
with power in the group (is it serving us? is it comfortable?)
the purpose of the group (more regular than 'at the annual strategy day')
the practice of the group (how do we make what we do better?)
the people in the group (do we connect enough? are there tensions to bring out?)
Do some spectrum lines to map how people are feeling e.g. on enjoyment, fulfilment, connection
If you would find it helpful, you can also use a version of a maintenance meeting agenda and slide template that we've used within R+R.
Perennial resources:
our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford).
See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.
We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!
Transcript
ALI
This is Resist + Renew,
KATHERINE
the UK based podcast about social movements,
SAMI
what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.
ALI
The hosts of the show are
KATHERINE
Me, Kat.
SAMI
Me, Sami,
ALI
and me, Ali.
SAMI
I'm recording this now, baby!
ALI
Shit, it's a podcast!
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the toolbox, which is an element of the Resist+Renew podcast. For the past three episodes, we've been talking about conflict in a more general sense: about frames and understandings. Now, from here on, we're going into tools, baby. And the first tool we're starting with is a maintenance meeting, which is a tool that can be put in place within groups. We'll explain what it is, its pros and cons and do our top takeaways. Sami, what is a maintenance meeting?
SAMI
So I don't have a concise definition. But I do have lots of aspects of what makes something a maintenance meeting. So, obviously, the clue’s in the name: it's it's a form of meeting. And so how we use the term is: a maintenance meeting is a space that you create to air things that can be difficult to raise. And specifically, it's generally a space that is used, in terms of the purpose, to discuss stuff, but before it snowballs in size. So to discuss smaller problems before they become larger problems. And that's kind of why it's called a ‘maintenance meeting’ is it's a space to like keep up the maintenance on the group as a thing, rather than waiting until the car breaks down. It's like the regular MOT type thing. Does the M stands for maintenance and MOT? Should I have checked that before now?
ALI
No
SAMI
Goddamnit. Okay, well, pretend it stands for maintenance; don't look it up, don't Google it people! And so some criteria of a maintenance meeting would be that it is something that is: regular. So maybe that would be every three months within your group, or whatever. And it would be, I guess another thing about it is it's it's something that's automatically in the diary, so that you don't have to actively go out of your way to call it because you've got a problem. It's all a space that's always there where you have the opportunity to discuss problems. And it doesn't necessarily have to just be for to discuss problems. It can also be like a space to build in, like, the opportunity for connection within your group to ...
