These are examples of common practices we use within Integration Station and in our collaborative projects with others. We are sharing them for inspiration and transparency. These are not “the best way to do things” or a recommendation for how to start. Every context is different and we hope that each group or community will discover what is most supportive for them through shared experiences, dialogue, and integration. We welcome feedback, questions, and ideas!
Core practices
🫶 Stay connected
We check in often to care for the work and each other. We meet in ways that support living and evolving our values and practices, like nonviolence, systemic change, curiosity, vulnerability, and gifting. We invite and welcome observers.
✅ Get stuff done
We hold shared responsibility for our goals, tasks, and the well-being of our ecosystem. We notice what is needed, take action, ask for help, and support others.
💬 Speak up
We share our experience, ideas, and concerns whenever it contributes to collaboration. When it’s difficult to do (or do with care), we name that and get support.
🚣 Move together
We make decisions that integrate just enough considerations to care for purpose, trust, resources, and coherence. We nurture strong external support systems to help us notice and transform habits like giving up, ignoring input, or avoiding discomfort.
🎉 Play and celebrate
We invite presence and joy into all that we do, with practices like appreciations, adding pictures of kittens, meditation, song circles, and dance parties.
🌱 Act with care
Instead of creating many agreements, we commit to caring for each other and learning through action and dialogue. We trust that we are all doing our best. We add agreements in areas where we need structure to support this commitment.
Decision-making agreements
We love getting things done! We want everyone to start, make, and lead decisions. We also want what we do to fit well together and work for everyone, so we have agreements about when to get input or agreement from others. Distributed leadership can get quite messy. To help us keep coherence and momentum, our stewards are responsible for decisions that have long-term impact on the whole collective.
How to make decisions
- If you’re new or only planning to work on small tasks, start by using the Advice Process. This means you get input from relevant people and then decide. It’s helpful if you’re willing to integrate at least some of the input, and others can tell you if anyone needs to agree.
- When you start holding functions (our term for being responsible for something), we ask that you adopt our decision-making practices and agreements, summarized below.
- No one expects you to magically know how to lead decisions, integrate concerns, or resolve disagreements. We all learn together as we collaborate. We recommend talking to people and asking for help. The Decision methods overview provides a quick reference.
- Members of the collective make additional commitments to use Integrative practices in all that we do.
Regardless of how you make decisions, aim to integrate as many needs as possible, including your own. Use Integrative practices to compensate for access barriers like language, internalized disempowerment, social inequalities, and less experience.
These reflection questions might help:
“How can I contribute to our shared goals in ways that work for everyone and build trust?”
“How can I compensate for my blind spots or bias to support participation from people who are very different from me or experience more barriers?”
“What would effectively move our project forward while supporting everyone’s sense of mattering and belonging?”
| If I want to… | I use this process | and I inform people |
|---|---|---|
| Do work on my own (tasks, drafting new content) | Act with care | In whatever way works for everyone |
| Make easy to undo local changes with low impacts | Act with care or Advice Process | Directly as needed |
| Make harder to undo changes (e.g., delete files, post to list) | Advice Process | By updating the decision log |
| Publish new materials or update existing ones | ISC collaborative editing | Directly, always include the original author and current holder |
| Lead a group decision during a meeting | ISC Integrative practices | By updating the agenda (with link to review the proposal) |
| Make decisions or changes with long-term impacts (e.g., strategy, agreements) | ISC Integrative (led by stewards) | Everyone participates, so they already know 🙂 |
| Escalate a disagreement (e.g., I’m not willing to follow a decision) | Full CF process | In weekly meetings |
Decision methods overview
| Process name | Who needs to agree? | Who gives input? | How much is integrated? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Act with care | Just the person wanting to take action or decide | No one required, can ask for input when supportive for self or others | Flexible, based on intuition and what we know or guess about other people’s needs |
| Advice Process (AP) | The person leading the decision (can be anyone), and any people or teams holding affected functions | Representation for people affected, needed for adoption, and with relevant experience; more if wanted | Chosen by the decider, based on sense of potential risks and enough support for the decision |
| Integrative (collection of practices) | Depends on the situation, often determined by team or group agreements | Same as Advice Process, plus anyone mentioned in specific agreements | For high-impact decisions: All input from agreers, at least one attempt for others |
| Collaborative editing | The previous author(s) or any steward willing to do integration | Anyone, see the content review and editing agreements for details | All input marked as “not safe to try*”, more if the editor is willing |
| Full Convergent Facilitation process | Decided as part of the CF process | All stakeholders or representation for them | All input is integrated (everyone needs to agree) |
* We define “Not safe to try” as “it would make it very difficult to continue our work or to be in integrity with our mission and values”
Quick reference: How to lead a decision during meetings
- Start with sharing a proposal: what, why, how, who, and when.
- If you don’t have a proposal, you can collect input or ask for ideas, then bring a proposal to a future meeting.
- Invite and answer clarifying questions
- Ask people to wait with concerns or “what if”, first check that everyone understands the proposal in the same way
- Invite and integrate concerns and suggestions
- Focus on underlying needs to find a solution that everyone can support
- If you can’t find a way forward, decide if you want to close the topic out or continue to work on the proposal later
- When everyone is willing to support the decision, clearly state that you made a decision and summarize what it is
- Assign any action items and follow-up needed to communicate, implement, adopt, and review the decision
- If people support the decision but no one is willing to implement it or you don’t have the needed resources, it is not actually a decision. Return to step 3.
Reflection questions for increasing choice
How much influence am I open to while doing integration of received input?
- Am I attuning to someone’s input to the point of losing connection to my own wisdom or what’s important to me?
- Am I confident to the point of not being open to other perspectives or the possibility that I am missing something?
- Am I closing myself to other people’s needs because I don’t think integration is possible or I find it stressful?
- Am I investing more energy than I think serves our purpose because I am worried about upsetting people or other relational consequences?
Curious how this could work for your group?
Connect with us to learn more or watch one of our recorded sessions.
You are welcome to drop by our ISC weekly open call,
Tuesdays at 16:00 CET.
📅 Add it to your calendar (.ics, Zoom link included) | Zoom link (to join at the time above) | ISC Signal chat
Photo credits: Four kittens on brown basket by Jari Hytönen on Unsplash | White and black cat by diego caro on Unsplash