Relational agreements
* Accountability: We do what we say we are going to do and communicate clearly and promptly when we are no longer able to.
* Gratitude & appreciation: We find ways to cultivate and regularly express appreciation and gratitude.
* Self-awareness: We find ways to increase our self-awareness in relationship with our; needs; impact on others; relationships with power; and, our conditioned ways of being, relating and communicating.
* Radical self-responsibility: We find ways to deepen our capacity to take responsibility for:
-our own feelings, needs, judgements and projections
-asking for support when we need it
-offering and receiving feedback in healthy generative ways
-engaging in the process of both rupture and repair.
* Empathy: We find ways to more and more come into connection with our own feelings, needs, judgements and projections so as to be able to increasingly empathise when these show up in others.
* Conscious communication: We find ways to communicate with empathy, care and compassion for ourselves and others, including; listening as much as we speak; speaking one at a time without interrupting; supporting all voices to be heard; owning our judgements, feelings and needs; making clear requests for support to meet our needs; seeking agreement around and holding confidentiality as appropriate; and speaking from our hearts and needs.
* Regenerative Feedback: We do the work needed to get better at offering and receive feedback in healthy generative ways in the spirit of radical self-responsibility, even and especially when it feels uncomfortable, and to respect any agreed organisational processes around this.
* Rupture & repair: We find ways of becoming more able to allow ruptures in relationship to unravel and to initiate and engage in the repair work needed to cultivate trust and safety.
* Resourced & available: We find ways to become well resourced and available within our collaborations, both physically and emotionally by; cultivating balance in our lives to avoid burnout; finding ways of balancing our own needs with that of the group; and saying ‘no’ when we need to.
* Healthy flexible boundaries: We give teeth to our relational agreements such that if a team member is unable to consistently bring themselves in alignment with the spirit of our relational agreements and this is having a significant impact within the team and our ability to deliver on the organisational purpose, we may need to suspend or exclude someone from the team.
This may be temporary in order to create some space for the team member and/or team to find support around the challenge they are experiencing, or it may be permanent, depending on the situation, degree and nature of impact and the dynamics involved. It is down to individual team members to bring a proposal for exclusion, in which case the person proposed to be excluded would not have objection rights for that particular consent decision-making process.
How we relate with these agreements
Our relational agreements provide a snapshot of our current perspective on what supports relational culture. These agreed ways of being and relating provide a container that intends to support enough safety within each of us to be able to regeneratively experiment and collaborate within.They provide somewhat of a north-star (overarching intentions) for how we are agreeing to relate within our collaborative culture - and a reference point for when tensions and conflict arises.
All Starter Culture team members and close collaborators commit to proactively continuing our inner work, especially shadow and relational work, and tending any protective strategies so that they are less likely to drive the bus within our collaborations. In this way we become more and more able to align with these relational agreements, whilst recognising that these remain a practice field and growing edge rather than grounds for judgement or perfectionism.
