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 do, like, appreciations and gratitudes to reflect on how you're going. Or the kinds of things that you intend to do in other meetings, but they're the kind of things that get bumped from the agenda sometimes because you've got other more urgent stuff to talk about.

And we're talking mainly today in the context of you doing a maintenance meeting within a group as a whole. But obviously, this works at lots of different levels of group, like, this could be a thing you're do in a whole group; this could be a thing you do within like a, like an establish working group within a whole group; it could be a thing that you do within like you and you and another person who like regularly work together as a pair; it could be like a reflection space you just built yourself or whatever.

And just one more note, in terms of purposes, it's basically what it's trying to do is it's trying to create like a feedback loop, like a mechanism by which you and your group can know and you can like monitor, when there could be things that that could cause your group problem,s before the point where they have caused your group problems. So, like, thinking of it as that kind of like it's a feedback loop, it's a way of your group monitoring your group so that your group can do something about your group. Said the word group too many times, maybe let's flesh it out with an example. [Laughs] Katherine, take it away.

KATHERINE

Sure thing. So,I think I first heard about maintenance meetings from friends in Wretched of the Earth. And we sort of took that idea, shared that idea and decided to adapt it a little bit for Resist + Renew. So I'm going to talk about the way we use it in Resist + Renew, but just to name that, like other groups around are using maintenance meetings, and maybe in their own ways. So this is just a way of doing it rather than the way.

But just to share a little bit about sort of the way we would hold a maintenance meeting in Resist+Renew. As Sami was saying, we build it into our regular meeting cycles, so we know when it's going to be happening. And then have a list of kind of options or modules, if you like, or like ways of holding the space in the maintenance meeting. So some things that we have done in the past are: having a capacity check in a maintenance meeting. So just asking everyone in the group where they're at with capacity in terms of their commitments, both within R+R within Resist+Renew, but also perhaps in other workload, other areas of their life. Just so we have a sense of, like, where people are at more generally with capacity.

We've also done specific invitation around difficulties. So asking the group: what's one thing that's a bit difficult for you at the moment that you think it would be good to discuss with the whole collective. And then people might share some of those ideas. And we would work out what one we wanted to go into, and what we will do with the ones that we didn't manage to discuss in that meeting time.

We've had a general check in sometimes using spectrum lines, because Sami loves spectrum line, see season one, on the toolbox. And on some of the spectrum lines, we've included, are: ‘How much are you enjoying working with r&r at the moment?’ and people can choose like ‘very much’ to ‘not very much’, and we see where people land, and then have a discussion about it. It could be a question like, ‘how connected are you feeling to others in the group?’ and then again, do a spectrum line from ‘very connected’ to ‘not very connected’. And then depending on where people land on those spectrum lines is then really useful as a way to have that discussion, start opening up that discussion. And if, for example, there might be one person who's not feeling that connected in, it’s a really good thing for the group to then notice that and maybe have that discussion about why that might be happening, what might need to shift in the group culture and so on.

So really, it's just thinking of: what tools can you use to open up some of that more reflective space on how it feels to be in the group, how the group is doing? And these are just some of the ways that we have tried to do that in R+R, to give you some specific examples.

There are quite a lot of strengths and weaknesses to this particular tool. And so I'm wondering, Ali, if you want to kick us off with one of the strengths maybe?

SAMI

Could I, could I jump in before you do Ali, sorry to throw… just to give an example of the kind of things that can come up in maintenance meetings to give it something really concrete.

So for example, if I remember correctly, one of the things that came up in a maintenance meeting we had within Resist+Renew, was that like that myself, and Katherine hadn't actually facilitated like a workshop together. And like, hadn't planned a workshop together. And so, like, off the back of those conversations, we were like, oh, let's try work on this thing together, then that one ended up falling through. So now me and Katherine are like, oh, let's try and facilitate this thing together. So like, it's it's like a space where you can like create those, like, you can identify where there could be areas you can focus on before you're like, Oh, God, I've never talked to Katherine, I don't even know who she is, or whatever. Sorry, that was just, I’ll, I'll stop.

KATHERINE

Love it.

ALI

Good. Good work. Okay, so a strength that I like about it is that it is… I like the fact that it's a regular thing. So it's like, yeah: every two, three months, whatever you choose, that feels appropriate. So it means you kind of don't have to request it specifically, you don't need to be like, ‘Oh, something's been bugging me about the group, and I need to like myself, raise it with everyone else and create a space separately.’ It's there. And as long as it's not super urgent, it could wait until the next one. And then I know there's a space ready for me to like, say something. And it's, like,