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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, a welcome invitation for that kind of difficulties that are there. And I think in so doing, it lowers like the threshold, it like lowers the energy required to or difficulties in saying something that’s difficult. So that makes it more likely to happen. And then we get more information about how the group is doing. And that’s useful. I think. Anyone else got any strengths they want to share?
SAMI
I can I share one, I think like, Yeah, I think so. For me, I think just to flesh out more on the like, like lowering the barrier, lowering the like energy required to say something: I feel like having a space really does help specifically with the things where where you’re thinking about them is like, oh, like, I’m not even sure I mind enough about this thing enough to mention it. So like having a space for it really helps bring out those things where actually, you maybe don’t care that much now about something that maybe you would care about if this thing continued for the next 12 months, or whatever. So having the capacity… having like, I guess, the invitation to bring things, and specifically providing space for it, which would just then potentially be empty if no one says anything. You’re like, ‘Well, I guess like, no one’s talking into the silence so maybe I’ll say this thing, even though actually, I’m not that bothered about it currently,’ or whatever. And I think that can be really helpful. And also you can do it in a space where because normally, if you don’t think it’s that important, if you raise it in a normal meeting, you’ll be like, Well, let’s not bother talking about this now, let’s talk about the normal meeting stuff. Whereas if you raise it in a space with the whole point is talking about random things you’re feeling you have more of an opportunity to actually explore it rather than sideline it and obviously, people’s feelings and human-ness should be centred in all of the meetings that you have. But given that it’s a thing that many groups struggle with doing, like making sure there’s at least one space where it happens is way better than having no spaces where it happens.
KATHERINE
And I think one that I would add in that I find particularly useful is that the maintenance meetings for me are a bit like a practice space, where I can practice saying difficult things that I might be feeling into the group. I can also practice hearing other people give me difficult feedback, or maybe someone has a challenge that they want to raise about the whole way the group is working. And I need to sit with that and hear that. And it’s a way for me to practice being with that and noticing like, how am I responding to this? Am I feeling defensive right now? Do I need to take a breath? How can I really hear and try and understand what’s being shared.
And I think as we said, in like earlier episodes, not all of us like have good experiences of being in maybe challenging or critical or conflict-related feedback loops. And so having these opportunities regularly to be in that practice of shifting the way that we’re working with feedback, sharing feedback, hearing feedback, can just be really, really useful. And actually, that can work like across levels of the group. So, like, full group is one space for that can work really, really well. But also, if you’re working on a project with like a couple of members of your group, having maintenance meetings on those projects, like we have a maintenance meeting at the full R+R level, but we also have a maintenance meeting for the podcast crew. And so we get to check in with each other on how we’re finding working with each other and have that space held so that we can share it. And even one to one as well can be a really good way to to keep up the practice.
ALI
Fractal! I’m just gonna say ‘fractal’ in every episode because they keep happening. I feel like that’s a bunch of strengths. Can we shift into considerations/weaknesses? Because I’m not sure, these are super, like ‘Achilles heels’, though. weaknesses. These are like, things you might want to consider.
SAMI
Yeah. I think I guess one that comes to mind for me. And based on what Katherine’s saying around, when you talk about like practising hearing feedback, as well as practising giving feedback, both of which can be difficult. I think what it highlights is like, the question of how feedback is dealt with in your group.
And so like, classic example, like to think of a work example, like, if you’ve got a hypersensitive manager, or something like you wouldn’t be the one probably to suggest like, let’s do a maintenance meeting, where then they’d have the opportunity to tell you off, but you’d never be able to respond because you wouldn’t feel able to or whatever. So like, thinking about how this would actually work within within this specific space that you want to set it up in is important. Like, it’s not a magic tool that will allow people to solve all problems.
So: some preconditions could be that like, that feedback hasn’t been like historically shamed when it’s been shared, or people haven’t been like, individually blamed for things which are structural problems regularly and things like that, like maybe what things you could see as preconditions to thinking that doing this is a good idea. And that doesn’t mean that you’d never do this in your group if those preconditions don’t hold, but maybe you would want to focus on different interventions, rather than a maintenance meeting. If you think of it as like a maturity thing. Like maybe your group’s not at that point yet, but maybe there’ll be at that point, if you do six months, or 12 months of another thing, or whatever it is.
ALI
Great. One consideration that comes to mind for me is like thinking about the frequency. So: how often do we want these meetings because you want to find like a Goldilocks level of like, let’s not do it every six years, because stuff’s definitely going to bring up, bubble up, and probably lead to like, out there conflict before six years comes around. But if you don’t want to do every week, either, because that just feels like a chore. So like, what, what kind of regularity feels like, regular enough so it allows people to know that it’s coming up and name things and share things often enough that it doesn’t build up, but not so much that it feels like a chore.
And I guess that’s gonna vary depending on how often your group meets. Because if your group doesn’t meet more than once a month anyway, then you’re not that tight and don’t have that many interactions. So maybe it’s less important. So it could could could be like once every six months or a year, if it’s like a loose thing. But if you’re working with someone every day, maybe you want to do it every couple of weeks and just have a can be just like quite more check in thing that happens more frequently.
KATHERINE
And I guess like related to that there’s something around being mindful around the labour involved in holding that particular space. And balancing that if you can. So thinking about like in a wider group meeting who’s facilitating that meeting, if it’s the same person every time they might not have the same capacity to share what might be their experience because they’re trying to hold the space for the group. So shifting the role around and noticing, like, does everyone feel like they have the skillset to be able to share that facilitation role, if not, and we want to have these maintenance meetings, maybe we therefore also need to scale up the group in facilitation skills, for example.
And I think also like noticing, who is the one that often is raising things, as someone who raises things, often, there can be a bit of a role that you can fall into, of like ‘the one that raises the difficult thing’. And sometimes people or other people in the group know that you do that role. And so they might not necessarily raise their own stuff, because they wait for the person who raises the difficult things to do that. So just being mindful, if you’re having maintenance meetings in your cycle, are there people who more regularly bring difficult things? Why are they doing that? But it might also be that that person is taking up quite a lot of the space. And so what would support the people that are not bringing anything to genuinely share something if they did have it. So kind of being mindful of who’s doing what, in the space around these maintenance meetings can help the whole group feel like they’re able to participate.
ALI
Yeah, and that makes me think of an aspect is like, there needs to be a baseline of confidence and trust within the group. So if you, if there are quieter people, what one of the reasons for that might be that they don’t feel able to share in the group and what work needs to be done before that? So that kind of speaks to what Sami was saying earlier on, like, the maturity level of the group or like, I don’t know, just like the readiness of individuals and the group as a whole to to share. And there might be, yeah, more things that need to happen before that.
SAMI
And then I guess, like, so linked into that, like, these aren’t… maintenance meetings aren’t like a magic intervention. And so building on what Ali’ssaying like it’s not, it shouldn’t be the only thing that you do you agree to like, build connection, and like, try and draw out difficulties.
So, for example, like Katherine mentioned before, like, we’ll do a maintenance meeting on the level of like, R+R, and then maybe we’ll have specific ones within like projects, but then we’ll also do like a debrief after we do specific, like run a workshop together, like two facilitators will do a debrief after that. And there’ll be other like feedback mechanisms and spaces to have discussions and things like that. So like, it’s important to have this as like, a suite of different things.
And that could include really explicitly reflecting on: Where do I feel like the group sat? And like, if I think this won’t work? What are the reasons I think this won’t work? And then what could I do about those reasons instead, which obviously, like with all things is probably best done. It’s like, not an individual reflection, but like working with other people to discuss stuff, even if it’s only like certain allies in the group or whatever.
KATHERINE
And just one last thing I’d add in on this is like, in the preparation for this toolbox episode, someone asked the question, like, Would an ideal group meet these? And I really liked that question. And I was wondering if either of you wanted to respond.
ALI
So I guess we’re when we were talking about this, we are thinking in the like utopian space of like: when it’s all good, will people need space to like, raise difficult issues? So I guess part of the thinking behind that question is like, if this, if one of the, the purposes of this meeting is to build the muscle of raising difficult stuff with each other, and having feedback, then potentially, what we’re trying to do is make feedback culture so normal, that it happens all the time, and you don’t need it. That might be part of what we’re aiming to do. And I think that’s definitely something that could happen by going along with this. And still, I think, the meeting serves, for me, I think it serves a function regardless, because I think it’s always like, useful to have that kind of space read- like that invites it. I feel like it reinforces the culture that it’s trying to build at the same time.
SAMI
Yeah, I think there’s a real like, even “after the revolution”, like we will still, this, like, you’ll still do that internal mental prioritisation of ideas, right? Like there’s, there’s always going to be only a certain number of a certain amount of time in a day between when you wake up and when you go to bed, there’s always going to be some kind of resource constraints that will apply in terms of how you do stuff. So, that that’s probably what leads to some people being like, oh, it’s not important that I raise this now. Like, I’ll raise it later. Even if you change people’s values, and all these kinds of things that underlie what people think is important. There’s always going to be some stuff which people therefore don’t raise. So having a space specifically to raise the stuff you don’t feel like you want to raise in the other spaces is going to be good, even if we’re all like feedback Queens. And I guess that links to a thing, which is like, what? So like, what is the purpose of the meeting? We gave a few example purposes.
But I guess one thing that is like, worth stating is like, explicitly not a purpose of a maintenance meeting is like, it’s the intention is not that it will like mean that there’ll never be conflict in your group.
Like, as we said, in one of the earlier episodes, like, conflict is like a really normal thing that happens in groups and in spaces and like conflict can be a thing that is like, either really challenging, or could be, like beneficial, depending on like, what the conflict is around how explicitly it’s done, how it’s handled, and all this kind of stuff. So it’s not a it’s not a thing that will like, stop anyone ever arguing with each other or disagreeing with each other in the future. The intention is almost the opposite. It’s to intentionally draw out disagreement and make more happen. It’s the going back to the forest fire example we use before, it’s like, more in line with the indigenous fire practices of making sure you do smaller regular burns in a forest rather than waiting, trying to avoid there being any burns, and then suddenly, the whole forest burns down. I’m going to keep using that example again, because I love I love it.
ALI
Nice. Let’s have some top takeaways. What are our top takeaways around maintenance meetings? Katherine, you got one?
KATHERINE
Yeah, I think for me it’s like, what do you need to have happen in the space for it to work for your group? So it’s not just about having a maintenance meeting in the diary. It’s like, what will enable people to share in that maintenance meeting? How do you build the confidence? How do you build the, the nervous system response to feedback of members of your group so that people can hear what needs to be shared? And people can share what needs to be shared? How about you, Sami?
ALI
Wait a second, just when you said nervous system you-
KATHERINE
Oh I did a little rub on my arm.
ALI
A soothing, self- soothing thing.
KATHERINE
Yeah, just just like, when you’re when you’re being met with feedback, sometimes the body can have a like, ‘What’s happening to me?’ freeze response and other responses also. And so there is, like, work that we can do on ourselves with our with our own bodies around like how we can hear feedback. And I think like thinking about what is the individual practices? And what are the collective practices that we can do that make those spaces work really, really well?
SAMI
Amazing. I think for me, it’s the – linking to a thing that Katherine said before, like these, I think it was Katherine? Like these meetings do need probably, like you probably need slightly more confidence to facilitate a maintenance meeting than you do to facilitate, like, a general group meeting. Because often what people are worried about when facilitating meetings is things kicking off and people raising difficult stuff. And this is a meeting deliberately for people to bring difficult stuff.
So I think like, I guess what it’s really important to say links to that is like the meeting, the content of the meeting should like should be really tailored to your group and where it’s at. And it probably will be true that what you want to do in one maintenance meeting, may not be the same agenda that you want to have for exactly the same maintenance meeting one year on, because what are the relevant things in your group that you want to respond to maybe different. Like maybe you’ve had some struggles with capacity, maybe capacity, what you want to focus on, or you’ve not been feeling connected? So whatever, like, it should be, it should be really, you should iterate it to make sure it matches what you’re doing. Ali?
ALI
Nice. Yeah, I guess my top takeaway is like the broad purpose of it, which is to have a useful sp- a useful space that is regular, that allows you to add things before things get a bit weird and intense. And that might be the things that are in your subconscious and you like put to one side, as like ‘Maybe it’s not that big a deal. And it’s a bit unnecessary,’ but it’s a space to like, see if that is actually a thing we want to address and see maybe other people might share it. And that’s a learning opportunity for the whole group.
KATHERINE
Nice.
SAMI
Great. And the one thing to say on this one, specifically, what we thought we’d do when we had chats about the toolbox, after season one, we were like, oh, would be really cool to do in season two is share more, like, resources and stuff. So along with having the transcripts and like a cool quote from the stuff which we have always had, we will also for this one include a template agenda based on what we’ve what we do within Resist+Renew for the maintenance meetings. And so if you’re thinking, ,how would I actually do this in your group, in my own group?’ then like, you can maybe download that and use that as a as a jumping off point. So look for the shownotes resistrenew.com Check it out!
ALI
Thanks once again for listening to this episode of the Resist+Renew podcast. Thanks to Klaus for the backing track we’re using right now, and to Rowan for doing all the transcripts for all the episodes of this season.
To find out more about Resist+Renew as a training and facilitation collective, check out our website, resistrenew.com. We are on all the socials. And we’re also on Patreon if you want to support the production of this podcast. That’s it for this week. Thanks for listening and catch you next time. Bye bye