Community agreements (also called group, shared, or mutual agreements) are used to guide how individuals engage with one another during gatherings. From one-off events to regular meetings, agreements are now commonplace.
Despite their prevalence, many designers and facilitators in the decolonizing design community observed that agreements often felt performative, rarely supported the needs of a group, and lacked mechanisms for collective accountability and care. While co-creation may help create collective accountability, it is not always guaranteed. Furthermore, agreements are particularly challenging to maintain with groups whose needs and size shift over time.
Leaning into the discomfort we felt around the effectiveness of our own community agreements, we put them up for scrutiny during our monthly decolonizing design labs. Drawing inspiration from Elise Granata's article, The Occasional Flimsiness of Group Agreements, we embarked on a journey to dissect and re-imagine our approach to agreements. We aimed to transform them into meaningful tools for community care that support our mission and purpose.
OUR AREA OF INQUIRY
We focused on three challenges which we defined as critical to our work decolonizing design: (i) The disconnect between agreements and a gathering’s design / purpose (ii) The relationship between psychological safety & collective accountability, and (iii) Unintended reinforcement of White Supremacy Culture.
The challenges and the experiments we identify are in no way comprehensive. We welcome reflections, practices and experiments from our wider community!
(i) The disconnect between agreements and a gathering’s design / purpose: Agreements felt ineffective, meaningless and performative when they were ‘recycled’ out of context and did not align with a gathering's design or purpose. Consider for example, an agreement for a team strategy retreat event that seeks to elevate “relationships over transactions” without providing space for connection in the agenda.
EXPERIMENTS TO TRY:
Embedding agreements into the design of a gathering: Effective agreements are integrated into the fabric of a gathering by design. Using the team strategy retreat example, the event facilitators might practice this agreement by providing a capacious agenda with plenty of structured connection activities balanced with content heavy strategy work, and intentionally making space for one-on-one meetings, individual reflection, processing and ‘digestion time’. This could also mean eschewing the norm of introducing people by their credentials and instead having people introduce themselves with personal stories as a way to find common ground.
Being intentional about when agreements are needed (and when they aren’t): Depending on the purpose of a gathering and the composition of a group, agreements may not be needed. Instead, consider an activity that helps each individual connect with the purpose of the gathering by asking them to reflect and share: What do you need from this space? What can you contribute to this space? What are you willing to commit to in service of this gathering’s purpose? This approach may be particularly relevant for one-off gatherings as a mechanism for creating individual (and possibly collective) accountability.
(ii) The relationship between agreements, psychological safety & collective accountability: When individuals or groups lack psychological safety, they are less likely to participate fully or be engaged. This might skew outcomes in favor of those members of a group who hold more power. In turn, this creates a vicious cycle that erodes relationship building, trust, inclusivity and engagement, especially among people who hold relatively less power as a result of their positionality within a system. Having an agreement like “take space, make space” is ineffective when the people who identify as introverts, neurodivergent, women, people of color or junior team members do not feel psychologically safe to challenge white male leadership who dominate the conversation during a staff meeting, for example.
EXPERIMENTS TO TRY:
Naming & shifting power as a way to build psychological safety and collective accountability: This might involve providing tools, language or learning opportunities to help a group notice power differentials, using this awareness to intentionally avoid replicating power imbalances and shift power, with facilitators modulating their involvement to empower the group accordingly: When there is psychological safety, the facilitator might explicitly share they are stepping back while inviting or reminding the group to collectively uphold its agreements. When group psychological safety needs are not met, it can be helpful and necessary for the facilitator to step in and hold individuals or the group accountable to its agreements.
(iii) Unintended reinforcement of White Supremacy Culture: Assuming that written agreements guarantee adherence can perpetuate harmful norms. Using vague and simplistic statements and punchy one-liners (For example, “one mic” or “be respectful”) without acknowledging multiple ways of knowing, being and expression.
EXPERIMENTS TO TRY
More intentional co-creation: Letting the group decide what actually needs to be written down. Inviting the group to come up with alternative ways to document agreements, while consciously practicing and honoring other ways of knowing, being and expression: oral, visual, storytelling, embodied learning, movement, art, silence, meditation, singing, dancing etc.
Real time reflection & positive feedback: Using live temperature checks (such as fist-to-five) to encourage real-time adherence and reflection on agreements. Noticing and appreciating when individuals or the group are practicing agreements in real time.
Looks like, feels like, sounds like: Ensuring that anything written down can be clearly understood - for instance providing descriptions of what each agreement looks, feels and sounds like in practice, while avoiding jargon, buzzwords, words that are vague or open to interpretation.
Our Evolved Community Agreements
Our community agreements (image below) have undergone significant transformation. This is a work-in-progress journey of continuous improvement, recognizing that meaningful change is a collective effort requiring kindness, adaptation and a growth mindset as the needs and and size of our community shift over time.
Many of the agreements represented here have been inspired by and adapted from words beautifully woven by Audre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, Mathura Mahendren, the Design Justice Network, Pause and Effect, Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures and so many other fierce, brave and beautiful people whose wisdom, knowledge and lineage we have the honor and privilege of learning from and building on.
Community Agreements V2.0
REFLECTION
As you reflect on your own experiences with community agreements, we’d love to hear:
What aspects of our journey resonate with you?
Where do you see room for improvement in your own practice?
Immense gratitude 🙏🏽 to our community for being willing to talk about the ‘iffy’ stuff and using our discomfort to (un)learn. Special appreciation to Julia and Rae for their co-facilitation, and to Lynn, Kurbally, Rachel, and Rebecca for their thoughtful contributions. Sending love and light to you all, always.