Navigating Growth in Community

What hermit crabs teach us about decentralizing leadership

It’s the day after the microsolidarity winter retreat. This retreat was the 2nd big in-person event that I cohosted for the microsolidarity network and I want to share what I’m learning while it’s fresh. The main theme of the retreat and what I’m learning is about decentralizing leadership and succession. It’s become so clear to me that the core skill for decentralizing leadership is to enroll others to gradually take on more responsibilities. While I knew this on paper before the retreat, now the picture is a lot more nuanced and I have an embodied sense of what it means to do this well.

The Hermit Crab Model of Leadership 

One of the focus points of the retreat was establishing a pattern of succession and empowering more people to step into an active role. During preparation, Jocelyn, one of our cohosts, brought the image of the hermit crabs to our conversation. As hermit crabs grow they need to move into successively larger shells. Some species of hermit crabs have evolved a stunningly collaborative behavior pattern for this: in certain moments they all meet and line up by size. Then they pass on their shells to the next smaller crab. This way they reduce the time they spend without a shell and because they are all in one bunch in this vulnerable moment they are more likely to survive unharmed. We really juiced this metaphor during the retreat to encourage all of us - the hosts and the participants - to look out for two things: 

1. Where am I starting to bump into the limitations of a role (shell) I’m currently holding? Where am I ready to pass something on? How can I make this known? Once I find someone to pass my shell on to: how can I support them to move in well? 

2. Where am I ready for my next level of growth? What’s calling me? Where do I want to stretch? What skills do I want to practice more? Who can I ask for support with growing into this new shell?

In this understanding, leadership means taking responsibility for recognizing when it is time to take on the next level of growth and not shying back from the challenge. By following the call to grow each individual contributes to the growth of the greater whole. Collectively we become more able to have a positive impact. But for this to take full effect it’s not just about me moving into my next shell but I must hand on the one I occupied up till now well, to someone for whom it is the right amount of stretch. 

Redefining success for collaborative groups

In digesting my learnings around hermit crabbing I’m starting to come to a new understanding of what it means to be successful as a collaborative group. In this new understanding, a successful group is one, where succession is working, where the passing on of knowledge, roles, overview, responsibilities, and resources works like the passing on of hermit crab shells. If we manage to succeed each other well, together we can become a highly adaptive social organism, where each individual contributes to the whole in a way that is proportionate to their current level of growth. So to be a successful group literally means to be a group full of succession. 

Richards 10 P’s of empowerment

Through our explorations of what it means to succeed and ceed well the question “how do I support others to grow into the shells that I formerly occupied?” surfaced. We discussed this during one of our open space sessions and our collective intelligence landed on a pretty clear formula:

https://twitter.com/RichDecibels/status/1756004761789227449?s=20 

You can listen to the recording of the whole session here.

Gradual Commitments Cultivate Response-Ability

On day 3 of the retreat, we started with a session to share the overview of the possibilities for people to get more engaged in the network. We did this via a User Experience Fishbowl with Rich, Jocelyn, and me sharing our stories of engagement from the center of the fishbowl and the rest of us generating questions from the outside. During this exercise, it started to dawn on me that I am now playing a central role in this network. I never took a conscious decision to move towards that role, I just gradually took on more involved commitments. The path went roughly like this:

 showing up to a gathering as a participant -> showing up to monthly calls as a participant -> cohosting a monthly call -> cohosting an online practice program -> designing and cohosting a summer camp -> supporting others to cohost a practice program -> designing and cohosting the winter retreat -> designing a new practice program. 

As I was sitting in the center of the fishbowl with Rich and Jocelyn who have been with me at each step of this journey, and all of us were taking notes of people's questions a familiar feeling hit me in an unexpected way: I’m taking responsibility for the microsolidarity network. I know this feeling from other contexts where I keep saying yes to things and suddenly I start feeling responsible for everything. Usually, this is an unpleasant realization because I feel isolated and under pressure in that role. Not in this case though. I feel honored to get to “hold the baby” together with Rich and Jocelyn. And I have full trust that we will actually hold it together. I attribute this different quality of responsibility to a few different things. 

1. Gradual build-up of commitment (as I already mentioned) 

2. A gradual build-up of trust with the people that I’m now sharing this role with.

3. Gradually growing into the role so now I am response-able - my skill matches the challenge (with a bit of a stretch, so it stays exciting).

Navigating Uncertainty and Ambiguity

On the last evening one of the participants approached me and asked whether I had a minute to chat about the flow of the next day. They expressed a wish to experience the richness and depth of relationships between people once more before the group disperses. This request didn’t exactly fit in with what we had planned, but I had a hunch that it would be really important to listen to this person fully and understand what the need behind their request was. Throughout our conversation it became clear that they were experiencing uncertainty about the nature of relationships that were being formed at this retreat: were we forming a community where members could find long-term belonging? Or were we coming together to practice creating a sense of belonging in service of a greater purpose? Were the relationships that were formed here going to last? By staying with this sense of uncertainty and exploring it together I started to see that there was an ambiguity to how we as a hosting team were holding the social container: on the one hand we set up the event in a way that made everyone feel welcome, at ease and like they belonged. On the other hand, there was a clear purpose to the retreat beyond just having a good time with each other: to enroll more people into contributing to the network. It is possible to find long-term belonging and community in the network if one is interested in contributing to it and taking on responsibility for holding it. However, it is not its primary purpose to provide a sense of belonging per se. Rather it exists to support people to create a sense of belonging where they are, in their communities, workplaces, neighborhoods, and friend groups. Temporary communities (gatherings) are a vital organ in the microsolidarity network. However, due to their temporary nature, these can’t function as the primary sources of belonging for everyone. This ambiguity had yet to be named by the hosting team. And I would not have seen it so clearly had this person not approached me with a feeling of uncertainty. What I’m taking away is the following: 

1. Designing events in a way that people dare to voice their uncertainties even if they are not super clear pays off!

2. Being curious about the need behind a request and holding space for an exploration to discover it yields more meaningful results than trying to please by fulfilling any request that comes up. 

3. Naming ambiguities and being transparent about the tension between different goals relaxes subtle tensions in the group field.

Holding Space for Collective Grief

On day two of the retreat Jocelyn and I held a session to connect with the pain we feel for what’s going on in the world. We designed the session based on Joana Macy’s Work that Reconnects and adrienne maree browns Emergent Strategy. The session worked really well for bringing in to our shared awareness the feelings that are present in the face of the state of the world. Jocelyn and I had decided not to participate in the exercises so that we could hold a more steady container. While this was certainly wise I was still surprised by the intensity of my feelings that can up in sympathy with what others shared. It was possible to let these emotions move through me and still hold space in a spacious and steady way, but afterwards I felt quite drained, tired and shaken. Following our session everyone went in to open space sessions, so it was tricky for me to find someone to express my feelings too and ask for support. I managed to take care of myself and later on had a good conversation with a good friend, that helped to process some of the tension I was holding. But this day was certainly the most exhausting. If I were to do this again I would make more space to process my own pain for the world before holding others in their process. 

Cultivating Resilience through Load-Bearing Relationships

What this experience showed me too is how important load-bearing relationships are for the success of any group. Load-bearing relationships are those connections that can do work for a group: supporting a conflict transformation process, holding intense feelings, taking a risk together, going beyond the usual to discover new terrain. Once a group has a critical density of load-bearing relationships it becomes really resilient. A critical density is achieved when there is a continuous web of load-bearing relationships that connects every member with every other member with max. two intermediaries. Cultivating these relationships takes time, but it can be accelerated by sharing vulnerability and supporting each other to move through challenging moments in small ways. 

A great way to intentionally deepen relationships to be more load-bearing is crewing. If you’re curious about this practice and want to learn more, check out our upcoming practice program. 

If you want to hear more lessons learned from this retreat, you can watch this recording of me and the rest of the hosting team debriefing the event together: