Geoff Brown looks at a model for getting people engaged (or not) in meetings or movements. It’s called SCARF, standing for…
Status – a lot of trouble is caused when people feel the need to defend their status.
Certainty – people like to have some!
Autonomy – people like to feel they have choices
Relatedness – balancing autonomy people like to feel connected to others
Fairness – trouble brews if people sense this ain’t happening.
Geoff thinks of a few interpretations. I’d say status has a pretty big impact on meetings. Set ups that confer high status on some particpants (chairs panels, keynotes…) set up for some fairly dysfunctional exchanges, either of pseudo-compliance or aggressive acting out.
Relatedness is worth thinking about too. You can support it in all sorts of ways. One of the best ideas I had on a two day workshop was to suggest a self-cooked barbeque on the middle evening. I had to fend off hotel staff to stop them helping… by cooking the meal together, people got related better. They tended to break their organisational status too… there’s something primal about the act of cooking and eating together than can be powerful. It can help create relatedness even when people have huge disagreements elsewhere.
I wonder if I’d go for the word “agency” over autonomy…. the latter sometimes suggests a kind of isolation, whereas agency is more about feeling connected to action. Again, cooking a meal together gives everyone a bit of agency…
