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A Transition Town group involved in preparations for peak oil and climate change; an intentional community, founded with the highest ideals; a nonprofit dedicated to social change—millions of such voluntary groups exist around the world. These collaborative organizations have the unique potential to harness their members' ideals, passions, skills, and knowledge—if they can succeed in getting along together.
The Empowerment Manual is a comprehensive manual for groups seeking to organize with shared power and bottom-up leadership to foster vision, trust, accountability, and responsibility. This desperately needed toolkit provides keys to:
- Understanding group dynamics
- Facilitating communication and collective decision-making
- Dealing effectively with difficult people.
Drawing on four decades of experience, Starhawk shows how collaborative groups can generate the cooperation, efficacy, and commitment critical to success. Her extensive exploration of group process is woven together with the story of RootBound—a fictional ecovillage mired in conflict—and rounded out with a series of real-life case studies. The included exercises and facilitator toolbox show how to establish the necessary structures, ground rules, and healthy norms. The Empowerment Manual is required reading for anyone who wants to help their group avoid disagreement and disillusionment and become a wellspring of creativity and innovation.
Starhawk is the author of eleven previous books including the award-winning Webs of Power . A highly influential voice for global justice and the environment, she is deeply committed to bringing the creative power of spirituality to political activism.
StarHawk is the author of eleven books on earth based spirituality, Goddess religion, and activism, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing , and the award-winning Webs of Power . A highly influential voice for global justice and the environment, Starhawk is deeply committed to bringing the creative power of spirituality to political activism. She also teaches Earth Activist Trainings, intensive seminars that combine permaculture design, political organizing, and earth-based spirituality. She writes for the Newsweek/Washington Post blog On Faith as well as her own blog, Dirt Worship . Her website is www.starhawk.org.
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: A New Era of Empowerment
1 What are collaborative groups? Why this book is needed. How the book is structured. Leading exercises and meditations.
Chapter 2: RootBound Ecovillage and the Talisman of Healthy Community
Introduction to our exemplary — or not so — ecovillage and its problems.
Chapter 3: The Circle of Vision
Finding a group vision, core values, intentions goals and governance.
Chapter 4: The Axis of Action — Power and Responsibility
Different kinds of power, rules and norms, earned and unearned social power, privilege and entitlement, balancing power and responsibility.
Chapter 5: The Axis of Learning — Communication and Trust
Communication norms, functional and dysfunctional. Basic skills for good communication in groups. Accountability and building trust.
Chapter 6: Leadership Roles for Leaderless Groups
Group roles and different types of leadership. How to be an empowering leader. Empowerment to the midline. Accountability.
Chapter 7: Group Conflict
Embracing conflict and learning to constructively disagree. Types of conflict. Strategies for mediation. Wrongdoing and due process.
Chapter 8: Dealing with Difficult People
What makes people "difficult?" Trauma and internalized authority. Borderline personalities and victimhood. Clashing styles and norms. Patterns of reaction. Problems too big for the group. Hidden agendas.
Chapter 9: Groups that Work
Examples of successful collaboration: Rainbow Grocery, a worker-owned cooperative; the 1999 Seattle Blockade of the World Trade Organization; Reclaiming, an Earth-based spiritual network.
Endnotes
Bibliography and References
Index
About the Author