GRAVITON TRAINING, SEASON 2
“Rather than looking at conflict as a threat, we can see it as providing opportunities to grow and increase our understanding of ourselves, of others, and of our social structures.” — J.P. Lederach
To have better DAOs, we need to have more comprehensive communities. To do that, we are training humans with the skills to prevent and manage possible conflicts that may arise in self-compositive, non adversarial ways.
We want to exchange the collective false self that gets reproduced in organizational identities for a narrative of authenticity and demystification of vulnerabilities, where individuals in self-managed communities feel comfortable to support themselves and others, with humbleness, in a loving environment that recognizes limitations as constituent parts of the system.
Being able to rely on others to receive assistance in handling difficult situations builds legitimacy and promotes coordination in groups, because it helps to process potential space into scenarios of dialogue where inputs and feedback are received to aid governance, and administer disputes in the system.
The Graviton training is a 10-session course that deep dives into tools and skills to prevent and manage conflict amongst DAO contributors. If you participate, claiming 6+ POAPs (1 per session), you can become a Graviton, a clear access point for your community to request support in a variety of situations.
You can register here!
To improve DAO communities from the inside by helping them to:
- Create Trust: Proactively identify potential sources of conflict to iterate solutions ahead of need, fortifying community relationships and minimizing frictions.
- Manage Conflict: When disputes DO occur, we engage in channelling them, through processes that offer transformational actions to solve the issue, and get insights for the future.
Initially, with the consent of the parties to compromise and look for win-win solutions, we help to screen the issues in a negotiation framework, trying to identify the common ground between each side’s interest without judgement (following NVC). If the parties need more support and request it, Gravitons can also continue to facilitate dialogue and engage in a mediation process. The outcome of the situation emerges as a possible settlement agreement that is witnessed and kept in the Gravity registry, setting party responsibilities with follow up strategies for accountability.
The Gravity conflict management cycle promotes getting to solutions without having to delegate authority to a third party in charge of taking decisions. Gravitons act with good faith and professional responsibility to reach a satisfactory position with the parties, but if the issue continues, this processes can also serve as previous step for other Dispute Resolution, like arbitration or litigation mechanisms.
Including the other
All people and organizations contain psychological shadows that are easily ignored. The role of Gravitons is to be highly aware of these expressions of otherness, to overcome antagonistic perspectives summarized as “us versus them” and establish systems that foster the wellbeing of all.
There is still a big margin for improvement for DAOs to become the future of human organization, especially in the social experiences around them. That’s why we are interested in: radical inclusion in the space, DAO2DAO relations or “DAOplomacy”, overcoming the tragedy of the commons, the collective psychosis around public goods, improving our ways of communicating mindfully, and developing resources for humans to belong pleasantly in socio-economic systems.
The second Graviton training has no cost, and it’s open to anyone who joins the Token Engineering Commons Discord server. We will meet every Tuesday at 8:00pm CEST (after TEC Soft Gov calls), starting the 21st of September and ending the 23rd of November.
FYI, here are the first gen Gravitons — the people who already did our training and have been actively contributing to keeping communities together even in disagreement.
This content will be updated, but you can check it out! :) (Old slides)
Special Thanks to (@Durgadas), (@acidlazzer), (@livia), (@Ddan) (@Griff) (@anna) (@nate) (@chuy) for their contributions in helping to write this article!
