We recently had an issue like this at Mechanical Tempest. At a fortnightly meeting, it came up that one of our volunteers was behaving in a way that was dismissive to people trying to learn, and generally acting like a know-it-all man (very common problem). We decided that the best way to approach this was 1 - amend our safe space policy so we had something to point to if it happens again in the future, and 2 - reach out to the volunteer and tell him the issue that others were having with his behavior. The mechanic that runs a shift with him put their hand up for this conversation. He took the feedback well.

That's a pretty lightweight response in a high-trust group. If he did not take the feedback on, or did not amend his behavior, it would be nice to have a conflict resolution scheme already in place, but we haven't gotten there yet. But at least having an agreed upon policy to point to if the situation escalates is a good start.

Jesse

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 9:28 AM, momoko saunders analyst@bikefarm.org wrote:

Hello!

Accountability is a struggle for Bike Farm. As an all volunteer run organization, it's difficult to chastise undesirable behaviour. Not only is it hard to tell someone who is volunteering their time that they did not do something right, but the negative feedback is not the kind of environment we're trying to create.

Still, what happens when someone messes up. To say nothing is nearly as detrimental. It erodes the quality of the service we provide, and can lead to an unsafe working environment.

What do other collectives do? Do you have a accountability agreement? Something along the lines of, "by volunteering here, I want to be held accountable to the group in these ways..." or a grievance procedure?

How do you communicate about your issues? any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, -Momoko ____________________________________

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