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The Leadership Team

The Leadership Team

➤ Introducing the Leadership Team

The leadership team was created out of need for building a structure for DD&I to manage initiatives, plan our activities at DrupalCon, and balance the work of running the meetings and engagement. The current members of the team were selected by Nikki Stevens, founder, of the most active contributors and people who were already leading or managing initiatives.

Current team

Leader

Leadership Team 

Leadership Council (Internal)

Advisory Board (External)

  • To be announced

 

We received some feedback at DrupalCon Nashville (2018) that there was a lack of transparency around how the leadership team was selected and the duties they were responsible for. Thus, we started to define the leadership team, roles, and other DD&I governance processes. 

Team Structure and Roles

We believe the leadership team should be around 5 - 10 people, consisting of multiple roles - leadership team members who are active in the work, an internal group of council, and external advisory members who can help us succeed in the work that we do.

All leadership team members are able to shift roles whenever needed for as long as needed and are able to leave the team whenever they see fit. The Leader will schedule periodic check-ins with leadership team members.

Leader

  • Responsible for the overall group
  • Working on and managing initiatives and relationships
  • Checking in with leadership team
  • Running periodic meetings with the advisory board

Leadership Team:

  • Periodically lead the main channel meeting
  • Participate in text-based weekly leadership meetings
  • Participate in quarterly leadership team video calls.
  • Each member of the leadership team will self select an initiative to work on.
    • For each initiative they work on, they must set a goal for the year and report progress on that goal during leadership meetings.

Leadership Council

  • Advisors internal to the leadership team.
  • These individuals will be a part of the day to day of the leadership team, but can be involved in a self-defined capacity.

Advisory Board

  • Advisors external to the leadership team
  • These are mostly from the Drupal community as a form of partnership and to foster collaboration
  • Meetings occur periodically in a separate slack channel
     

Time Commitments of the Leadership team 

  • Weekly slack-based leadership team meeting - 30 mins / wk

  • Attending/Leading the weekly Diversity & Inclusion meeting - 45-60 mins / wk

  • Quarterly leadership team video calls with possible virtual activities - 1 hr / 3 months
  • Leading at least one initiative, checking with volunteers, updating the drupal.org issue, reporting progress towards the goal of the initiative. - 2-3 hrs / mo

Leading the weekly meetings

Expectations of the Leadership team 

  • “You matter more than the cause” - The leadership team is meant to be sustainable, volunteer work. We appreciate you and you can switch roles, take a break or leave the team whenever you need to.

  • “Lead with compassion whenever possible” - This apples to conversations in our slack channels. Let’s be compassionate and understanding of people where appropriate. Since these conversations are sometimes the first face-to-face interactions we have with newcomers, let’s take a bit of extra care.  

  • “We support individual accountability.” - Each leadership team member is accountable for their participation in the team, discussions, and votes. We communicate in advance when we anticipate being unavailable for meetings, and are committed to ongoing participation in any votes or action items that need our attention.

Decision Making Process 

The DD&I Leadership team will run its major decisions by Robert’s Rules of Order. 

Robert’s Rules of Order was developed to manage formally structured debates. With Robert’s rules, organizations follow a fixed agenda and present motions prior to voting. Board members participate by stating the decision they would like to make prior to discussing its merit.

Given the nature of our asynchronous team meetings and small team size, we will make decisions based on the Majority Vote and keep the voting period active for one week (unless otherwise stated).  

Here’s a Robert’s Rule of example with DD&I specific by-laws:

1. The member rises and addresses the chair.
 		 skip
 
2. The chair recognizes the member.
 		 skip
 
3. The member makes a motion.
 		 Any member of the DD&I team (leader, leadership team, leadership council, or advisory board) makes a motion.
 
4. Another member seconds the motion.
 		 The motion is seconded in words or receives at least one thumbs up emoji by the leader or a leadership team member.
 
5. The chair states the motion.
 		 The motion being voted on is stated clearly.
 
6. The members debate the motion.
 		 The leadership team members and the leader debate the motion. Leadership Council may weigh in during the debate.
 
7. The chair puts the question, and the members vote.
 		 Only the leadership team members and the leader vote. In the absence of the leader, two leadership council or advisory board members must vote.  The decision is made by majority > 50% of the votes.
 
8. The chair announces the result of the vote.
 		 The leader announces the result of the vote in slack, adds it to the decision log on Google Drive and the decision is executed.
 

Decision Bylaws: 

  • All votes are active for 1 week unless otherwise stated.

  • A quorum is all leadership team members (including the leader) who act within the defined time period.

  • Leadership team members who do not act within the time period relinquish their right to vote and the decision will move forward without them.
  • Additions or removals of individuals as the leader or leadership team, leadership council, advisory board member will also go through this process.
     

 

Application Process

If you’re interested in being a part of the DD&I leadership team, reach out to us at drupaldiversity@gmail.com. In prospective leadership team members we look for individuals who are actively contributing to DD&I meetings, initiatives, or our work overall. In some cases, we will also reach out to individuals in the community who are contributing to our work and invite them to join the team. 

The response to your interest depends on a number of things - how many team members there are, the number of active initiatives and workload we have, and your current involvement with DD&I.

The following are some recommendations to include in your email:

  • Name
  • Slack handle
  • Social media handles
  • drupal.org username
  • Role requested (team member, advisory board)
  • What is most exciting to you about the work we do in DD&I?
  • What would you like to lead in DD&I?
  • Here’s our values statement. How do your values align or differ from ours? 

Once we receive your email, we will discuss your application and aim to respond to you within a month. Thank you! 

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