Holacracy Assessments

Prepare for the Tactical Assessment

The Tactical Assessment is designed to measure your Holacracy facilitation and coaching skills during tactical meetings. You’ll facilitate and coach a circle through a simulated tactical meeting, which we use to evaluate different levels of facilitation skill.

The Tactical Assessment is more than an assessment. It’s also a learning tool that fills a gap our public trainings are not designed to satisfy. Therefore, in order to provide candidates the most valuable feedback possible, it is an intentionally difficult assessment.

What to Expect

The assessment is a 1.5-hour simulated tactical meeting that you will be simultaneously facilitating and coaching — as you would for a client organization. The meeting will be virtual, but the simulation will not begin immediately upon joining the virtual meeting. Instead, it will start with some open space for questions and framing.

We will have 2 assessors (Certified Holacracy Coaches) role-playing as if they were members of the client company. At different points during the simulated meeting, the assessors will notify the candidate to pause the simulation and switch into a real discussion about the candidate’s performance.

Please note that this is the very first meeting of the circle (i.e. a “launch” meeting), which is different than facilitating an experienced group. You will be expected to orient the participants to the process (and Holacracy) as you go through it, but you must balance education with your ability to get through the process smoothly and help the team process their tensions.

This assessment is also a learning opportunity, and there will be dedicated time for feedback. However, we will stay in the simulation as much as possible to replicate a real meeting. Feedback will be provided in two parts: the first about halfway through the assessment, the second at the end. During feedback time, we will start by asking you, “How did it go?” Use that opportunity to ask for specific feedback on something. It also helps the assessors understand your thought process.

The participants will be expecting you to “run the meeting”; however, they are familiar with Zoom, and to a lesser degree, Glassfrog. Feel free to call “timeouts” as you would normally. The assessors will call a “Real Timeout” when it’s time to debrief.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. You’ll also be able to ask the assessors questions before the assessment starts.

Scoring

Scoring for the assessment covers 6 criteria (in no particular order):

• Mechanics – Holds to the rules of the tactical meeting process.
• Support – Appropriately balances processing and learning.
• Powershift – Appropriately addresses powershift issues.
• Differentiation – Appropriately addresses role/people distinction.
• Involvement – Appropriately balances involvement in the triaging of items.
• Explanations – Appropriately communicates rules, mindset shifts, and pathways.

Each dimension will be scored on a scale from 0 to 2:

• 0 – Missed: Misses the mark, or introduces significant inaccuracies that outweigh the benefits of the response.
• 1 – Useful: Provides useful information, and the benefits to the client outweigh potential inaccuracies or lack of nuances. (Level expected of a Certified Facilitator)
• 2 – Empowering: Accurate and well-articulated coaching that enables the client to move forward in their specific case. No inaccuracies. (Level expected of a Certified Coach).

There are three possible final scores:

• Coach-level: 9 – 11
• Facilitator-level: 4 – 8.5
• Novice-level: 0 – 3.5

NOTE: Unlike the Governance Facilitation Assessment, we will be scoring introductions, check-ins, etc.

Setup for the Tactical Meeting Session

You have accepted a last-minute request from a colleague to “launch” a new client by facilitating their first tactical meeting. You have the following context:

• The company, Healing Homecare (a Hygean competitor), has recently decided to adopt Holacracy.

• Taylor (a certified Holacracy Coach) has been working with Jan and Susan (HR) to craft their initial governance. Others were consulted, but the effort was owned by Jan and Susan. It’s expected that this will be completed just in time for their first Tactical Meeting and you will be emailed a link to view their Governance Records an hour before your assessment starts. (If you don’t see it in your inbox, you may need to check your junk folder).
• Only two people can make the meeting. One of them is Charlie, the founder and former CEO. It has been extremely difficult to schedule this meeting, so, even though much of the staff is missing, Charlie wanted to have the meeting anyway.
• You are not aware of what previous exposure the participants have had to Holacracy (e.g. a taster, a Discovery Day, a Practitioner Training, read the book, etc.)
• You have not had any previous contact with the client.

Technical Setup

Here’s what you need to set up ahead of time:

• A high-speed internet connection (suitable for video/audio conferencing like Skype)
• A webcam
• A good microphone
• We will use GlassFrog. Please make sure you’re familiar enough with GlassFrog to facilitate a tactical meeting remotely.
• Headphones. If you don’t wear headphones, we will likely have echo, which will make it impossible to conduct the meeting.
• Install the Zoom Plugin: https://zoom.us/download (choose “Zoom Client for Meetings”).

Preparation Advice

• Read these support articles from a Holacracy Master Coach on how to prepare for the Tactical Facilitation Assessment.
• Take the Facilitator Fundamentals online course, which covers the core knowledge needed to earn Facilitator & Coach credentials for both Tactical and Governance Meetings.
• Combine your knowledge from the course with lots of practice to develop the required skills- more details are in this article about Pathways for Earning Holacracy Certifications.
• Review the detailed scoring criteria prior to the assessment.

The following is advice from previous Tactical Assessment candidates:

• “Practice with others and prepare a scenario for yourself on how you would do a real client Tactical meeting for the first time.”
• “Spend some time the day before doing the recommended reading and reviewing the meeting design. Pay attention to what is supposed to be happening at each stage.”
• “Schedule time an hour before the assessment to review the governance of the circle you’ll be facilitating.”
• “Do not try to relate to the people in the simulation emotionally, because this will bring you off track.”
• “Practice as much as you can first. It’s important to build facilitation “muscle memory” and that can only be done with lots of actual practice. Practice on total newbies.”