Specification of leadership style
I don't see the difference between leader and facilitator as it relates to WE workgroups. Rather than suggest a distinction, maybe this section should be about defining the leadership role and provide an example. Also, I'd rename it as Leadership Role. Here's suggested text.
"Leadership Role
Indicate whether this workgroup will have a leader/facilitator and provide responsibilities for this leadership role. For example,
The XX workgroup is led by a facilitator. The facilitator's responsbilities are:
- Keep team on task
- Monitor team projects
- Provide direction for team assignments"
Any other opinions on this?
Personally --- I don't think we need to be too worried about what labels we use for this role: leader, co-convenor, facilitator, instigator ;-) etc. The trouble is that different leadership models and theories attach different meanings to these and other labels. Ideally we strive for consensus and collaboration. Some folk are natural leaders / facilitators. Each work group will have its own dynamic -- that's the open wiki model. If the charter compartmentalises too much -- we may constrain innovation and participation. My own feeling is to be a little more own and flexible on the use of labels and roles.
The charter template is intended to be a guideline -- not a policy. So we can be a little more relaxed about nomenclature -- ultimately work groups which don't bring together the right ingredients, will not complete their specified tasks -- and that's OK.
To be fair -- the initial Charter template guidelines were not developed for wiki communities (to the best of my knowledge), so we have a little liberty to be flexible :-)
Cheers
I totally agree. In fact, I spent some time reading about shared/collective leadership last night. I had no idea that such a style existed. I decided last night that I'd like to redo the leadership style section to include the shared leadership option -- I was too tired to attempt it so I left a note to remind myself. I think I'll lay out a few options for groups to consider, with the upshot that there's lots of flexibility here.
I agree on the idea that many actions are self-limiting, so no need to require exact adherence to a particular process.
I've had the same thoughts about how well a charter template that likely originated in a face-to-face market-driven business world, will work out for groups of distributed volunteers working in a directly collaborative environment, as is the case in a global wiki. It's been really helpful to have the Administrators workgroup trying things out.
