Dear Abi
You recently asked me whether I thought consent-based decision making processes would work well for autistic people and given you recently supported our housing co-op through adopting consent-based approaches I thought I'd share with you my early reflections as an autistic person.
The first obvious thing that is a huge benefit of this approach is the structured nature of it. One of the reasons I originally became a facilitator is because I'd enter meetings and be completely overwhelmed by all the different layers of conversation that were happening at once. One person might’ve been talking about some big idea and another person might've been sharing a small gripe - and each of those ebbs and flows between focus required me to do a huge mental transition - which is exhausting. At one level you might argue that neurotypical people go along with this structureless way of communicating simply because it's easy to them, but on a more sinister level I often see it as a purposefully obfuscating approach to conversations that keep those who know how to perform in the ‘correct’ way in power.
The consent-based decision making process disentangles different types of response and ensures that we are all moving at the same pace through a decision. Even just the explicit nature of someone actually proposing something as something for a group to decide upon is a huge transformation in comparison to the structurelessness of all the micro and macro decisions that usually happen within team meetings, and then having clarifying questions, feelings and critical concerns all split out as separate responses provides even more clarity. For an autistic person it's often as simple as knowing someone's intentions or the place they are speaking from that can make it easier for us to engage and respond.
The thing that I noticed though when layers of responses are disentangled from each other is that I found it particularly hard and anxiety-inducing to engage in certain layers of the process. Both the general “feelings” and the space to voice “critical concerns” brought up a lot for me, which will ultimately make this process incredibly useful for me as an autistic person but it doesn't feel that way instantly. When asked to share our feelings on a proposal it reminded me that there is often so much going on in my body that I find it really hard to put a sensible hierarchy to my response. Even a simple thing like whether I've remembered to go to the toilet or not that day, or the confusion about someone's facial expression, could be creating a whole surge of feelings in body that I can't interocept, and therefore adds to what I think might be big feelings in response to the question I've just been asked. This was a great reminder of just how much time I need as an autistic person to process. Standard unstructured processes are obviously even harder and more confusing for me to engage in authentically, but the slight shift towards slowing down through a consent-based approach demonstrates just how much slower I need things to be - or how I need to have time on my own to connect with my feelings. Obviously this is a great learning and it's simple to resolve now I can see it - it empowers me to say “can we separate out this conversation and come back to the next part tomorrow once I've processed”.
On the critical concerns front, my non-hierarchy of needs and feelings continued but in a way where it made visible just how much conscious second-guessing of other people I'm doing all the time to suss out what is the “correct” way of responding and to work out how to manage my filter (because of all the historical shame associated with being a very unfiltered human due to my autism). Again I'm doing this exhausting work in general chitchat as well as in big decision-making processes so it's not like the consent process made this worse - it just made it more visible. So with that comes valuable self-knowledge, and the capacity to start centring my needs rather than trying to make the group comfortable.
Which brings me to the power of rounds. I have always loved engaging in this way rather than a random order of people responding to each other, or interrupting each other. It allows me to switch my brain to pay attention in the correct way to different people, and it reassures me that my time to speak will come. Often in group discussions it can be tiring for my brain to have to read multiple different people's facial expressions and tone of voice, as an autistic person I don't have a standard model to draw upon so each individual requires extensive effort for me to decode (which is why many autistic people prefer 1-2-1 relating). An explicit pattern and order that I am listening to different people is soothing and gives me some indication of how I might need to interpret the next set of input from the next person. When it comes to my own contributions in a group space I often find I hit on thoughts about something long after the conversation has moved on, so I sit quietly because I can never quite keep up with the pace.
The very fact that rounds are occurring calms my nervous system and helps me to know that there's a certain amount of space I will have and everyone else will get a similar amount of space. It's a pattern I can follow and patterns are incredibly grounding for autistic people.
All that said I think I also had a positive experience simply because of who you are as a facilitator. The regular reassurance you give to people is a massive thing for me as someone that can become easily overwhelmed. And it's something I talk about often as part of the Holding Space series - so many facilitators don't explain why they are asking people to do certain exercises or let them know it's okay to struggle or not know where to start. And these simple reassurances can be the difference between a positive experience and an awful one.
I think it's worth people remembering that when they implement consent-based decision making. It's got to be paired with continued care for everyone participating, and openness to learn and grow too. I love the way you talked about it being a way to play - making it more joyful has really helped me to experience the possibilities of such a process and to build excitement around all the proposals I can't wait to put forward to just see how we practice together as a group.
Thank you for not only being a beautifully caring facilitator, but also bringing all your knowledge and wisdom around the power of doing decision-making differently. This really is a much more inclusive and equitable way of relating, and even though there will still be challenges when it comes to different levels of access and agency, I think this type of process is a giant step forward for meaningful inclusion of autistic people.
Abi Handley is a freelance coach and facilitator working with teams on culture change, governance and strategy. She has worked with a wide range of teams (and now housing co-ops) to implement sociocratic decision-making.