Proposed by: Jim R, Lisa M, Staci, Wendy, Boaz, Rene, and Vivienne
Vote is open, please scroll to the end
Issue:
Trusted Servants who serve as Breakout Room Hosts and Newcomer Greeters must be empowered to act confidently, in accordance with group conscience guidelines, when confronted with aggressive or bullying behavior. Training and documentation should explicitly affirm their right to self-care and group care, including taking necessary action against harassment and bullying.
We move that the training for Breakout Room Hosts and Newcomer Greeters would emphasize their right to self-care and the importance of maintaining a safe group environment; providing clear guidelines on how to handle harassment and bullying, including immediate response actions; and that these guidelines would apply to business meeting chairs and anyone in a facilitative role in service to SMR.
Background:
This is why action is necessary: Volunteers have been bullied, which undermines recovery of individuals and the group, so the behavior cannot be tolerated. Suggested guidelines and empowering responses for Trusted Servants to repeated aggressive behavior:
- Trusted Servants experiencing aggressive or bullying direct (chat) messages could respond with a message like: “I am focused on my service, please do not contact me now.”
- If abuse continues, Trusted Servants have the following options:
– Removal of the offender from the breakout room and meeting, (this prevents their return for 24 hours)
– Public acknowledgment of abuse at an appropriate time – directly after the meeting, at a business meeting, at service support sessions. Sharing the inappropriate messages exposes the behavior. - Documentation of harassment by copying the chat using Zoom’s “copy chat” feature, taking screenshots, or using a smartphone camera.
By reinforcing these principles in training and documentation, the ACA Strengthening My Recovery Trusted Servants will feel more confident in their roles, ensuring a safer and more supportive meeting environment for all participants.
References:
Tradition 1: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on ACA unity.
Tradition 5: Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the adult child who still suffers.
Bill of Rights:
– (1) I have the right to say no.
– (5) I have the right to detach from anyone in whose company I feel humiliated or manipulated.
– (15) I have the right to ask for what I want.
– (18) I have the right to be my True Self.
Affirmations:
– (2) It is okay to trust myself.
– (5) It is okay to say no without feeling guilty.
– (6) It is okay to give myself a break.
Additional Safety Resources:
ACA Morning Website: Personal Safety Suggestions and Addressing Harassing Behavior
It can seem healthy to give a host power to take direct action on a person they perceive to be overstepping.
But I feel it’s not in accordance with this meeting’s very high standards, and I feel it’s the worst thing that could happen to a meeting as good as this one – to have it become driven by a win-lose not a win-win atmosphere.
If this motion is to be considered, I feel some significant conditions need to be included as part of the motion for it to be fair and balanced.
Where a host or secretary has formal powers to remove a person, and where Zoom-bombing isn’t happening, a system of checks and balances needs to be in place to prevent accidental or deliberate mis-use of power when mis-use could result in a person needing the meeting being excluded.
IMHO the power to remove someone from the meeting potentially opens the space to drama-triangles where people are labelled as trouble-makers. Not only does it violate anonymity in a shaming way but it’s the stuff a denouncement culture is built on.
Let’s face it – meetings are often the equivalent of attending Accident & Emergency. This is the real context of deciding what kind of powers its managers have to remove people. Like the rest of us, hosts are human. Regardless of how much experience they have, they may not like a person. They may act inappropriately through wanting to practice boundary-setting, or because they are having a bad day. Or they might be stressed and making an in-the-moment error of judgement, as we all can, overstepping their authority as a way of addressing their own personal triggers. I’m writing as someone who has done it.
When personalities start leading over principles and authority is uncontrolled, the meeting potentially becomes like a town where a law enforcement officer in the field can discharge their weapon without being held accountable, making them judge, jury and executioner. In my experience a good Leo would not be comfortable without accountability. (Apologies Leos. I am sincerely grateful for your integrity and daily bravery on the job in spite of being underpaid).
So I feel a motion like the one being proposed here needs to have a rider attached: a way or ways to effectively hold anyone accountable for something as drastic as removing a person.
There are lots of ways to create checks-and-balances so the meeting stays motivated by a win-win spirit. One way might be to keep the host off-service after an incident, say for a month. I’m sure the creative minds here could come up with a few ideas if they felt ideas were needed.
The real question here might be, is it important that everyone have the freedom to attend a meeting? Is this still a critical part of Twelve Step Fellowships? My answer is yes. None of us are here because we want to be – we are here because we need to be. That’s what’s important.
Thank you for reading this.
Thank you for this thoughtful reply to the proposal. It has been helpful to reread what you have written, and I will do so again, one or twice and will then likely respond.
I have noticed that when I am hosting a breakout room I do not have “host tools” anywhere on my menu anymore, it’s there when I am in the main room, but not in the breakout room, nor is there anyway to “call for help” when I’m co-hosting. So I am not sure what I could do even if there were a zoom bomber or some egregious form of abuse or inappropriate behavior.
So far I haven’t experienced any abuse when in the breakout rooms, either as room host or a participant, but I have (very) occasionally heard aggressive, self-righteous, blaming comments comments made to New Comer Greeters which really disturbed me, and as a result I’ve never wanted to take up that service position.
As a trusted servant I manage running the breakout room to the best of my ability, but it doesn’t mean I will never make a mistake, that I will handle everything perfectly, or that I am required to be a policeman for the group. However, if in my best judgement, and for the good of the group, I feel that the best thing would be to remove someone from the room, I would like to have the tools to do so, so that the meeting would not be held hostage to someone who is not (in the moment) able to abide by the safety guidelines already set up by the group conscience. I am talking about flagrant violations, not small missteps.
We come to these rooms in search of personal recovery.
We may be moved at some point of our journeys to provide service. When we serve, we now have a new opportunity: to build on our personal recovery by working on ‘healthy family relationship’ skills (as fully defined in the Loving Parent guidebook). This includes setting proper boundaries for myself, and when I am serving, for the group I have taken responsibility for. Clarifying what our meetings healthy family norms are through a group conscience is extremely valuable and appreciated.
I would add a
Removal Warning: I need to ask you to stop messaging me, as these messages are going against our meeting’s crosstalk guidelines.
If this behaviour continues, removal from the meeting will be the consequence.
There is also a zoom setting that allows for the chat to be closed during the breakout rooms.
I agree that including brief counsel about how to handle such situations during training would be helpful. That way, in the rare instance that it might happen to a person while giving service, they may immediately remember, “Oh – I was told this sort of thing can happen and I have resources so I am not left completely flat footed. There are things I can do…I hope I can remember them.” (a little levity there)
I also think we might head off such moments by composing a sentence for our opening script to be inserted at the point where we mention conduct expected of participants regarding cross talk and displaying outside issues, etc. Such a sentence might affirm that: “we appreciate all those who have stepped up to give service today, and as a group we sustain and support them with kindness, patience, and cooperation.” Something to that effect might be helpful too.
On the other hand Empowerment comes from surrendering (Practicing Step 1).
So how about it, when an adult child is hurting and lashing out, instead of engaging or taking it personally, we just detach from a place of love, leaving the adult child to their own higher power. Choosing to disengage from the chat feature, choosing to remain centered in love, choosing to put the principles forgiveness, surrender, love… above personalities.
Because an adult child’s biggest fear is the fear of abandonment and some of us push the boundaries just to get the validation that we don’t belong that sooner or later we will be abandoned, rejected. By removing someone from the meeting that’s the consequence, we are contributing to their biggest fears. I wouldn’t like to feel banished from the meeting, would you? Do to others what you would have them do to you.
It’s up to every single one of us to stop engaging in the Cycle of Violence (Laundry Lists Workbook – Appendix A), to stop ourselves from playing the dysfunctional roles (victim, rescuer type I & II and persecutor) we learned growing up and don’t serve us anymore.
From a place of love & self-love.
How many proposals have been approved that were merely reenactments of the drama triangle dynamic, where someone portrays themselves as a victim, and someone else as the victimizer and seeks the group’s intervention to rescue them?
If I’m having an unhealthy day/moment, I have no right to take it out on someone else. If I feel anger when someone says or does something that I don’t like, I’m free to use the mute button or to leave the meeting. I have no right to abuse another. Room hosts are just normal regular members of ACA stepping up to voluntarily give freely of their time. They’re not a special superior type of member. Unacceptable behavior is unacceptable behavior. There can be no justification for supporting unacceptable behavior. If you’ve never been a room host, you can’t understand this.
I am glad to have this information having no knowledge of behind the scenes goings on. If I ever were to step up and volunteer in as meeting/room host I would want a guideline such as the one being proposed. Thank you!
I think it’s a wonderful idea for room hosts and newcomer greeters to receive clear training on how to handle harassment. Many thanks to the group who worked on this.
I also like the idea that was suggested of inserting a warning step after the host follows the first step of writing “I am focused on my service now please do not contact me.” Perhaps a warning that if it continues, the host will close the chat as this is the action our group has agreed on?
I wonder if that would take care of the problem in most cases? It’s the equivalent of muting. BUT it closes the chat for everyone, so we would need to agree on some statement the room host would make at that point that makes clear they are following steps our group has agreed upon and not just acting on their own.
However, when I was room hosting, I mostly ignored the chat as I was trying to focus my attention on each speaker. I am a bit embarrassed to admit I would have trouble typing into the chat while hosting!
The chat feature allows us to make wonderful connections AND allows a bully to be a bully in private. At an in-person meeting, there are witnesses to abusive behavior. The group would need to address this behavior for the health and safety of the group, the individual, and especially the newcomer. An unrecovered, unsafe person will find their next victim in someone. If the current victim leaves that meeting or the program altogether, the bully will find another victim. Imagine the fallout if not addressed. This is also a chance for the abuser to get help, if they choose. A zoom meeting needs to adapt to the restrictions of not having the subtle benefits of a more public in-person meeting.
As a Room Host, I definitely support empowering and protecting Room Hosts! The bulk of this proposal I fully support. However, as a fallible human being and an ACA, I know that I can be reactive at times. Personally, I would not want to expel someone from the meeting for 24 hours. Whatever their anger, outrage, or inappropriate expression might trigger in me, I can’t know what they are experiencing. They may be in dire need.
I would be more comfortable sending them out of the breakout room rather than sentencing them to expulsion. I realize this only kicks the can down the road and means a Tech Host might have to deal with the individual. Inside a breakout room, it’s impossible to know if someone is a repeat offender. There are fewer Tech Hosts and perhaps they could be informed of such situations.
Tech Hosts are juggling many moving parts (Thank you Tech Hosts!) and may not have the bandwidth for additional responsibilities, so this idea may not be feasible. I simply offer these reflections for the process and the good of the meeting.
Peace and Grace!