Ted Rau: sociocracy has taught me how to be me and us at the same time

Listen to my new episode with Ted Rau where we discuss sociocracy as a governance model relying on self-management and consent-based decision-making. Ted is an advocate, trainer and consultant for self-governance and his main focus is sociocracy. After his PhD in linguistics and work in academia, he co-founded 'Sociocracy For All' and spends his days consulting, teaching and leading the organization as an executive director. He is a co-author of multiple books on self-governance, 'Many Voices One Song' (2018) and 'Who Decides Who Decides' (2021). In a few weeks he will publish a brand new book called ‘Collective Power. Patterns for A Selforganized Future’.

“For me, the personal development and growth within the sociocratic community boils down to how to be a self-responsible human being. How do I say ‘yes’ and mean ‘yes’? How do I say ‘no’ and mean ‘no’? How to be clear about what my boundaries are? In sociocracy we basically learn to object but also learn to say, ‘yeah’, whatever, that works for me. Do it, fine, without having an attitude about it, just rolling with everything else unless I have to say ‘no’. And that is treating your ego in a healthy way, without making your ego too big and also not making it too small. I mean as soon as you have that interface clear it makes you free to choose to be in a healthy relationship with others, without spilling your own stuff on other people. That was a humongous learning point for me because interdependence for me was really hard. You have to be self-sufficient, but how are you self-responsible and self-sufficient and then choose to cooperate at the same time? To me, that was a polarity that was too hard to hold in my mind at the beginning. And now I feel like I got it how to be me and us at the same time. So that is what I have grown on and I am still growing on in sociocracy.” – Ted Rau

Listen and enjoy!