Unsure what we might mean by one of the terms you've seen on Holaspirit?

Here are some quick explanations:

Purpose • Circle • Role • Accountability • Domain • Scope • Member

Governance • Policy • Core Role • Elected Role • Tension • Proposal

Inactive Member • Transversal Role

Clarifies the identity and intention of a role or circle. The purpose represents the “why”, the “mission statement” of a role or circle.

A collection of roles that all contribute to the same purpose or topic. You may consider circles to be self-managed and semi-autonomous teams. Just like roles, a circle can have accountabilities.

A circle is actually a role that has expanded into more parts – when a role becomes too complex or diverse, you may extend the role into a circle and split up the work into more roles within the circle.

For decentralized management and organizational governance models that call for special roles to represent a circle (e.g. Facilitator, or Circle Lead), one can add core roles to a circle.

👉 Read more about circles

Roles are the foundation of your organization in Holaspirit. Roles are defined by a purpose, a set of accountabilities, and a set of role holders (members). A role puts clarity on “who does what” and “who decides what”.

👉 Read more about roles

An ongoing responsibility expected of a role. It basically is the work a role is supposed to do.

⭐ Quick Tip: define accountabilities as full sentences that begin with an -ing verb. For example, a “Content manager” role might have an accountability for “Writing and publishing meaningful content to our blog.”

A piece of property controlled exclusively by a role or a circle. For example, a “Website Manager” role might own the domain of “Website content”. The role may impact its own domain to achieve its purpose and accountabilities, but may not impact another’s domain unless given permission.
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👉 Read more about domains

If a role has more than one member, you may want to further clarify who's in charge of the responsibilities of the role under particular conditions.

For example, a “Business Developer” role with several members may have a focus per holder for geographical areas, such as “French leads”, or “Dutch leads”, or “German leads”.

👉 Read more about members' scope

A person with whom you collaborate and is part of the organization. A member is defined by their profile information and the set of roles that they hold.

An explicit, written set of rules and expectations including the circles, roles, purposes, accountabilities, domains, and policies of the organization. The organization’s governance changes in response to the demands of the environment through the initiative of circle members (during meetings or via propositions of evolution). The Governance menu in Holaspirit allows you to navigate to your chart, roles and circles.

A policy allows or limits others from impacting a domain. For example, if a “Website Manager” role owns the domain “Website content” then a policy might be enacted to allow a “Content Manager” role to publish blog content (e.g. “Content Manager has permission to post content to the website blog”).

👉 Read more about policies

A role that is flagged to have a special status for a circle. This may be a coordinator, an elected strategist, or a spokesperson role for the circle. For decentralized management and organizational governance models (such as Holacracy, Sociocracy), the Circle Lead, Circle Rep, Secretary and Facilitator are core roles.

👉 Read more about core roles

Roles can be set to be electable, meaning that role holders are elected for a term. Marking a role as electable allows one to set the term limits.

A gap between the current reality and the potential you sense for one of your roles. Basically, a tension is an opportunity to improve, a feeling that something could be different.

👉 Read more about tensions

A recommended change to the circle’s governance presented by a circle member during or outside a meeting.

👉 Read more about proposals

A member who do not need full access to Holaspirit features.

These are useful to represent external suppliers, partners, freelancers, etc.

👉 Read more about inactive members

A role that is invited into another circle to participate in the circle's decisions and operations on a one-time or permanent basis.

👉 Read more about transversal roles

📌Note: Several terms are adapted from glossaries found at Holacracy One and Sociocracy 3.0