Community Agreements for Review Committees
Establishing community agreements with a group of people, especially those working together on peer evaluation of faculty, is important to create a community of mutual trust, respect and honesty and that will hold each other accountable. Some basic agreements are:
- We will make “I” statements: I can speak only from what I know, I think, I feel, I hear, as in ‘I heard you say’ rather than ‘well, you said’, which is an opening to an argument rather than an invitation to discussion. Because ‘I heard you say’ is usually followed by ‘Well, that’s not what I meant….’
- We will recognize intent and acknowledge impact: your intent may have been benign or even supportive, but if the impact was hurtful, offensive, or dismissive of what I was communicating, your intent doesn’t matter. Simply apologize.
- We will employ “one mic,” meaning only one person will speak at a time and we will let them finish.
- We will practice active/deep listening, which means not thinking about what you want to say in response – or rebuttal – but rather really try to hear what’s being said.
- We will make no assumptions and we will ask questions to avoid assuming what anyone else might be thinking.
- We will keep discussions in confidence, especially discussions of the candidate we’re reviewing.
More suggestions for how to conduct the discussion of the candidate being reviewed are included under What to do as a Group.
Click here for more information about using Community Agreements in classes and more generally.