Re: [802SEC] Possible Signs of Dominance action

[Pat Thaler <000006d722d423ba-dmarc-request@ieee.org>]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Paul Nikolich <paul.nikolich@att.net> wrote:

Adrian,

Thank you for drafting this document, it is a good mechanism to stimulate discussion on an extremely (impossibly?) difficult to measure, highly subjective topic.

I haven't seen any of our EC colleagues way in yet -- perhaps my comments will help get the comments flowing.

My high level comments are as follows:

1) We should try to define and separate "signs" from "evidence".  In my mind, "evidence" is something that has documented proof of occurrence (e.g., motion vote tallies).  A "sign" is behavior a group chair (or participant) observes (it may be documented by the observer).

2) In your Notes column, the potential explanations for the observed behavior have negative connotations.  In some (many?) cases there is a perfectly acceptable explanation for the observed behavior.  For example, in the first row, the explanation for non-existent technical debate is that everyone simply agrees with the proposal on the floor.  Perhaps there should be two explanation columns; one for 'negative' and one for 'normal' or 'positive'.

I agree that it is often difficult to tell the difference between dominance and consensus.  However, other than fairly trivial proposals, there is usually some discussion of the details even when a lot of participants agree with the general sense of the proposal. A total lack of questions and/or suggestions for at least tweaking the proposal the first time it is presented would tend to indicate pre-agreement to the proposal. 

3) We need to be very careful not to hinder positive consensus building behaviors that naturally occur outside formal meeting time.  In my opinion, as long as the group of individuals working on building consensus are open and transparent in their activities, it probably is OK.  If we produce a 'signs/evidence of dominance' document, we should also produce a 'mechanisms for constructive consensus building' document.

There have been times when we ask those with differing proposals to discuss them off-line and see if they can create a consensus proposal. That is different from dominance behavior in that the intention to have the off-line discussions is open and additional parties can get included in the off-line discussion by asking. Also, usually there is some discussion and review of the resulting proposal before adopting it.

Regards,

--Paul

------ Original Message ------
From: "Adrian Stephens" <adrian.p.stephens@ieee.org>
To: STDS-802-SEC@listserv.ieee.org
Cc:
Sent: 4/7/2017 5:35:53 AM
Subject: [802SEC] Possible Signs of Dominance action

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