So you’re interested in calling a crew!

The good news - this hopefully will not be your last time crewing. In my (Johnson’s) experience, it’s an art and a practice that you’ll improve at over time. There’s no pressure or expectation that the 1st or hundredth crew you call has any specific outcome. Hopefully, a minimum, it’s a growthful experience that you come out of with some friends.

Table of Contents

Structure of a Crew Cycle

You’re going to navigate a full crew cycle/round/season. A full cycle looks like:

  1. Calling (bringing together) the crew
    1. Sharing expectations with crew mates: ‣
      1. If you crew “in the wild” (outside of the Commons), you’d want to communicate these with everyone individually, but here, we’ll communicate them (just make sure your crew mates have read it)
    2. Sharing your pitch on the crew sign up page: 🙌 Crews
      1. “Here’s what I’m about/my vibe, I want to meet for this amount of time at these day/times, at this place”
      2. Make an event in Luma for the crew: Creating an Event for the Calendar
  2. Running the crew
    1. Create a group chat
    2. Each meeting, someone does a case clinic (peer support)
    3. Last meeting, retro
  3. Self reflection/growth
    1. “How do/did I show up as a leader and how can I improve?”
  4. Participating in feedback for the crewing program
    1. Regularly sharing how your crew is going, getting support if stuck
    2. Retrospectives, collective learning, sense making, etc. (Mid/late July?)

Calling the Crew

1. Why

Take some time explore if there’s anything specifically you want out of your crew - “why crew?” Some questions to consider:

If you have clear answers to those questions, great! If not, the good news is that “I want more/better friendships, connections, trust, support, belonging, and to show up as a better friend/person” is a wonderful purpose - it’s the most common one for me (Johnson) across a few dozen crews.

Some other possible inspirations, from my experience and that of the Microsolidarity network: