Chapati Power Diagrams are a leaderful organising tool which helps a group analyse power in a specific situation.
Overview
This 1.5h session will support participants to develop shared understanding and vocabulary related to power in groups and to develop the capacity to talk about power in our groups.
The chapati diagrams are a way of analyzing power in a specific situation. The activity requires an ‘experiential’ element that can be analyzed. This could be generated using a game with the group. It could also simply draw on the dynamics that have arisen within a group conversation or in the actual functioning of a team or group in their ‘real life’ outside of the session.
How does this tool support leaderful movements?
Understanding and learning how to work with the way power functions in our groups is a key competency for effective leaderful organizing.
It can be a difficult theme to discuss and acknowledge, but developing the trust, frameworks, courage and willingness to look at and explore power and its dynamics in our groups is a crucial foundation for healthy group and movement work.
This activity supports groups to engage in an honest dialogue on how power has functioned in a specific situation, thereby allowing them to take the next step by engaging in deeper conversations on working with power and distributing power, which is an essential competency for leaderful organizing.
More detail
Participants are divided into small groups and each group uses paper and scissors to make a ‘chapati diagram’ of the situation being analyzed. They do so by cutting circles from the paper in different sizes. Each circle has a name of the person it represents, and the relative size of the circle represents the relative power of that person in the group.
The session includes giving some short input on “understanding power” and time to debrief as a whole group. Keep in mind that this activity requires enough time and care to process both in the session and afterwards. Participants might find it exposing and struggle with how they were perceived (either for being considered as having a lot of power or the opposite, being seen as with very little power).
Access Resource
- Psychosocial Resilience and Regenerative Activism Training Manual
Find a session plan for ‘Exploring power with chapati diagrams’ on pages 242 – 245. This session plan is intended to support you to facilitate the activity for a group.
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