Hot take: Nothing. I’ve never seen a group of volunteers not revolve into infighting and politics. Churches, local governments, soup kitchens - seen it all, every one of them is just brutal
It's absolutely critical to have some at structures in place to deal with this. While some level of this often surfaces anywhere you have human relationships, it is 100% made much worse by a bad culture that is allowed to perpetuate.
- Code of Conduct longer than 3 lines clearly spelling out expectations. Not everyone has the same "obvious" expectations.
- Clear written process for dealing with complaints, member suspensions and expulsions.
- Just get rid of people that are consistently abrasive and cause problems with multiple other people over time, no matter how good or important they are. Just blamelessly ship them out earlier than later. Somehow. But it's easier said than done. A clear code of conduct sooner than later to fall back on as the "bad guy" helps rather than needing individual people to make the "bad guy" decision. You can just follow the process and whoever it's instituted against has a clear set of rules to expect.
We have learnt these lessons the hard way, repeatedly, until maybe some of it has sunk in.
I've lost count of how many times i've pointed out that you cannot put good and bad actions on a scale and try to balance them. Good actions are good in one pile, and bad actions are bad in their own pile, and that pile has to stay real, real small. Conflict avoidant people who are new (to you, ie me the 10yr veteran vs the 3yr 'newbie') really, really struggle with 'ostracising'.
Our code of conduct is pretty average tbqh. Do you have any examples of ones that you would consider exemplary or have particularly interesting points or approaches?
- Code of Conduct longer than 3 lines clearly spelling out expectations. Not everyone has the same "obvious" expectations.
- Clear written process for dealing with complaints, member suspensions and expulsions.
- Just get rid of people that are consistently abrasive and cause problems with multiple other people over time, no matter how good or important they are. Just blamelessly ship them out earlier than later. Somehow. But it's easier said than done. A clear code of conduct sooner than later to fall back on as the "bad guy" helps rather than needing individual people to make the "bad guy" decision. You can just follow the process and whoever it's instituted against has a clear set of rules to expect.