Process: Infoco minutes: 2015-11-22

Minutes:

Facilitators' brunch
11/22/15
10am to noon, unit 18
Present: Amy, Mary, Elph, Rowena from Sunward, Sarah, Jillian

AGENDA:
1. Brunch potluck - eat yummy food!
2. Discuss facilitation in the next season, and what can happen across
communities
3. Next meeting

MONKEYS:

MONKEY: All - on YouTube look for and watch Tim Hartnett's 1-hour video,
Consensus Oriented Decision Making.

MONKEY: Mary and Sarah to forward their fleshed-out version of the
consensus powerpoint.

MONKEY: Jillian to propose some brunch dates for early March


Sunward just had a one-day workshop with Laird about Bullying and
Boundaries.

Definition of bullying fairly broad - interaction where someone feels like
they can no longer contribute or engage in communication. Not necessarily
physical.

Do you have an agreement about observers having community support for
intervening in a situation happening between people that is not going well.
Help people hear each other. Not necessarily arbitration, just helping.

That idea seemed somewhat foreign so Sunward did practice. Person A wants
solar panels, person B just lost their job, and person C is observer to
help them hear each other. Did role plays in triads, of being a speaker and
being a receiver and being an observer. Receiver, how am I receiving,
listening, how quickly am I moving to cut the speaker off. Observer is
supposed to practice intervening when things go 'off the rails', when the
speaker and listener are no longer having constructive conversation, aren't
really listening to / hearing / understanding each other.

Rowena learned that people have very different perceptions of what is 'off
the rails' and what needs intervention - perception needs education and
practice. She felt she was being completely off the rails in her role play
and yet the observer never intervened, afterwards the observer said that
'you were still talking to each other so you didn't need help'.

Decision making system at Sunward is different, and, now Sunward has more
experience. When you have people holding opinions who don't care that no
one else agrees with them and so don't change the way they're communicating
at all. The group knows how to respond now. We (Sunward) used to try so so
hard to help them get there. But if they just were not inclined to get
there and we would all be so tired, worn out, upset. But now we're used to
it, we don't get flapped by it.

At Great Oak we did start out knowing that consensus is not unanimity and
that you can make agreements that some people don't like. I think we
learned a lot because we had Sunward to help teach us.

I think there is value to having a 3 hour chunk to talk about parking but I
think we could deal with it in-house.
I think GO can take on the basketball issue again. I think we should and we
should do it over the winter ourselves not needing outside facilitation.

Skills and Thrills topic it was suggested that we look at Work system
again. Work cmtee members have a perception that its broken, many Great
Oakers have a perception that its fine. Interesting.

When you go to a cohousing conference, you come back and realize our work
system is amazing and works really well. 80-20 rule. You can apply that
ratio to all sorts of things. 20% of people are not going to participate.

Any system needs work and discussion from time to time. We need to talk
about it periodically. Remind ourselves of our agreements and commitments
and listen to the issues that have come up.

What is the sweet spot of hours? So some people have a sense that their
hours are too much. What I don't get is what is the sense of what people
actually do want.

I don't know about that. Ask people, if you could have your perfect work
hours, what would that number be?

More ways to encourage cross-community facilitation.

Invitation went out to Lilacc for a tri-community intro to facilitation on
12/6, 2:30-4pm, by Sarah and Mary. Had some responses already. Basic
introduction to what does a facilitator do and why. What are some of the
tools, what are some of the models of facilitation. Then get people
interested in another session, Feb 6 and 7, 6 hour training, split into 3
hours a day. They will announce on 12/6.

Broaden people's thinking that they can be a facilitator too, you don't
have to be experts, we use a paired system. Keeping people on topic and
working toward the desired outcome, keeping time, keeping a respectful
space.

Feb 6 and 7 training, 9-12 on Sat and 1-4 on Sunday. Will try to structure
it so the first one is the more basic skills and the second day is the next
steps - weaving, responding to difficult personalities.

We'd like to encourage experienced people to come to both days, we'd like
to encourage the cofacilitation model to continue so that people can
experience working together and encourage each other.

This would be the first tri-community work / skill sharing. Connecting and
meeting people across the communities.

Maybe quarterly we could then keep it going, the group could keep getting
together.

All three communities deal with the same issues around basketball, seems
like we really should work on it all together.

I think things happen in their own time. Maybe its because TS is fully
occupied now, something feels like its shifted and its time for the three
communities to really work together. And perhaps we've all had enough time
to just get experience being communities on our own. It was too much to
network across. But now we feel ready.
I think part of it is Mary and Sarah teaming up!

TS wants to learn from GO about their budget process. A sense of
cross-community info-sharing.

We have so many new people at GO, have we done enough training about what
is consensus and how it works.
Orienting people is important. Coming and living and learning does help,
you get experience.

Tim Hartnett wrote book, Consensus Oriented Decision Making. He also made a
1 hour video that is basically an intro to consensus. Its online and free.
We should watch that video and see what we think.

Sarah and Mary took the basic powerpoint about what is consensus process,
and made it much more robust.

Can you share that with the rest of us?
Sure.

Re the Intro to facilitation we want people to come even if they don't plan
to facilitate - you learn how to be a good member of a group. Facilitation
is a participatory sport. Everyone in the room is on the team.

Patti is working for ICC now. Sarah and Mary are doing a half-day thing
with some students. Perhaps a few will want to come to the Feb 6-7
training. Possibility of starting to build relationships with the students
more.

And then if people want to try it and like it, idea to bring back the 2
year training again with Laird, there might be enough new people among the
three communities to have enough interest, plus perhaps ICC student coops.

Midwest regional gathering sponsored by the national cohousing association,
was an idea floated at the national conference but I don't know if it has
any traction.

3. Next meeting - Jillian will set up another brunch in early March, we can
debrief about how the two events went.

--end--
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gocoho.org/pipermail/infoco-minutes_gocoho.org/attachments/20151209/7280c3b1/attachment.html>