Process minutes: 2018-09-16

Minutes:

Tri community facilitator's brunch 9/16/2018
Touchstone cohousing
12:30-2pm

Present: Maggi (TS), Ralph (SW), Patti (GO), Jillian (GO), Elph (GO),
Dolores (TS), Mary King (GO)

AGENDA
1.Check ins
2.Announcements
3.Go round about what’s up in each community
Topics to discuss
4. Microphone Use
5. Planning for community meetings
6. Number of facilitators
7. Next meeting


2. Announcements
- Fundraising effort for Meg Wyngaard (neighbor at GO getting chemo) to
help cover living costs. CLICK HERE TO DONATE!
<
https://www.gofundme.com/support-for-meg-wyngaard&rcid=r01-153687854973-50bdb01875cd4419&pc=em_co_campmgmt_w
>
-GO fun club will announce apple picking activity soon, maybe mid-October
- Dolores working on zero waste effort, made about 30 gallons of detergent
and will keep doing it. If you have empty laundry detergent bottles, you
can bring them to Dolores to use. Also instead of saran wrap can use a kind
of wax paper, Dolores can also make with the kids. Considering doing a
training with the kids how to make art using recycled materials. Looking
for volunteers to help with various initiatives. In Belgium, machine to
recycle plastic, costs about $600.


3. How are things going at your community, from a process view?

SW
Sunward - we’re in budget process. I was not there, but there was a vision
and values discussion yesterday. Also at our second to last community
meeting, a couple members were talking amongst themselves and getting a bit
loud and disturbing the group. They happened to leave the meeting early.
During the meeting evaluation, folks said how disturbing it had been to
them. And so the facilitator, after the meeting, sent out an email to the
two talkers, and asked for mediation with them. I participated in that
mediation and it went reasonably well. Interesting idea.

TS
Working on budget process too.
Facil team and community feeling more confident, after the third Laird
training (out of four). Co-facilitation model now instead of Lead and
Assistant.
Found that it’s crucial to have the facilitator’s debrief after each
plenary, to support each other, and, what we can do in general - new ideas.
Comments from community that they can see the change for the better, too.
We have about 16 people willing to facilitate! Nice. Some who are willing
to facilitate committees but not community.

GO
Ok overall, working on budget too. various ongoing issues but does not feel
like we are having a big problem.
Seems like we have less facilitators available - some have moved out and
others are busier.
Committees function at varying degrees of effectiveness.


4. Microphone use

We use microphones at GO consistently but the quality of them is not great
and they only work in the dining room. We could pay money to have them
work in other rooms. GO has three. Are others using them?

TS is, we have a sound system, recently bought two more so we have four.
The ones we have are not very good and are going to spend money on better
ones. Ideal is Four for the group and one for the facilitators (but our
system only supports four), so no one has to do mic running. TS folks say
that its disruptive and a lot of work to run the mic around. TS only uses
in dining room.

Sunward. Facilitator wears a wireless clip-on and there’s one other mic.
Have not had a big problem with it. In dining room.

I’ve seen other meetings with mics where there’s a center table where each
speaker puts the mic back in the middle.

Interesting. That might slow down the meeting but might be a good thing. GO
would need to have better mics to do this since we can’t leave them on, two
mics will interfere with eachother.

Discussion about a ball mic. Easy to throw around. You need able people to
receive it. Attempting to address people being afraid of mics. So if you
have a group that’s meeting that is new might be a good solution. But our
groups are somewhat more used to using them.



5. Question about how we manage the logistics of the planning for the
meeting - Coco/steering plus facilitators?

At Sunward, Coco and Facilitation meet together to plan each community
meeting. If we had cofacilitation would have to figure out that scheduling.
SW has 5 or 6 people able/willing to facilitate. David, Dalinda, Rowena,
Ralph, Sandra. Whoever is up next goes to the Coco meeting.

TS also does it similarly, the co facils try to both go to the steering
meeting but can’t always.

TS - I’m facil a meeting on Monday night. So I meet with the other facil
and we go through the agenda and we divide up the tasks. I am tasked with
talking to these 2 presenters, the other facil tasked with talking to these
other 2 presenters.

GO - I don’t think we have a lot to add from GOs perspective. I don’t think
we’re fully doing what we’re committed to doing, that well. I think we’ve
slacked off of a clearer process.

GO - I always prep with my presenters when I facil. I have two things I
always want to accomplish in that meeting. 1. I want to be very clear what
the presenter’s goal is - what do they want to accomplish. 2. To help them
think through what is the best process to get there. I think the quality of
the meeting really improves if the facil prep work with the presenters. It
can sometimes be a 5 minute phone call, but other times can take hours and
can be absolutely essential.

GO - I think we as an organization are not doing well at tracking the
bigger picture of the agenda. The facil has to do a lot of work, as the
last-gasp gatekeeper to make sure an item is plenary ready. I think that
really we need the process to change. Idea in the beginning to have an
Infoco committee but that never really functioned.

Either next time or now, I’d like to continue to talk about how the process
for HOW we each prep for meetings, valuable.

Critical that you talk with each presenter, not just email. And with some
people that has to be in person, phone is not always enough.

In a perfect scenario, two-step vetting process. One through a central
group like a Coco, and then facils too. But what if you don’t have a coco
or steering, then what?

So if we assume that all facils are fulfilling the role alone, is that ok?

Sometimes, if you have pretty experienced facils. But one issue that it
sets the bar yet higher for people to start facilitating - if they fear
they have to prevent an agenda trainwreck might be yet more daunting.

Also does not address the larger scope issues of what’s coming together at
what time during the year, what is the bigger picture stuff happening,
coordinating work and decisions, not visible to a facil working on a
particular agenda.

Why didn’t Infoco work out? Perhaps it was seen as not critical at the
time, had too many urgent things to work on.


6. Number of facilitators

How many facilitators did GO have during the Laird training? When we did
the training we had 8 people, but not all were interested in facilitating
community meetings.

TS its really nice to have a large pool of facilitators - its inspiring! We
encourage the other communities to do it again.

It is hard only having 4-6 people willing.

Would doing another training grow your pool?

I am new to facilitating and am finding the training so supportive. The
fact that there are so many of us, making an atmosphere of better process
for the whole community, not just those in the training.

We’re also learning good systems, not just facilitating.

Sunward is not using consensus any more though. And our meetings are going
great now.

But it is still a cooperative decision making system - still going to do
agendas, have functional committees, empower and communicate the
empowerment.

At GO we have two-thirds original members and one-third new members,
approximately? The training speaks to the whole culture of meetings and
that is helpful.

TS has 7 who are actively facilitating and another 7 who are trained and so
could.

TS is going to move our process meetings to the second half of the debrief.
Debrief for a half hour, and then process meeting for a half hour. That way
we don’t have to plan an additional meeting. With wine and snacks.

Interesting idea.

I feel like some of the most creative problem solving for our community
happens at meeting debriefs.

It’s hard to stay on topic and discuss the facilitation and not the content
but we’re good at redirecting the conversation back.

Sunward - we don’t have debriefs, I’d like to do it, I think its helpful
to do but we are not currently.

Sometimes presenters will come to the debrief too and that can be very
helpful.


7. Next BRUNCH
At GO 12:30-2 on Dec 2.
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