Process minutes: 2004-05-14

Minutes:

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Process cmtee meeting
7/14/2004, 7:15pm
Present: Jim Sw, Gail, Jillian, [[Elph]], Mel

Agenda
1. Check-ins
2. Monkey reviews
3. update/progress on the decision re-visiting policy
4. gesture of appreciation to Sandra
5. continuing discussion and action towards setting up a fall training/retreat
6. reviewing process agreements from Sunward
7. follow-up on "What we learned" from June 22 community meeting
8. Next meeting
(addendum at end, of training ideas.)
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2. (these are just copied from our last meeting minutes.)

Re-MONKEY: Amy H will finish the agreements binder and will put it in the common house sitting room, with labels, and will let Helen know to print out new agreements and put them in there as they happen.
Re-MONKEY for Finance cmtee - when the "Can't pay your dues" agreement is finished they should please email it to process cmtee
Re-MONKEY: (Amy did this once but will check back again): Amy H will talk with Malcolm, about someone from membership getting together with Bill as soon as possible and going over the binder of agreements, or at least the membership packet and any agreements that seem the most urgent.
Re-MONKEY: At the next meeting [[Elph]] will present the common house usage policy as a reminder to the group.
Re-MONKEY: [[Elph]] and Jim Sweeton will work on the revisiting decisions agreement.
Re-MONKEY - Sarah heard back from two people re: how their work is going. She will contact the others in person to get some feedback.
Re-MONKEY - Sarah will talk with Membership re: picking a date for a GO / Touchstone community meal at GO and inviting Touchstone to join us. A part of the evening would include a chance for GO members to learn about the Touchstone site plan.
Re-MONKEY - Sarah will write up goals/feature list for the electronic book of agreements
Re-MONKEY - Jillian will check with Tree about suggestions for info on community organization structures
Re-MONKEY - Jillian will check with Sandra and Bea and Ruth at the Michigan Friends Center about possibly doing a GO training - Jillian talked a bit with Sandra, will wait to do more until process has more clarity about what we want to do.
FREEZER
Make sure there is money in the budget for a new easel next year

3. Update on the Decision Revisiting Policy
MONKEY: [[Elph]] and Jim Sweeton will work on it. They will have something for our next process meeting, 7/27.

4. Sandra's work

Sandra submitted an invoice for $750, for 7.5 hours of work, she actually logged over 16 hours but charged us for less than half of that. And she charged us less than half her commercial rate. What can we do for her? Card? [[Elph]] suggested a gift basket. We don't have a budget for this. Well, she saved us hundreds of dollars, we could charge it to our training budget.

(Side note to remember, that usually when we have trainers they are coming in from out of town and they need to be taken out for dinner, need to have a budget for this kind of thing.)

Proposal to spend $50 on a zing basket. [[Elph]] gets a 30% discount. He surfed the web during the meeting and we picked a basket.
MONKEY: [[Elph]] will order it next week.
MONKEY: Jillian will put a card out at the meeting on Monday.

5. Fall Training Ideas

See doc below that Sarah emailed out to process. Ideas submitted by various people. Plus membership cmtee was interested in diversity training for GOers. Membership cmtee also wanted there to be trust building.

Discussion around one of the items, about how we communicate with eachother. If you have an emotional charge around something, what do you do with that.

Gail - I talked with Jim Johnson - I don't think its a realistic thing to work with him this year, we don't have enough money budgeted. I brought a copy of the part that I thought was relevant to us of what he does - collaborative dialog. He saw it as a full day with a morning talking about dialog. And then the afternoon being more specific and working with facilitators rather than the whole group.

We have $700 left in our budget for the rest of the year, for both a training and for more outside facilitation if we need it. Not a lot.

Sarah mentioned that she had recently done a training in conflict resolution at the Friend Center. Who gave the training? Membership cmtee - talked about people not communicating well, escalating the emotions instead of helping. That falls into what Susan King wrote about below - "Building Community without going to a meeting." This would be part of a good conflict resolution training. Its not something we automatically know how to do - to approach someone we have a difference of opinion with, and have a constructive, solution seeking conversation.

need to find an inexpensive trainer and the materials to make it fit for us.

I wonder if Sarah has any materials from that friends center training? We can ask.

Who are our local resources: Sandra, Clair Tinkerhess - Peace Talks. Also people within GO/Sunward. With $700 as our maximum we should not try to get someone from a distance - we can't afford them.

It is our diversity that leads to the friction. Diversity of different people's viewpoints and approaches to problems and styles of communicating and ages etc etc.

Mini Trainings are a great idea - Susan wrote up some below - feeling that we need this urgently - lets not wait until fall to do anything. maybe she could lead one a month? As a slightly long icebreaker?
MONKEY: Jim Sw will talk with Susan when she gets back, see if she'd be willing to do this in the near future, what kind of help/support she'd need from process if she's willing.

Idea of the retreat, we talked about at the last meeting, as well. You mean go away somewhere over night? That would be ideal. It can be a great way to bring people together, and yet, a great way to produce separation for those who don't go... Hard for it to be practical, financially, time, logistics...

Can we foster a "retreat" atmosphere without going away? We can get creative about this. If we were not allowed to use electricity - bonding experience. :)

Should we pick a weekend as a next step for the training day idea? Or two? I remember people didn't like September, when [[Elph]] and I proposed the facilitator's training 2 years ago, too much starting up, maybe try October. Don't coincide with home games. Oct 2, Oct 16, 23 are Saturdays that do NOT have home games.
MONKEY: Jillian will send out an email with these three dates, will ask people to let me know which they could NOT make it to, and Jillian will ask again on Monday.

6. Process Agreements from Sunward
Sarah is talking with Sandra about getting copies of sunward agreements, around how the committees work, make decisions, know when to deal with something or take it to the full community, etc. Jillian thought she had some but looked at them today and thinks they're out of date.

7. From the last process cmtee meeting minutes:
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List from the 6/22 meeting - brainstorm

What to do more of in future
- take responsibility to stay up to speed on issues
- read minutes and proposals that are posted on bulletin board and email
- post minutes on email and bulletin board
- develop structures for addressing individual needs
- empower committees - create criteria they can follow, proceduces cmtees can follow
- have an open mike at every other community meeting for people to voice concerns
- at every other community meeting pass a talking stick
- triage - not everything to full community level - infoco
- advance announcements of meeting times
- facilitate committee meetings with more structure
- work more to shift from adversarial to advocational model
- helpers - communication - process advocates
- need more detail in revisiting consensus decisions policy

What we need to do less of
- group think at the committee level
- we didn't put enough detail in our revisiting decisions policy
- individual AND community perspectives, not VERSUS. s
- being more proactive to ferret out individual concerns - surface them ahead rather than wait for them to get explosive.
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We're already working on a few of these. How about something simple. Every week, email out something, like, by the way, here are the minutes guidelines. And this week, here are the agenda guidelines. And this week, here are the steps we use to call for consensus. And this week, here is our agreement around quorum.

That's sort of along the same lines of bringing back old agreements for review at community meetings - refreshers. I still think that's a good idea too.

Also the idea of the open mike. Is that something that might be especially timely right now. How would that be framed? Or just leave it at totally open mike and leave it at that and see what happens? What about time, how do we manage it - is it to leave a little bit of time for each person, or to allow the five people in the room with burning issues to say, time to do that? Frame it like 1 minute per person or 5 minutes? Could try it one way and see what happens. We would not have time to problem solve issues that come up, in the meeting. but maybe people could approach the person afterwards if they have ideas. Set clear guidelines that we are not going to solution seek in the meeting, but encourage communication afterwards.

what would the ground rules be:
- use I statements
- there is no back and forth (just a one-way short talk by someone)
- its not the place for specifics of interpersonal conflicts to be talked about.
- if you have ideas or suggestions for someone about what they talked about please share that with them afterwards

what amount of time? Try it for ten minutes once and see what surfaces?

This is not a replacement icebreaker - would be later in the meeting. maybe after the break. Sunward does theirs as the very last thing, when the "business" was done.

one thing to note - the open mike opportunity only offers an outlet for a certain subset of people - there are some who would not do that.

who is facilitating on Monday? I don't remember. Monday will be too soon for a mini training to happen, maybe we could do a ten minute open mike?

Depending on who the facilitators are we should see if they're willing to make this happen.
MONKEY: Jillian will find out who is facilitating and email this idea to them.

When can we get into talking about the committee stuff?
Like what?
Like, how do you define a member of a committee? Do you just show up at one meeting, and you are a member? what if that person comes to the last meeting of an 8-meeting series discussing an issue? Do you have to do work to be a cmtee member? Can you just come when you feel like it?
I don't think the committee emailing list is all members, there are "listeners". But I do expect cmtee members to read the email.
I do think that's one part of the work we need to do - to create guidelines for how committees operate and also who is on the committee and committee participation. There are hidden landmines for empowered committees.

And the "expectation" that every adult member will participate in a committee - that's not in writing as a community agreement. And what does participate mean.

8. Next meeting - 4th Tuesday, 7/27, 7:15, Jim Sweeton's house.
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Sarah emailed this to process, suggestions that Susan King and some other GOers emailed to her.

Possible half or full day training topics

Half day - I'm not in control!
Summary -
Acknowledge that we are all now living in a situation that is new to us. We no longer have the same kind of control over things that impact our quality of life as we used to. Provide tools for understanding common ways people respond to this situation and offer alternative solutions that build community and trust.

Content:
- Identify/describe different styles of responding to a feeling of "lack of control."
- Identify/describe the strengths and weaknesses of these different styles.
- Invite people to describe/identify which styles they find themselves using.
- Offer alternative coping skills/tools and how to coach ourselves and others to try new responses.
- Role playing to contrast old and new ways of responding

Half day - Who are you?
Summary -
Part I - Acknowledge that none of our tried and true relationship categories of family, friends and co-workers really fit the kinds of relationships we are forming with many of our GO neighbors. Provide tools for identifying/forming a broader range of types of relationships.
Part II - Acknowledge that we are mostly used to building relationships with people who are "like us." At GO we will have relationships with people who have different personal and social values than us. Provide tools/understanding for how to foster relationships based on respect for differences instead of what we have in common.

Content:
Part I - Can you relate?
- Describe and name different kinds of relationships, identify expectations for each type.
- talk about what it feels like/what happens when expectations for a relationship don't match the type of relationship it is.
- compare contrast to kinds of relationships we are building with GO neighbors. Come up with some names for these different kinds of relationships.
- Talk about expectations for these new "GO relationships", how they're different what feels awkward or like a relief

Part II - The spice of life
This is basic diversity training stuff:
- First exercise: Have the group identify assumptions we make individually and as a group about the values/political/religious views/life experience of GO community members.
- Ask community members to write (anonymously) their actual views/values on 3x5 cards and post them for people to look at. Get group to talk about what surprised them or what assumptions were being made that were not accurate.
- Second exercise: Ask group to describe what behaviors make them feel welcomed in a new setting. What does that feel like? Then ask group to describe what behaviors make them feel unwelcome or resented in a new setting. What does that feel like?
- Draw from previous discussion to identify community norms for how we want to be treated and how we want to treat other people.

Specific skills/exercises for mini-trainings
Mine or ours?
- Present some methods and techniques for discerning if a concern is an individual concern or if it's a community-wide concern and what to do in each case. We need to give community members a couple of techniques or litmus tests for figuring this out, as well as info on how to proceed for each type of concern.
A related question is, "What resources does the community have for addressing individual concerns?"
I am a little concerned that it appears some folks individual concerns are "OK" and others' aren't.

NIMBY
- Tools to help identify a range of solutions to individual or community concerns, instead of all-or-nothing solutions. Brainstorm ways an individual or household can explore and implement these kinds of solutions within the community's current processes.
- break into small groups and do this exercise with a problem scenario: make a list/description of your ideal solution and then make a list/description of your worst-case-scenario. Then work backwards from each until you get to something you can live with. Next, identify what parts of the solution you as an individual can implement and what parts need committee/community input or support to implement. In real life the next step would be to contact the committee convener for a conversation about your concerns and how best to bring your idea to the committee.

Building community without going to a meeting
- Skills for how to listen to and respond to your neighbor kvetch about a community issue or other community member in a way that builds community and fosters respect for individuals and community processes.
It would probably be helpful to let folks know that this is probably the single most important thing you can do at GO to build community, and you don't even have to go to a special meeting to do it!
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Community Input

From a member:
I've been thinking that many people are feeling disenfranchised, that their ideas get slammed as soon as they are put out to the community. I was thinking that we need some work on what it really means to live in community and have to discuss everything... not just *do it* the way we might in a private home. I have no idea what to call that, but there you go.

Also, I've been marveling at how we apply "sustainable" to so many different things. Some people apply it to our land and want to feed the birds and rabbits, but love to eat meat; others apply it to food--eat only vegetarian--but might use perfumed soap. Could we do some training about how different our definitions of our mission might be and how we could respect those differences?

From a member:
One piece of the information/communication issue that I don't think was discussed was some training for individuals. One of the things that has bothered me about some interactions or emails I've had from people is the tone of their voice or email. Just because you are angry doesn't mean you can come out screaming. In our search for improving communication, let's not focus only on the committees.

Individuals need to understand, that in the spirit of community, you need to approach people in a manner you would like to be approached. If my kids use rude words or a rude voice, I tell them to try again until they can use their nice words and a nice voice. I expect nothing less of adults invested in the idea of community.

I understand that we all need to adapt to each other's styles. But, people must understand that if they come out screaming and shooting things down, they may not be listened to. I, and probably most people, shut down when confronted that way and automatically decide to discount that person's comments. It is very hard for me to care about a person's concerns when they are not attempting to deal with their anger diplomatically.