Liz Magill offered our 18th WebChat with advice for community support teams who help community members work with conflict. She started off with a list of 8 questions she recommends support teams ask themselves when they receive a request: 1. Is this conflict covered in the committee mandate? 2. Is it an individual or community... Read More

In community, and in life, there are many personality types and many ways for those personalities to clash despite everyone’s best intentions to get along. There is a framework from the theory of Imago Relationships that distills this down into two general patterns. I find it useful for understanding a lot of interpersonal conflict and... Read More

So imagine this, you’ve had a meeting of your community, forming or formed, and you could hear some tension in the discussion. Roberto was really not happy with the discussion. At process check-in thefacilitator asked if he was upset and he said he was fine, he just needed time to mull over the facts. And... Read

Why can’t we all just get along? Some percentage of people who join a cohousing community do so because they want everyone to “just get along”. Idyllic images of not just knowing your neighbors, but also of really liking to hang out with your neighbors flutter through our heads. And then we move in. Or... Read More

What shall we discuss as we are forming our communities? Every forming community (I hope!) asks this question and communities that have already moved in give lots of different answers. Many of those answers are in the form of “I wish we’d resolved this” and “we decided x which was irrelevant and should have decided... Read More

Why is connection so elusive? How can something so universally desired be so difficult to attain in a richly resourced culture like the United States? Especially, how can it be difficult among members of an intentional cohousing community? I believe there are two elements essential for connection lacking in our broader culture, and co-housing provides... Read More

Several years ago there was a post on Cohousing-L related to the community’s legal documents that were written in “legalese.” I had recently researched Plain English for Lawyers for a neighbor. She was a single parent trying to set up legal guardianship and financial oversight for her daughter in the event of her death or... Read More

As a professional consultant in group dynamics I rarely get asked to work with a group when everything is going fine. Usually they’re leaking oil, have a busted leaf spring, or can’t seem to shift into third gear—and are hoping for inexpensive repairs from me, the itinerant shade tree mechanic. Overcoming Inertia First of all,... Read More

I’m back from Star Island off the coast of New Hampshire – a week long intentional community of 300 – where I took a workshop on “global compassion.” I’m personally motivated to help create a society of caring, that puts compassion into action, that can reach across the globe to reduce human suffering, address food... Read More