[This is a repost from Craig’s blog on Good Group Decisions Inc. Craig also offers a Make Shift Coffee House: a forum he designed to help people understand each other. If any cohousing community would like to host such a forum, he will facilitate it for free! Contact Craig here.] In principle, when people in... Read More

There’s a prevalent style of facilitation that’s mostly passive—where the person running the meeting isn’t doing much more than deciding who’ll talk next, punctuated by the occasional need to blow the whistle, perhaps to signal that time has expired or to announce a restart, either to referee moments of fulminating tension or to cut through... Read More

I’m traveling to Durham NC where I’ll be working with a cohousing community (my 61st if you’re keeping score at home). I’ll be using one of my favorite approaches: a four-day intensive immersion. After arriving Wed evening I’ll get a good night’s sleep and then begin work in earnest in the morning. My time with... Read More

Recently I was conducting a facilitation training with co-trainer María Stawsky The weekends run from Friday morning through Sunday afternoon and are a mix of presenting material, answering questions, conducting practice exercises, and facilitating live meetings. That said, we emphasize the last approach above all others: devoting three-fourths of every weekend to having students prepare... Read More

In the last week, a colleague sent me the link for a TEDx talk entitled: Conflict: Use it, Don’t Defuse It. The two presenters, CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke, are professional facilitators and they do a good job of laying out their main premise: that conflict is inherently neither good nor bad, yet most people... Read More

I was recently in a conversation with a friend who had just facilitated a difficult meeting for a neighboring community. Upon reflection, he felt fine when it came to working conflict and emotional distress, but felt sloppy and not well-focused when it came to managing problem solving and issue exploration. While most facilitators would report... Read More

Personally I object to the use of the word “block” as synonymous with “objection” and this entry explains some of the reasons why. What is a block? This is not a facetious question. If this is the word people want to use, what does it mean? From the accounts on the Cohousing-L email discussion list... Read More

One of the ways the principles and methods used by sociocracy speed up decision-making is going directly to objections instead of discussing the proposal. The proposal should state the perceived advantages or reasons why a decision is needed. The presenters will also have presented the issues and options they considered. After clarifying questions, there is... Read More