Power structures in group process
From: Rob Sandelin (floriferousmsn.com)
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 22:44:06 -0700 (MST)
Understanding power structures in a group is pretty advanced and often
subtle stuff. It is often a key that there is leadership to make things
happen and this is in some ways a power structure. You need to be very
careful about the balance of this. If you try to be completely egalitarian
you will probably not succeed in building your multi-million dollar real
estate development. You need to give some power to people to enable
decisions to be made, and frankly you want to give  power to those with
competence.

Power comes from  the ability to persuade the group and sometimes  this
comes from a place of respect and competence. I have seen  many times decion
making deferred to a person or team because they are the ones who know the
details or have proven themselves to do good work.

A story: I once sat with a group (just watching) that spend 5 hours talking
and trying to reach consensus about a wiring plan for their community
center. It was obvious, that people who had NO COMPETENCE at all in
electrical wiring were overly participating, in fact the two people who had
competence in the field, left in apparent disgust after the second hour. One
person spent a huge amount of the groups time trying to convince them to get
an electrical service panel in the color scheme of their choice (they come
in one color, gray). Facts could not dissuade this person.

So in doing a real estate development project you need to give up power in
certain areas. Having an understanding of your competence areas and the
humility to shut up when you are out of your depth will be helpful.

Also, as time goes on, and the real estate project develops, new people
join. Since new people have no understanding of the reasons why things have
evolved how they are, they have much less power, and are often politely
told: "we don't have time to go into this again now just for you, so please
sit quietly while those of us who understand this make the decision."  This
sometimes hurts peoples egos, and they react in the ways they do in such
situations, often to their, and the groups detriment.

I think a huge mistake that cohousing groups make, particularly in the
development process, is letting new people, who have no history, and no
training or experience in group process, have  veto power over the group.
There have been groups have been hamstrung by consensus dysfunction imposed
upon them by someone who has almost no understanding of what they are doing
to the group, but only thinking of themselves. And this is not surprising.
Why wouldn't a person block the group to get what they wanted if they could?
We are trained early and it is reinforced often, to look out for our  own
interests.

There is hopefully a point in time, after bonding with the group and its
goals, where the focus shifts from a me center to a we center. But this does
not happen right away, and in some folks it may never really happen.

Rob Sandelin

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