Power structures in group process | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
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 _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
- Re: the importance of clearly defined process & power--consensus recommendations, (continued)
- Message not available
- Re: the importance of clearly defined process & power--consensus recommendations Tree Bressen, February 3 2002
- Using Professionals to Help Define Decision-Making Processes Sharon Villines, February 3 2002
- Re: Using Professionals to Help Define Decision-Making Processes Maggi Rohde, February 3 2002
- Re: Using Professionals to Help Define Decision-Making Processes Robert P. Arjet, February 3 2002
- Message not available
- Consensus Sharon Villines, February 4 2002
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Re: Power structures in group process Tree Bressen, February 4 2002
- About Tree Bresson Rob Sandelin, February 5 2002
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