Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Leaving Meetings

[Stuart Staniford (stuart]

Gretchen Westlight wrote:
 
> I'd like to make a distinction between a participant leaving a meeting
> because of disinterest (The Law of Two Feet), and a participant leaving
> because they were upset (unhappy, hurt, angry, etc.).  I don't think of
> the former situation as a problem, but I personally believe that the
> latter one usually indicates a breakdown in the consensus process.  I
> recognize that sometimes folks walk into a discussion on a difficult or
> intensely personal topic primed for conflict, and I don't think it's the
> group's responsibility to "rescue" them.  However, any such departure has
> an impact on the remaining group, both for the rest of the meeting and
> beyond.  If consensus is truly about bringing forth the wisdom of all in
> the circle, and someone leaves the circle, then we are not getting the
> complete thinking and therefore not making the best decision.  Second-
> guessing an absentee doesn't ever cut it.

At Marsh Commons in Arcata, where I currently live, the group went through
an incredibly agonizing development process (finding the soil was
contaminated during construction was the worst part).  This understandably
led to enormous stresses in the group that still haven't been fully
resolved, though it's much better than it was.  Although I wasn't a member
of the group during development, I did some outside facilitation and
mediation for them during the later stages.  I've been living there as a
renter for the last few months.

So we've had a lot of experience with exploring the outer edges of
emotionality in group meetings.

Firstly, I think that if someone feels they really need to leave, they need
to leave.  That may well be the safety valve they use to avoid doing
something that feels worse to them (losing control, yelling and screaming,
becoming violent).  Here we negotiated an agreement that if someone really
needed to leave, it was ok.  However, they're supposed to work to calm down
and then rejoin the group when they feel ready.  Reframing it as "I need a
timeout" rather than "I'm leaving and maybe I'm not coming back" can help a
lot.

But, as Rob pointed out, there's a lot the facilitator can do to avoid
someone getting to that point.  The first essential step is awareness; if
the facilitator doesn't realize where people are at emotionally, it's not
possible to intervene in a timely way.  Some of the more difficult Marsh
Commons meetings I facilitated were amongst the peak experiences of my life
- I knew the situation was at the outer edges of my competence, or beyond
those edges, that it was incredibly important, and so every nerve in my
body was straining to be aware of what was going on for everyone in the
room, and my brain was constantly trying to compute both the content of
what was being said and also all the body language and facial expression
undercurrents going on.  The meetings that went well, when it was over I
felt completely drained and completely exhilerated.  The ones that didn't I
felt like s**t.  Hopefully, most situations require less awareness than
that, but still, training oneself to be aware of the emotional state of the
short fused folks is key.

In general, it's much easier to help someone who is reaching the point of
emotional overwhelm *before* they get there than it is to clean up the mess
afterwards.  If the facilitator is up for it, there's also some really
amazing work that can be done with someone who is actually in an extremely
emotional state.  Some kinds of change and healing only happen when someone
is really upset.  

Personally, I'm still very much in the learning stages about working with
this kind of thing - though I've gotten to practice a few times and seen
some very good facilitators working with extremely heavy emotion (and I can
often do something myself after I've seen another facilitator do it once). 
I took a workshop from Laird Schaub about this which was really good.  His
view is that the facilitator needs to take the upset person through three
steps
        * what are you feeling right now (get the person to directly 
          report their inner state)
        * what was your experience of what happened? (get their side of 
          the story)
        * what do you want to have happen?

Something Laird does not emphasize, but which I think is important, is
empathy in the facilitator.  It really helps with dealing with an upset
individual if the facilitator can completely understand and feel the pain
of the person in question.  That tends to be very healing.  In a conflict
between two people, you have to be able to do that to both sides.

One of the things I'm now realizing from doing a lot of therapy and
learning about psychology etc, is that in a very emotional meeting, the
participants can tend to do a great deal of projecting onto the
facilitator.  There's a real challenge in both accepting and learning from
feedback, and also being willing to hold onto oneself in the face of
someone else's projections about you while they are very upset.  In
general, I've realized that facilitation at a more advanced level is not
just about technical skills; it's also very much about the facilitator's
personal evolution.  The more evolved I can become, the more I'm going to
be able to handle in a meeting.

I think the big things to avoid if possible are
        * person leaves and never comes back, or the conflict never 
          gets worked through in any form.
        * judging people for getting upset.  We all make those judgements
         (I've done it plenty) but they only make the problem worse.

Stuart.

-- 
Stuart Staniford  ---  President  ---  Silicon Defense
                   stuart [at] silicondefense.com
(707) 445-4355                     (707) 445-4222 (FAX)