Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Something faster and easier than consensus?

[Dahako (Dahako]

Hi -

IMHO, virtually anything is faster and easier than consensus. Saving time in 
the present isn't the reason to do consensus - community building and saving 
time in the implementation stage is.  Again, IMHO.

An effective but time-taking exercise to help people feel heard is to do a 
round robin in which the first person speaks (briefly ;>) ) on the topic at 
hand, then the next person mirrors what was said, to the satisfaction of the 
original speaker.  Then the next person speaks, and the pattern repeats around 
the circle - twice.

It's important in doing this exercise to not let the people whose turn it is to 
mirror go on to express their own viewpoint immediately after doing the 
mirroring.  Go all the way around the circle twice and let each person do (and 
think about) one thing at a time.  In groups I've done this with, the repeating 
stops pretty quickly as people learn to listen and to trust that their 
neighbors are listening.

Takes a while though.

-Jessie Handforth Kome
Eastern Village Cohousing
"Where we're trying to figure out what play equipment to put on the green roof 
- jungle gym, sand box, hot tub. . ."
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