Cohousing-L Mailing List: Consensus in older groups

[Christine Della Maggiora (cdm]

Hi Becky. We've been living on site at Eno Commons (Durham NC) for five
years now, and the group met for several years before that.

We've been running on our good looks and good will for five years now, and
patching together a process to muddle through. I don't feel like we've given
consensus a fair shot at glorious success because our current group hasn't
really done any training in it. We've made decisions,, adopted proposals and
made it through big issues. But I feel like it could have been a lot easier
if we'd all been using the same map, or any map.

Even the junior Representatives in Congress have to go through a
parliamentary procedure training course.

But I'm hopeful that this fall we will get it together and invest some time
on training ourselves (retraining for many of us) to ensure that we're all
speaking the same language and expecting the same process.

I think many people who are disenchanted with "consensus" may need either
more training in the process, or their group may be in need of some
community building so people want to work together better, regardless of the
process used.

Christine
Eno Commons
Durham, NC

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