Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Handling conflict

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 2/13/04 11:04 PM, "Anna Fallon" <AnnaFallon [at] worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> Many of the members find conflict difficult and shy away from any
> argument.  We find consensus difficult to achieve.  We are beginning to search
> for ways to build our members confidence in conflict.  A group of us thinks
> that 'developing' conflict is the only way to really get at what people need
> and want from community life.  We would like for people to be more comfortable
> with each other when there is disagreement.  Now when there is a somewhat
> emotional meeting---some members are devastated or horrified....  We were
> thinking that this must have happened in other communities.

I happen to be very comfortable with conflict so I'm probably the last
person you need to respond to this but here I am anyway. Avoiders drive me
nuts.

Until you reach the conflict levels, you really don¹t know where people
stand on things -- you need to know where their edges are before you can
smooth them off. These edges only appear when things get serious. We are at
three years after move-in and some people's edges are just beginning to move
out into the open. So the good news is that you are getting to some real
stuff early on.

Laird Schaub has a good statement on this -- Pay now or pay later, and the
interest rates are huge.

Professional facilitators are best at helping you work through these issues.
In addition to diffusing internal tensions, they understand how to interpret
and rephrase people's concerns so they can be heard and resolved. Often
people are upset but not clearly expressing their concerns so no one knows
how to resolve them. So the first thing is to find professional
facilitators.

If that is not possible, it sometimes helps to have discussions with upset
people outside the large group. Have a leader in the group speak privately
with people on opposite sides of issues can help clarify what they are
concerned about. Often they misunderstand the other person's position but
the emotions are too volatile for this to be clarified when everyone is in
the room together. Ultimately the whole group has to hear the issues and
resolve them together but the private work can make this much easier.

Never fear, it eventually works out -- or so they tell me.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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