Cohousing-L Mailing List: My Sociocracy online course Feb. 8-Apr 12

[Diana Leafe Christian (diana]

Hello,

I wanted to let you know about my next 10-week online sociocracy course 
specifically for cohousing communities and other kinds of intentional 
communities. It's Monday evenings, Feb. 8 through Apr 12, $245-$445 sliding 
scale, Early Bird Discount of $225-$445 through January 4.

In my experience as a community consultant and consensus trainer and 
facilitator, and now a sociocracy trainer for 9 years, sociocracy can be a more 
effective governance and decision-making making process for cohousing than 
classic, traditional consensus. I agree with the concerns about consensus 
expressed by Bryan at La Querencia. I wrote an article series about these 
challenges for Communities magazine several years ago ("Busting the Myth That 
Consensus is Good for Communities”), which I condensed into a handout, “What 
Can Go Wrong in Consensus Decision-Making.” If you’d like a copy: diana [at] 
ic.org <mailto:diana [at] ic.org>

(I disagree with the idea that sociocracy is a form of consensus. I’ve taught 
and facilitated both methods for years, and while sociocracy is derived from 
some principles and values of sociocracy from consensus, what Gerard Endenberg 
ended up creating is quite different in practice. Using sociocracy in community 
feels like being in a whole different paradigm than using consensus!)

Although I believe sociocracy more effective than consensus, in my experience 
this is only true if the group does four things: everyone learns it, they use 
at least seven parts, they use it as their trainer taught them (not combining 
it with consensus), and they get periodic review trainings or phone or Zoom 
consultations. If a group does these four things they can experience four great 
benefits: having better meetings, getting more done, being better organized, 
and feeling more connected to other community members. (If they don’t do these 
four things though, in my experience, using a partial or pseudo-sociocracy can 
result in as much confusion and conflict as any other method.) 

The February sociocracy course has short watch-ahead videos, graphic-rich 
handouts making a clear, thorough sociocracy how-to handbook especially for 
communities, and live weekly practice sessions with other course participants. 
And opportunities each week to talk about what you just learned in videos and 
handouts with another course participant through a randomly generated Buddy 
System, with a different person each week. I address using sociocracy in common 
challenging community situations, such as how to work effectively with people 
who misunderstand or mis-use Objections, and various ways to interrupt and 
re-direct challenging circle members or new circle members who don’t understand 
sociocracy well yet.

In my experience doing this course in the last two years, course participants 
start successfully using each part of sociocracy they learn each week in their 
own communities or forming groups right away, and they love it.

To get a sense of the course, I can send two handouts: “The Four Benefits: Why 
People Like Using Sociocracy,” and “Sociocracy: ‘Effective, Efficient, and Fun’ 
“ If you’d like these, just ask: diana [at] ic.org <mailto:diana [at] ic.org>. 

And a 10-minute video overview of sociocracy: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVpt0bzQL4&t=2s 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVpt0bzQL4&t=2s>

To know what recent course participants from communities have said about this 
course, more information, and to register: 
https://tinyurl.com/WebsiteFeb2021Soc <https://tinyurl.com/WebsiteFeb2021Soc>

Thank you for considering this course.

Diana Leafe Christian