Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Using outside facilitator

[Jim_Snyder-Grant . LOTUS (Jim_Snyder-Grant.LOTUS]

New View's history with outside facilitators:

When we did programming, the architects contracted with a facilitator to do 
some of the organizing & group process work. That worked out fine, I thought. 

Then, we considered bringing in a facilitator when we were wrestling with 
issues of diversity in the group & how to expand our diversity via our 
membership outreach & possibly by making policy changes: feelings were running 
high. There are people who make a living at helping orgnanizations deal with 
the traditional legally-involved dimensioons of diversity such as race, gender, 
age, etc. We decided not to bring in a facilitator on that one, but even just 
talking about that prospect in the process committee & in the whole group 
helped clarify what the issues were & generated some ideas about how to proceed.

Professional process-workers who have observed our meetings always say very 
positive things about how well we work: I imagine that any cohousing group that 
has been successfully working togther for a while would get the same reaction. 
As people have pointed out before, the process of developing cohousing seems to 
attract & train respectful leadership.

We didn't even consider bringing in an outsider when we wrestled with our last 
permitting issue -- the one that led to our first-ever vote -- and I think we 
did fine on our own.

The process of bringing in new members has meant that we have had fresh 
perspectives & new skills coming in to the group from time to time, and that's 
been very helpful.

-Jim Snyder-Grant, New View cohousing
Jim_Snyder-Grant [at] lotus.crd.com