Cohousing-L Mailing List: re: meetings, meetings

[Lizette Mill (lizette]

>Rob had some great ideas about meetings.  One of his points I think merits
>repeating and that is strong facilitation.  A strong facilitator can make the
>meeting fly when it needs to and slow down when appropriate.  But weak
>facilitation will let the meeting wander.

I agree with Dan-- Rob's message was really helpful and comprehensive.

>Another tip on meetings is put your most controversial items or items needing
>consensus as the first items.  Don't save the tough ones for last!

Or, here's a technique that I used quite recently and with really good
results-- be fun and creative in your approach to tough issues.  Here's an
example of what I mean:

The particular problem that we needed to work on was prioritizing our standards
and criteria for home design.  We had come to consensus on definitions for our
terms and we'd done a first rough cut at prioritization in prior meetings,
using standard "sit, discuss and write the results for all to see" techniques.
At the end of a fairly long evening meeting, where everyone was very ready to
quit and go home, I asked for just 15 more minutes of everyone's time to
participate in a "never before used exercise for prioritizing standards and
criteria".  People agreed to spend the time, though not enthusiastically.

My goal was to get the group to come to consensus on a final prioritization of
the four most important standards and criteria (we had about 15-20 items, which
we had lumped into rough groups previously).  The four items were
"Affordability", "Open and Spacious", "Quality Construction" and
"Energy-Efficiency".  We needed to put these four items in strict priority
order to give to our design and development professionals.  But, I wanted
people to have fun doing it.  So, my exercise has three major elements:

  1.  Playfulness
  2.  A way for each person to non-verbally express his or her feelings and
      priorities
  3.  Getting people out of their chairs and on their feet

I incorporated playfulness by using colorful, fun props-- in this case, bags of
brightly colored candies and attractive crystal candy bowls.  Each of the four
candy bowls had a label-- "Affordability", "Open and Spacious", "Quality
Construction" and "Energy-Efficiency".

The bowls were on a table in a separate area from where we had been meeting.
So, people had to get up out of their chairs and move to this separate area.
We then all stood around the table during the entire prioritization exercise.

People expressed their feelings and priorities by putting as many candies in
each of the four bowls as they felt reflected how important this item was to
them.  I asked people to not talk about why they were "voting" the way they
were until everyone had finished distributing their candies.  I also said that
people were allowed to eat their "votes" :-).  Note that this was _not_
actually a voting exercise.  It was simply a fun and _quick_ method of getting
everyone's feelings and priorities out on the table (pun fully intended).

Suddenly at this point, I had a sinking feeling that my method wasn't going to
work-- because a number of the bowls looked equally full.  Oops, was this
getting us anywhere?  This was where I had an "Aha!" community/group synergy
experience.  One of the other community members noticed something:  "Look at
this-- 'Open and Spacious' has far fewer candies in its bowl than do any of the
other bowls.  Clearly, it has the lowest priority of these four items."  Whew!
I quickly said, "Are we in consensus on that?  Is 'Open and Spacious' the
lowest priority of these four items?"  Sure enough, consensus happened!

Well, what we were to do about the other three?  Madly improvising, I dumped
the candies from the other three bowls into a pile.  "Okay, every household
take 10 candies, and let's re-vote on these other three."  From this round,
"Affordability" clearly emerged as the highest priority item, and we quickly
came to consensus on that.  Then, we had some in-depth and lively discussion
around the last two items "Quality Construction" and "Energy-Efficiency", and
finally settled on prioritizing "Energy-Efficiency" over "Quality Construction"
using our standard consensus techniques.

All told, our exercise took the predicted 15 minutes-- 15 minutes notable in
that we were not only accomplishing an important community task, but we were
having fun and building up good relationships at the same time!  I went away
energized and enthusiastic (which is not my typical reaction after two hours of
facilitating one of our business meetings), and it really seemed that other
people felt the same way.  There was a lot of talking and laughing as people
went out the door.

So, incorporate playfulness into your community business tasks-- it can sure
help meetings go faster, be more effective, _and_ be a heck of a lot more fun!

Lizette
future resident of Greyrock Commons (Fort Collins, CO)

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