Cohousing-L Mailing List: What does consensus really mean...

[JJSherwood (JJSherwood]

While this is tardy response to an earlier (February 8) posting, the issue is
central to most of us in CoHousing.  It certainly is in our new community.
 Thus, this response.  On that date,  Mac Thomson wrote:

<<In response to a comment made by Molly of Cambridge CoHousing where a
person standing in the way of a decision may change to standing aside with
the statement, "I feel the sense of the meeting is to move forward, I will
not stand in the way..."  This is a very scary statement to me.  I feel that
a person should stand aside because they think that the decision will be OK
for the group, but not so good for them personally, not because the group is
impatient to move on.  Consensus is about spending the time necessary to
allow everyone get to a decision they can live with.  If someone decides not
to stand in the way because "the sense of the meeting is to move forward", I
don't think this is consensus at all.  Other comments?>>

My comment:  Recently, one of our members put it this way:  "Consensus does
not mean agreement on a fundamental level about a particular core value.  It
just means getting to a place where everyone simply agrees at whatever level
works for them.  We don't have to deeply agree or profoundly agree.  We just
agree to go forward."   If it works for them to move the meeting forward--it
works for them in away they can accept.

As we choose to use consensus, it does not mean total agreement, it means
that everyone is able to say:  "Whether I am in complete agreement or not, I
feel heard, and the decision appears to be in the best interests of the
community, therefore, I will not stand in the way of its implementation."  In
order for consensus to work in a meaningful way and contribute to community
well-being, our community believes a back-up process needs to be established.
 The way we work is:  Where there are constraints such as timeliness or other
reasons for urgency that require a decision to be made during a meeting, a
3/4 vote of members present is necessary to exempt that decision from the
consensus requirement.  Once a decision has been exempted from the consensus
requirement, a 2/3 vote (super majority) is necessary for acceptance.

During our struggle to decide how we would understand and use consensus, we
visited Winslow CoHousing and learned the following:  "We (Winslow) adopted
consensus as our way of making decisions, but we mistakenly used an approach
to consensus that focuses the person's attention inward toward personal
feelings and objectives.  In doing so it asks the wrong question:  It asks
people to support a decision where they may not be in complete agreement, but
feel personally heard and are willing to support the group's decision."  We
now know that a better question is to bring the community's perspective into
the heart of decision-making by asking:  Can you justify why this decision is
not in the best interests of the community versus are you willing to go along
or can you live with this decision?  With the later question, the perspective
is the individual's rather than the community's."

Back to my view, one of the reasons consensus creates so many problems and
raises so many questions is the focus on the individual:  his or her
integrity, wholeness, comfort; while the community is immobilized.  I
understand a consensual decision as one in the community's best interests
that everyone can support without feeling significant values have been
compromised or ignored, furthermore, everyone agrees to implement the
decision with positive energy, or at least, not to stand in the way of its
implementation.  

Thanks for the opportunity to be heard.

Jack Sherwood:  jjsherwood [at] aol.com
Deer Island Village
Novato, CA... 30 minutes north of San Francisco, we break ground this month!