Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Supporting Facilitators

[Eris Weaver (erisw]

At SoCoHo, we have long had a facilitation committee; at the very beginning
we rotated, but decided that it made more sense to let people who do it well
do it and folks who don't, do other things.  (Also some of us founding
committee members are very type A control freaks and have a low tolerance
for pooorly run meetings.) The group as a whole invests in the facilitation
group building skills, getting training, etc.  For example, we have twice
had Rob Sandelin down to do work with our entire group but also more focused
work with our facilitators.  We have been told by many visitors that we have
some of the best group process of any group they've seen!  (Comments like
that sure buoy us up!)  Our members help support our work by respecting
it -- pretty much committee chairs get their agenda items to us on time,
their proposals in the proper format, etc. and try to follow our (pretty
loose) protocols.
We get together and debrief after general meetings -- what worked, what
didn't, etc.  and people are good about letting us know if something didn't
work for them without being nasty about it.  And when things are flowing
great, we get lots of strokes after the meeeting!  (However, the suggestion
that the facilitator should get a foot massage after the meeting has yet to
be implemented.....)

**********************************************************
Eris Weaver                                erisw [at] sonic.net
SoCoHo
http://www.sonic.net/~erisw/socoho.html
Sonoma County, Northern California

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