Cohousing-L Mailing List: productivity in consensus meetings

[Tree Bressen (tree]

Hi,

I started to write this as part of the other thread on consensus & voting,
but then realized it was properly its own topic, especially since my other
piece was getting long.

Racheli wrote:
"In our community (and I bet in many others) people often judge the success
 of a meeting by whether we've managed to reach consensus on a given item
(or more)."

I agree that this is common, and i'd like to point out that one function
facilitators can fulfill is pointing out the successes of the group whether
or not final consensus decisions are reached in a given meeting.  

Groups need to have their productivity reflected back to them, otherwise
they'll feel like they wasted their time or talked in circles.  

While coming to a consensus decision is one demonstration of progress,
there are many others, such as: "Today we figured out what the three main
issues are to consider as we move forward with this proposal" or "We agreed
to set up a committee to deal with this issue" or "We came to agreement on
part A of the proposal, and we're ready to deal with parts B & C next time"
or "Now that we know what the underlying tensions are, we can generate a
list of criteria that we want the next proposal to fulfill."  

I recommend facilitators make a habit of highlighting whatever the group
produced whenever summarizing in preparation for moving to the next item on
the agenda.

Cheers,

--Tree



-----------------------------------------------

Tree Bressen
1680 Walnut St.
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 484-1156
tree [at] ic.org
http://www.efn.org/~bressen
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