Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Team cultures

[Margaret Weatherly (mhweatherly]

Hi Jessie! This is Martie from Liberty Village. I think when you are building 
and not living all together that you will have to put up with a lot of 
variation in time and place and type of meeting - by phone, by computer, in 
coffeehouses, etc. However, the important thing is for each team to publicize 
the meeting ahead so anyone can come and put out a report afterward. Of course, 
there will be spontaneous meetings but generally each team should let others 
know what they are discussing and when.

We used to give team reports at our meetings, but stopped that in favor of 
reports by email and that still works. Before we lived together, we sometimes 
had meeting time scheduled before a business meeting, when teams could get 
together and meet (we had a lot of people traveling a ways to get there.)

Whether you meet by phone or in person, you can still use the consensus process 
- not the formal part about bringing up items in a certain order, but that idea 
of  putting out an idea and dealing with people's concerns to find agreement. 
The idea of honoring each person's ideas does not have to be limited to a 
meeting of the whole - it can be the context for every meeting whether it is on 
the phone or over coffee.

Keep those meetings moving!

Martie Weatherly
Liberty Village
martiew [at] earthlink.net

Dahako [at] aol.com wrote:

> Hi all -
>
> Does anyone out there have any insight to offer on the following situation:
>
> The Eastern Village group as a whole is using one consensus process, which we 
> are working to hone (with help and training from Laird Schaub). However, 
> every major team except community life uses a different process.  The 
> outreach team mostly meets virtually or just messages/phones each other.  The 
> finance team is (somewhat oddly, IMHO) much less formal and usually chews 
> through items in long discussions at the local coffee house (which in large 
> part accounts for my regular attendance at their meetings).  The design team 
> seems to use different variations in each subteam.
>
> This is a large group - we're in development with about 40 households bought 
> in and several more in the wings - heading for a total of 56.
>
> Do you have any experience with different teams within the same community 
> having different consensus cultures from each other and from the group as a 
> whole?  Any observations?
>
> Thanks -
>
> Jessie Handforth Kome
> Eastern Village Cohousing
> Silver Spring, Maryland
> www.easternvillage.org
> "Where we're in the thick of development - the roof is dried in, our 
> apartments are almost all framed, selection of individual options is coming 
> up, and many design and money decisions are being made quickly."
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