Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Handling conflict

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

 One of the dilemmas of cohousing as a community form is often there is a
subset of the group that does NOT want to hear about personal stuff or do
any kind of touchy feely thing. They did not move in for group therapy, they
wanted a simpler, more practical lifestyle. Sitting around dealing with
wounded people is NOT how they want to spend a Saturday. And, they are
right. They have the right not to deal with peoples stuff if they don't want
to, it is typically NOT a requirement for cohousing group membership.

There is often another subset (often with some overlap) of people who rarely
participate at all.

The primary problem of course is that often these same folks are the CAUSE
of wounding or other problems with relationships. So how do you engage them?
One approach I used which works sometimes is to spend a bit of time talking
about what kind of relationships people want. This can often be done as a
shelter scale, where you define a scale of meaning on a 1-5, or 1-10 line
such as 1= I want to be left alone all the time to 10= I want to be with
people all the time. From there you take the scale that develops and
assuming people want relationships mostly, then brainstorm up a list of
relationship enhancing actions, and relationship diminishing actions. This
quickly outlines a pretty reasonable and doable set of actions around
problems and conflicts. Doing this sets the ground work of awareness, that
you have to participate, and make some effort, in order to have a
relationship.

When I facilitate this process I tend to emphasize actions, and make lists
of things people actually can do, or not. In some cases, this makes a great
poster to hang in the commonhouse as a reminder.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com

http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

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