Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: not participating in consensus

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

If people show up to a meeting, hear all the sides and feel that their ideas
and contributions have been considered, then simply sitting out a decision
is no real cause for alarm assuming they had a chance and felt comfortable
voicing their opinions. If the same people continue to sit out decisions, or
stop coming to meeting, a friendly inquiry might find something important
and worth knowing and working on.  Large meeting environments can get very
tedious, and sometimes people just bail on a topic because they are tired of
it and want to go home and don't have a huge investment in the outcome
either way. Some folks also have great trouble speaking in large groups.
There are also times where the group has unknowingly created a situation
where a person feels they are shut down, we don't want to hear anymore, your
idea is stupid, etc.  Under these conditions people often simply withdrawal.
Sometimes this withdrawal is caused by people not getting their way, people
seeking attention, passive-aggressive behaviors, etc.  If you are truly
going to work in a committed cooperative process, somebody needs to pay
attention to who is not showing up, and ask them why.  The more people there
are in the group, the more energy this takes.  I often have recommended that
groups form a team of facilitators who spread these tasks around, look for
patterns in behaviors, troubleshoot the meeting processes. 

Sometimes a good solution is to hold a few small group, single topic
meetings, to flesh out details, concerns and ideas, prior to the topic
coming up at large group meeting. If you have an email list serve this can
also get ideas generated.  We have been doing this at Sharingwood for
several years and often it works very well and creates much better proposals
for the large group meeting time.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Cohousing Resident for 16 years.
Snohomish County, WA

 

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