Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus Facilitator Sought

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

I wholeheartedly endorse PattyMara's suggestion.  I think the on-line 
customer review model is one of the very best things to have come out 
of the internet.

People who'd like to break into this field may present themselves as 
the answer to a cohousing group's prayers despite having no track 
record (or a poor track record). There are scammers and 
self-promoters and incompetent people in every field and we may well 
experience them in this arena too.

The need for customer review will become greater as the Professionals 
list expands to more than the folks who are household names to many 
of us.  And even being a household name is not an endorsement as 
such.  Hiring groups should know something of the personality and 
style that a facilitator would bring, because there isn't always a 
good fit between even a good, experienced facilitator and a group.

But this will be useful only if cohousing groups are willing to 
provide fair and objective descriptions of the experience they've had 
with the facilitators that they've hired, including any 
responsibility they feel falls on themselves for an unhappy 
experience. I hope this would be the case.

  Muriel

At 04:22 PM 2/22/2008, you wrote:
> HI Craig,
> Just a thought.  Have you and your team considered having private 
> testamonials available on the website's professional listings?  Not 
> just the glowing ones either.  Something like the customer ratings 
> on Amazon or Overstock.com?
>
> I suspect that most groups have experience with most of the 
> professionals out there; it's a small pond.  For example, Tierra 
> Nueva has experience with Wonderland as our developer, and Laird 
> Shaub as a mediator.  I think that honest, thoughtful analysis of 
> the perfomance of professionals would be a helpful aspect to the website.
>
> thanks for all you do,
> PattyMara, Tierra Nueva