Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Request for your Blocking Procedure

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

drmaryann49 [at] mac.com is the author of the message below.
It was posted by Fred, the Cohousing-L list manager
<fholson [at] cohousing.org> because it contained two pdf
attachments. Cohousing-L does not distribute
attachments.

I pasted the contents of the shorter one at the end of this
message.  The longer one ( 8 pages , 128 K bytes) is at
http://l.cohousing.org/Consensus_Process.pdf

--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

Here are the relevant pages from our Policy/Procedure manual.

If you're interested in the entire manual we have it for sale on our
website ( http://www.manzanitavillage.com/ ) for a nominal fee.


     A Guide to Consensus Meetings

The culture of consensus is different from the decision-making model
most of us have used because the goal is for all participants to
consent to the decisions of the group rather than decide by majority
rule.

The facilitator plays a major role in integrating the contributions of
all members present. By searching for strands of possible agreement,
the group members are contributors in the effort to weave together
everyone's unique contribution.

To accomplish this goal, facilitators and participants can find a
win/win outcome by:

o Being agreement-biased and looking for possible bridges and
interconnections between seemingly divergent opinions and approaches.

o Maintaining neutrality around charged issues and engaging in a
fair discussion of the issues regardless of personal feelings on the
topic.

o Sticking to the approved agenda. Sometimes unplanned topics or
strong emotions arise that deserve attention. These may be noted by
the facilitators, keepers of the heart or participants. When this
happens, the facilitator makes a determination or calls a time out in
order to decide whether the community will be served by an exploration
of these charged emotions at this particular moment.