Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The reverse of one person blocking consensus

[Moz (list]

> how to address the situation where one person keeps bringing up
>a given issue/proposal?

I've found there's a few reasons why people do this, and they need quite
different responses. If someone is optimistic about the consensus forming
(or shifting) they can quite reasonably bring something up again. When
they're mistaken it gets annoying, and it can help to point out that there
are blocks, and if the blocking people are willing it's often useful if
they're identified (sometimes blocking is for non-public reasons). Then
it's up to the people to deal with the campaigning that results.

But when there's an ongoing "we will never reach consensus on this" and
someone doesn't want to accept that? I've found we just have to say "you
can only bring that up once a year, otherwise we spend all our time
talking about it and nothing else gets done. Which, honestly, is sometimes
the tactic. If so, shut it down, blackmail is not a legitimate tactic.
Even if not, "we have added that item to the bottom of the agenda" should
be enough. Unreasonable people is a whole 'nother issue.

Other times the group really doesn't want to deal with something that has
to be dealt with. And the one or two people who go on about it are right,
and that's really ugly. In my experience that never goes away, you just
have to churn enough people for the consensus to swing. Which can happen
very quickly, as "we have to address the foundation problem" turns into
"our building certificate just got revoked and everyone has to move out
until we fix the foundations".

But if you're the one and no-one else wants to address it? Sometimes
there's no answer and you just have to walk away.

Moz