Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Roles: spread, rotating or fixed

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

I wonder if the idea of fully rotating the roles of meeting facilitator and
note-taker belongs in an early stage of a cohousing project, and tends to
disappear with time. Are there established communities that still do this?

Going by my usual N-of-1 data point, namely my own community, we started
out rotating these roles as well. I still have uncomfortable recollections
of the few times I acted as meeting facilitator, a role for which I have
zero talent, back in the very early years of planning our project. Our
meetings probably aren't perfect now, with a cadre of facilitators who
range from pretty good at it to very good at it (and a couple of new ones
in training), but ya know, it could be a lot worse.

I would guess that more people would do okay as note-takers than as
facilitators, which I think requires a certain mixture of skills and
personality that is not evenly spread out in our population, which is not
to say that everyone is a good note-taker either.
  Muriel at Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg, VA
  (where two of our smaller homes are for sale; each would work well for 1
or 2 persons)
  www.shadowlakevillage.org