Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: bullying

[fernselzer (fernselzer]

Hi all,In our community I initially had disappointment and frustration because 
of one member who since the beginning was negative and disruptive.   But 
talking to people in other cohousing communities, it became apparent to me that 
every community has problematic individuals.  Speaking for myself, most of us 
can become problematic at times.
I appreciate the suggestions put forth in this thread of how to handle 
"bullying" behavior 
In our community, we have our facilitation team we call "community connection 
committee" and we observe  the pulse of the community and ourselves.  As 
needed, we address issues by bringing it to our regular plenary meeting to 
share in discussion and come up with next steps.     For example, we needed 
some rules around email communication when people were using it for emotional 
venting that was hurtful.   Though the time-consuming policy-making around 
email communication was prompted by the behavior of a few people, the actual 
outcome from the discussion and coming up with policies benefitted the whole 
community.  

"Bullying" isn't a specific term in my opinion.   Some sweet people lose it and 
yell every once in a while and it doesn't intimidate anyone.   People who 
quietly threaten lawsuits,  shun, sulk or interrupt the progress of things are 
more scary for me.   We had to change our decision making policy because of one 
person blocking most decisions -  and that was a lot of work.   But looking at 
it now, years later, I see that our new process is  better and our decision 
making process would likely have needed to change at one point or another 
anyway.  And that is just ONE example of how one person in our community has 
unintentionally improved our group agreements.  Fern New Brighton 
CoHousingAptos, CA