Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: bullying

[fernselzer (fernselzer]

Hi Kathleen, Kind of embarrassing to admit, but I can't find those policies 
written down altogether, as they have kind of evolved. We are currently in the 
process of organizing our policies so we can find them.But, briefly, for email, 
we have agreed not to discuss controversial or emotional issues by email.   So, 
if an email thread starts moving in that direction, whoever notices first  
reminds the communicators to move the discussion to in person or by phone.  For 
decision making, we started with consensus but now we have consensus 
discussions, that is everyone with an objection is heard and given an 
opportunity to move the group in their direction.  This often includes 
postponing the decision unless the decision is urgent.   Sometimes our 
discussion looks more like sociocracy.   In the end, we simply decide by 
super-majority and usually the only "no" vote is from the same person who votes 
no on almost everything.  
By the way, do you know there is a database of policies at cohousing.org?   
Here is the address that I have for it.  
http://oldsite.cohousing.org/policy-database?page=1Also, I think a number of 
cohousing communities have public lists of their policies.   Other people on 
this list-serve probably know more about that than I do.   But one is Great Oak 
cohousing.  Here is the link to their policies that are public.   
http://gocoho.org/boa/
FernNew Brighton Cohousing



-----Original Message-----
From: Kathleen Lowry <kathleenlowrylpcclmft [at] gmail.com>
To: fernselzer [at] aol.com; cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Sent: Sat, Aug 6, 2022 1:50 pm
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ bullying

Fern, thanks. Is there a way to learn about both your email process and 
decision making policy? Kathleen

> On Aug 6, 2022, at 3:38 PM, Fern Selzer/US/CA/95003/NBC via Cohousing-L 
> <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
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