Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Process Committees

[Nancy Morehouse (nmorehouse]

Hi Melanie,

How did the "rotating facilitation through everyone" agreement get buy-in and 
approval?

Thanks,
Nancy Morehouse
Wolf Creek Lodge
Grass Valley, CA


> On Dec 15, 2022, at 5:16 PM, Melanie Mindlin <sassetta [at] mind.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi Elizabeth
> 
> Our community started out with something called a Facilitation Committee 
> which handled the formation of the plenary (whole group) meeting agendas and 
> the facilitation of the meetings, along with some smaller tasks such as 
> planning a yearly whole group training and ongoing discussion of facilitation 
> techniques.  There was a perception by a segment of the community that this 
> group held and exerted unequal power within the community.  Though ostensibly 
> open to all, some felt that it was cliquish and uncomfortable for others to 
> join.
> 
> Upon the advice of facilitation trainer Laird Shaub, we attempted to separate 
> these two main functions. and formed a new committee called the Process Team 
> whose job was to collect and evaluate agenda items as to their readiness to 
> come to the plenary meeting, and form the agenda.  The facilitation team was 
> meant to be a separate group from which we would recruit facilitators for the 
> meetings, and who would follow up with preparation with the presenters, as 
> well as evaluating and improving facilitation skills.  The intention was to 
> break up the power dynamic by having a different group of people with the 
> power to set the agenda from those who had the power as facilitators to set 
> the approach to discussion and decisions within the meetings.
> 
> Sadly, the new Process Team ended up being mostly the same people who had 
> been resented on the earlier Facilitation team.  It was difficult to find 
> other people to facilitate, partly because our meetings had become 
> contentious, so this same small group would step up at the last minute to 
> facilitate as well..  Improvement of facilitation skills was pretty much 
> dropped. 
> 
> The evaluation process  for “plenary readiness,” as well as needing consensus 
> approval from the members of the Process Team for items to be on the agenda, 
> while well intentioned and useful in some situations, ended up exacerbating 
> the power dynamics in the group. Combined with some intransigent 
> interpersonal conflict, we ended up in a tangle with about half the community 
> wanting to dissolve the whole concept of self-management because it was so 
> stressful.
> 
> At that point, we decided to try something completely different. We are now 
> rotating facilitation through the entire community in alphabetical order, 
> giving each meeting’s facilitator the power to set the agenda. Facilitators 
> are encouraged to bring any topic or mini-training that they think is 
> important or useful for the community to discuss. 20 minutes of each meeting 
> is allocated to “business items” that require plenary approval. As a 
> well-established community, we actually have very little business that is not 
> handled within our committees who are all operating quite effectively. 
> 
> We’re almost a year into this, and about half way through our rotation, and 
> things are going quite smoothly. The proposal was to revert to the previous 
> structure when everyone has had a chance to facilitate, though I personally 
> think this may not be such a good idea.
> 
> I understand that this may not work well for new communities with lots of 
> business requiring their attention.  I’m sure others will write with copious 
> suggestions, so I will just add that in my opinion, the more you can delegate 
> to small groups, the easier your decision making process will be. 
> 
> Good luck with everything,
> Melanie
> Ashland Cohousing
> 
> 
>