Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consequences ?

[Sandi Goldie (coachsandi]

Wise words, Karen--thank you!


Sandi Goldie
Certified Co-Active Life Coach

Cell:  206-697-9701
Email coachsandi [at] gmail.com
Website:  riversongcohousing.org
regeneratebc.org

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

--*Margaret Mead*




On Sat, Sep 9, 2023 at 7:10 AM Karen Gimnig Nemiah <gimnig [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

> When you ask about consequences, I’m curious what your goal is? Getting
> clear about this is essential determining a path forward.
>
> Typically the answer I get is that folks want to change the behavior
> (leaving dishes, poop etc). I’m sure we’d all like a magic wand for
> changing other people’s behavior. The follow up question is: At what cost?
> Certainly there are consequences you could institute that would change
> behavior, and I’ve never met a community yet that is willing to use them.
> It turns out that we’d rather be nice to each other and support connected
> relationships than keep our common house free of dirty dishes.
>
> Consequences are fundamentally about applying pressure to make someone
> behave differently than they would otherwise. This is a power over approach
> and like all power over approaches it will always harm relationships. I
> can’t tell you whether it’s worth it. That’s your call, but mostly folks I
> work with decide that it isn’t worth it for these kinds of things.
>
> So if we aren’t going to try to force people to change their behavior, what
> options do we have? At least the following two:
> 1. We can live with the behavior. We can decide that the benefits of
> community, of which there are many, are worth the cost of sometimes
> cleaning up someone else’s mess and make our peace with that.
> 2. Vulnerability. We can share our wants, needs and expectations, without
> blame or judgement and trust that our neighbors care enough to take our
> needs into account. This is hard work. If it is outside your community’s
> capacity right now, there are ways to grow that capacity. CohoUS offers
> trainings that would help including one I’m teaching on conflict starting
> later this month.
>
> For me it’s usually a combination of the two that works best, and it’s a
> lot of emotional work to get there, but I think it’s worth it. I grow every
> time I do it.
> --
> In Community,
> Karen Gimnig
> 678-705-9007
> www.karengimnig.net
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