Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consequences ?

[Ted Rau (ted]

I think there are two different cases here. One I'll call noise. The other
is recurring behavior.

*Noise*
When there's stuff left behind in the Common House, people are often
outraged by what they perceive as disrespect.
Yet, I want to advocate for considering simple numbers. Let's say (for
simplicity of numbers) that we have 100 people that could leave stuff
behind. Now let's say that each of the 100 people accidentally leaves
something behind 1/year. Making a mistake once a year is not a lot. But
that means that there will be two things left behind in the Common House
per week. That will drive the CH cleaner uppers crazy.
In order to get that number down, from 1 mishap/year to, let's say, 1
mishap every 10 years, that would need a crazy amount of control, systems
and reminders. *I* wouldn't want to live in that community!
So echoing what Karen said, the trade-off of reducing mishaps and noise
might simply be too high. So, for many things, I'd say we're better off as
a community if we count our blessings and factor in those mishaps because
we expect they will occur. I see many communities plan for perfect behavior
but we have to factor in humans, and humans make mistakes.

I once rushed into the common house to clean up something I had left behind
(which was pointed out by email to everyone) only to see my neighbor - our
founder - almost done cleaning up my mess. I apologized profusely and he
said: "To me, all those messes are a sign for the community and the common
house being used. To me, they are all signs of exactly what I want from
this community - humans sharing the space. Doing a few dishes here and
there is nothing compared to that."

The other one is *recurring* behavior. In those cases, to me, it becomes a
governance issue. If you have a policy, I assume there is impact from
violating it. (If there is no impact from a violation, don't make a
policy!!)
So if someone violates it, those who made the policy need to contact the
one who did it and hear what's going on and share what the impact is of
violations. It's peer-to-peer accountability.
There are three common reasons preventing this from happening:

   - If people avoid the conflict. It might be useful to think about why
   you make rules/policies then. Do you believe they're worth following? Then
   make sure they're followed. That might mean feedback, conversation, fees,
   consequences, or whatever you think is appropriate and helpful.
   - If there is no policy. In a peer system, it can be hard to hold people
   accountable to an imagined standard without stating the standard
   explicitly. So then spell it out. But not in vague statements like "be
   respectful" but in actionable requests like "no poop on the lawn". So
   more policy than value statements.
   - If everyone is in charge. If a policy is made by 100 people then no
   one is in charge (called 'diffusion of responsibility'). If that's the
   case, governance needs to be reconsidered to you know who is responsible
   for what and can act accordingly.

(I think/talk about this a lot because lack of accountability is such a
common complaint in peer-oriented settings. If you find my logic helpful, I
talk more about these topics here
<https://www.sociocracyforall.org/event/horizontal-accountability-september2023/>
.)

On Sat, Sep 9, 2023 at 10:10 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
> Scheduling Calendar
> <
> https://calendar.google.com/calendar/appointments/schedules/AcZssZ1HbmZphFgCZM9GqLtIUeijkmgdXNGvkPR6Mi7nN7dBSzxKaCxl6tCrW2_eh6dPXn0OhtT3z4Fw
> >
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<http://www.sociocracyforall.org/>
Certified sociocracy consultant  <https://www.iscb.earth/team/ted-rau/>
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