Finer points of meeting etiquette

In reviewing my notes from the meeting facilitation workshop last weekend, I stumbled on the section about intervening when a meeting participant was talking for too long. These were ideas that trainees floated out:

Stand up.

Ring a bell.

Take a step or two towards them.

Say, "Thank you."

Say, "Time's up."

Hold up a red card. (This is in the context of communities that use coloured cards to send signals during meetings.)

Implement an agreed upon procedure.

Make a hand signal.

Address the person by name.

Throw balls of paper at them.

Shoot at them with a water pistol.

Ask them to wrap up.

Ask them to be succinct.

Act like a court jester.

Set a timer.

Say, "We're going to a commercial break."

I rather fancy the water pistol idea. As you may be able to tell, I'm in a kind of goofy mood this evening. :-)

The Zen of Meetings

After participating in Tree Bressen's workshop on meeting facilitation last weekend, my view of meetings has been transformed.

I used to think of meetings as a necessary evil.

But, when I look back on the way in which the workshop unfolded, I see meetings as an art form. If it is well planned and well executed, a meeting is a thing of beauty.

At its best, a meeting draws out people's feelings, bonds them to each other, identifies their common purpose, and moves them towards the realization of their vision.

I have a meeting to attend this afternoon. Rather than thinking, "Sigh," I am thinking, "Oh goody."

Feelings and values

Something that I learned in my conflict resolution workshop and that I witnessed again during the meeting facilitation training in Courtenay, British Columbia was the importance of a dialogue in which feelings and values are expressed and heard.

When people encounter challenges, they often respond with what they believe are solutions. Hasty solutions, however, sometimes have unintended consequences that, in themselves, become problems.

One of the issues that we trainee meeting facilitators observed the members of Creekside Commons discussing was whether or not to surround their community with a deer-resistant fence. Prior to our arrival, members of the community had been divided on the question.

Attempted solutions that had created new problems were the fences and walls that about forty percent of the households had erected around their individual back yards and the temporary fences around the community vegetable garden and community orchard that many residents considered ugly.

When people who disagreed with each other about a perimeter fence sat down and had a dialogue, they were very surprised to discover the values they shared.

A theme that emerged was that members of both camps cared deeply about the meadow on which they had built their community. Most of them also were committed to sustainability. But what did sustainability mean? Did it mean ensuring food security for humans? Did it mean living in harmony with deer and other wild animals?

Creeksiders also found out that many of them regarded themselves as prudent. But again, how was that defined? For some community members prudence meant fiscal responsibility. For those people, the cost of a perimeter fence and Texas Gates (cattle grids) were a concern. For other people, prudence was tied to stewardship of the land for future generations.

Other issues that emerged were aesthetic considerations (what balance to create between edible and ornamental landscapes), privacy in individual owners' back yards, and maintenance of an open and accessible community while providing safety for children.

Allowing for minor modifications because of our community's different layout, I can see us at Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community having to address the same issues in due course. I also see the same range of values and interpretations of those values represented amongst our community members.

The meeting that we external trainees facilitated for Creekside Commons did not result in a consensus decision. But it cleared the air and elicited mutual compassion amongst Creeksiders who previously had disagreed with each other. Towards the end of the meeting they figured out some next steps that we all were confident would result in a resolution in the near future.

This exercise demonstrated to me very powerfully that a discussion of feelings and values was not a waste of time. Indeed, while it involves an upfront investment of time, it is more efficient in the long run. It also leads to win-win outcomes.

An engaging workshop

The first workshop in the Community Facilitator Intensive Series was a heart warming and meaningful experience for me.

It was the first time that I'd participated in an event with members of other intentional communities. In this case there were representatives from six cohousing communities and two ecovillages in Coastal British Columbia. It was wonderful to hear about life in other intentional communities and to witness it first hand in the case of our hospitable host community, Creekside Commons in Courtenay, BC.

The purpose of these workshops is to teach meeting facilitation skills. That, in turn, is intended to build the capacity for consensus decision making within each participating community.

During the three and a half days that we spent with them, our host community had two meetings. In advance of those meetings, members of the host community briefed us trainees. They explained to us what the issues were, how long they'd been wrestling with them, and what they'd done so far in an attempt to resolve them.

We trainees, in turn, chose meeting formats that we thought would be most constructive for each issue, and we created agendas for each meeting. The facilitator, time keeper, vibe watcher, scribe and minute taker for each meeting was one of us external trainees.

In case you don't know what a vibe watcher is, it is someone who monitors the moods of meeting participants and alerts the facilitator to an emerging issue if it escapes the facilitator's attention. A scribe is someone who jots down key points on a flip chart that is visible to meeting participants.

The two community meetings resulted in a rich cross fertilization of ideas. The host community had a chance to try meeting formats that were new to them. There was one in particular that they liked a lot and said they would use again. They also had the benefit of external facilitators and other meeting aids who felt compassionate towards them but who were not personally invested in their issues.

For the trainees, it was a high privilege to witness members of the host community discussing their challenges at an authentic level. It was comforting to hear from the members of established communities that they had grappled with the same issues around the two year mark (which was the age of our host community). Those of us who belonged to forming communities or communities under construction gained insights into what it would be like to live in community. From the point of view of our training, it felt much more relevant to work with real issues being debated by real people in real time than it would have felt if Tree had created hypothetical scenarios.

The drive back to Nanaimo with Roz, my fellow Pacific Gardener who had participated in the workshop, was delightful. She wisely chose to take the slower but more scenic route that hugged the coast, rather than the quicker but more mundane inland highway. On the way home, we unpacked the meaning that the workshop had held for each of us.

I am deeply grateful for this experience.

The adventure expands

This is a short break during a three and a half day workshop in consensus decision making that I'm doing at Creekside Commons in Courtenay, BC.

For me the rewards of this experience are off the charts. I'm learning so much from observing the dynamics of our host community, and from accessing the combined wisdom of eight intentional communities in coastal British Columbia. Besides that, it's just plain fun.

I rather suspect I could get used to this cohousing gig. :-)

Happy Earth Day

Last week, one of my fellow cohos and I attended a campaign planning meeting at the home of our future next door neighbour, Ian Gartshore, who is running for the Green Party in British Columbia's provincial election. As we stepped outside after the meeting, we heard the beautiful symphony of frogs croaking in the pond on our property.

I keep on catching glimpses of what it will be like to live at Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community. It gives me goose bumps to think that I will be able to open my window at night and hear the Earth sing.

When I see the kids at the school across the street playing during recess, I hope that this song will endure for them and their children and their children's children.

Pedestrians are anything but pedestrian

This morning I responded to Bruce Elkin's Happy Earth Week greeting on Facebook. As Bruce is wont to do, he challenged folk to view environmentalism from a creative rather than problem solving point of view.

That got me thinking about the boldest eco-friendly move I had made in quite a while, which was to sell my vehicle back in February. Taking up Bruce's challenge to look at it as a creative act, I reflected on the surprisingly pleasant side benefits I have experienced.

I love walking, and I get to exercise without going to a gym. When I walk, I feel much more engaged with my neighbourhood than used to be the case when I drove. I interact with people, and I notice small details.

Because of the way in which Bruce frames things, I felt motivated to describe my new lifestyle in creative rather than problem solving terms. So that got me thinking. Would I describe this as a car-free lifestyle? Perhaps a pedestrian lifestyle?

Pedestrian lifestyle! That stopped me dead in my tracks. Pedestrian, when it's used as an adjective, usually means ordinary, nondescript, dull.

That makes it sound as if the act of walking is boring, while other ways of getting around, by implication, are more exciting.

Ummm ....... Hello ....... Walking improves my health, it strengthens the social fabric of my neighbourhood, it's economical, and it reduces my carbon footprint.

But it's far from pedestrian because, more than anything else, I find it fun.