Any group of people getting together to form community or even an association that is to last over time, creates an organic social form. These forms have a life of their own, and after a while we can look back and trace the biography of the group, and find that each one has a distinct unique history. Even though individuals may come and go, the group has its own identity. Just like individual people, groups go through developmental stages, and we can trace patterns, such as youth, maturity and old age. Transitioning from stage to stage is often dramatic, not unlike the changes we go through when we experience puberty. Understanding these patterns can help us through those hard times.
The Permaculture, Transition Town and Ecovillage movements have developed a number of useful tools to help groups through the hard times, and we will look at some of these tools in this chapter.
A design course lasting a week or more also has a lifecycle. The group behaves and feels very differently at the end of the course than it did at the beginning. In order to get off to a good start, there are many different tools we might use. Some of these have been gathered at the end of preceding chapters of the book.
We might want to begin with a series of statements and questions, to be answered as a go around (see below).
• Tell the group about a meaningful experience that you have had in connection with community.
• What aspect of community brought you to this course now?
• Are you in any kind of community or group that is meaningful to you now? Please describe it.
• Are there any negative aspects of community you would like to talk about with the group?
• What particular aspects of community would you like to explore during this course?
Every group develops its own culture, something that contributes to the group identity. Being aware of this, and consciously developing it, helps the group to establish a safe and comfortable place for each participant. We can brainstorm attitudes, behaviour and guidelines to secure respect, positive attitudes and mutual support within the group. These can be written on a mind map on a large piece of paper which can be fixed to the wall, allowing us to refer to them should any kind of conflict arise.
Many people are apprehensive at the beginning of a course. New people, unknown challenges ahead, and negative experiences in the past may create insecurity. One way of overcoming this is to ask everyone to write down two or three fears they have on a piece of paper, without putting their name on it. These can be collected in a box, shaken well, and then the box is passed around the group, each person taking out one slip of paper and reading what is written aloud. This is very helpful for the facilitator who can give reassurance in sensitive areas. At a recent design course I taught, several participants voiced a concern about the individual design projects, fearing that they may not be able to achieve a high enough standard. I made extra sure to explain the design criteria carefully, give sufficient time for them to work on their projects, and positive encouragement and advice along the way. Everyone presented a satisfactory design at the end of the course.
Creating trust in a group is the first priority, whether it’s a learning group or a decision-making group. Here from a design course in Latvia in 2013.
A group making decisions has to operate in a number of different areas. Making these explicit may help the group to move forward when it gets stuck. This is not a linear progression, and a mind map with the aim in the middle might help the group to define where they are at any given moment. You might like to focus on one or more of the following:
• The aim. What are we striving for? Where are we going? When everyone shares the same aim, decisions are much easier to arrive at, but if some members are there for completely different reasons, disagreements may arise.
• The action-plan. What needs and resources do we have at our disposal? What are we actually going to do? Do we need to divide into workgroups or delegate some things to outside people or groups?
• The facts. What information do we need? Do we have the information we need?
• The individuals. Is everyone able to contribute? How can each person’s skills and interests be incorporated into the plan?
• The development. How far have we come in our journey to fulfil the aims? It’s often very helpful to stop the flow of discussion occasionally to see where we are.
• The achievement. When we finally come to a decision, we may ask ourselves if we really have achieved our aim. This might be a kind of evaluation.
There are several tools that we can bring with us to meetings, in order to make them better and more enjoyable.
Divide into pairs, each one takes a few minutes to talk about what is going on, how they are feeling. The partner just listens, does not ask questions or make comments. Then they switch roles.
This is a standard meeting and seminar tool, used on many occasions. It gives each person a chance to talk and be heard, and breaks up otherwise long and sometimes confused or rambling sessions. A go around can be used for pretty much anything: how people feel, their reaction to a topic, a check-in first thing in the morning, and a quick evaluation at the end of a session or a day. Sometimes go arounds are called ‘creeping death’, as the last few participants see their turn come slowly creeping up on them, and they don’t know what to say.
Like a go around, but instead of the structured round, people elect to speak when they are ready. Again, it can be used for anything to get the energy in the group to change. In my experience as the group becomes more comfortable with itself, there are more popcorns than go arounds, but sometimes popcorns spontaneously become go arounds.
Both popcorns and go arounds are useful ways to begin and end meetings. At the beginning, a quick ‘weather check’ of how people are feeling may reveal sensitivities in the group that the facilitator should be aware of, and to end a session or a day with a quick evaluation is a useful way for the facilitator to assess how things went and adjust accordingly for the next day or future meetings.
Occasionally go arounds or popcorns are interrupted by others making comments and asking questions. It’s quite useful for the facilitator to check these, pointing out that the group is going to let each person speak before opening up to a discussion, if that is what is needed for the next step. This is important in order to let the shyer participants have a chance to talk, and not to let the more vociferous members of the group dominate the meeting.
Often people hide their own feelings by trying to make them universal, saying things like: ‘It’s not such a good idea to …’ when they really mean, ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’ A facilitator might ask everyone to use the ‘I’ form when speaking, instead of ‘someone’, ‘you’ or ‘one’.
I worked for a while as a Trade Union branch secretary in England, leading meetings every month with a rule-book. Everything was decided democratically, with motions forwarded, seconded, discussed and then put to a vote. We had a similar, if less formal, decision-making system in the kibbutz I lived in. Democracy is a good system, and obviously much better than a dictatorship of the strong, but it does have the built-in problem of creating winners and losers.
It’s really important to have a wide range of emotions, and give them free rein.
Consensus was developed to overcome this flaw, and has been used for many decades and now has a good tradition and its own training systems. One important point is that it’s not just talking and talking until everyone agrees (or not!) but is based on rules and training, which are really important to make it work well. Here are a number of points that should be borne in mind about consensus decision-making, but they are not a substitute for real training. Any group wanting to use consensus should study the system and are advised to begin with a trained facilitator.
There are many reasons for moving “beyond democracy” and you will have to assess what is right for the group that you are participating in. Here are some of the reasons why it might be appropriate to make such a move:
• Majority voting creates losers and encourages conflict.
• Consensus gives each person’s voice a chance to be heard and requires agreement from everyone involved.
• Consensus includes everyone, helps create a common vision and encourages strength in a group.
Consensus does have its weak points. It is a slower process and more complicated, and any one person can block a decision, which may lead to resentment and frustration in others. It can also lead to no decision, which may undermine the group work. Consensus also demands a willingness from everyone in the group to work with it.
In some instances I have come across what I might call ‘consensus lite’, a form of consensus where a vote might be taken if things take too long and are too complicated. This is not always successful, but works well if the group is friendly and trusting and don’t have any deep-seated conflicts or controversial decisions to be made.
Experience has shown that successful consensus requires training, and the inclusion of a facilitator at the beginning. The following is a list of what could be the typical sequence in a consensus decision-making process:
• Gather questions and make an agenda, with priorities and timing.
• Talk the issue through as a group. Try and see it from various angles.
• Make proposals.
• Take the proposals and work on them, changing the wording so that everyone gets included.
• Can we all agree? If not, are those who don’t agree willing to support? Different ways of expressing this can be used, hand signals, cards, or even moving around the room.
• Individuals can ‘agree to disagree’ and support the proposal in order to show solidarity.
• Anyone seriously disagreeing with the proposal can choose to ‘block’ in which case the proposal falls. Amendments to the proposal can be suggested to overcome the blocking, but if this fails, the proposal remains blocked.
• In practice, it has been found that very few proposals stay blocked, and that the blocking option is pretty serious, and is only seldom used. If anyone is in a blocking position more than once or twice, it opens a question how well they fit in with the group.
There are a number of defined tasks that have been developed to make consensus flow easier, and any group wanting to work with consensus should train in these tasks so they can go in rotation.
• Facilitator. This is the discussion leader, directing the conversation. This person frames the proposals, and tries to keep an eye on where the group finds itself at any given time. You might like to refer back to ‘Making decisions’ and ‘Tools for better meetings’ (see above, p. 221 and p.222).
• Minute taker. Writes down the proposals and the changes in the proposals that the group decides upon.
• Timekeeper. This person keeps an eye on the time, keeping track of time agreements. This is especially important so that meetings don’t drag on forever. This person can interrupt at any time with such information as: ‘We agreed that we would spend forty minutes on this point. There are now five minutes left and we should have a summing up before we go on to the next point.’ Should the group decide to spend extra time on a point, the Timekeeper may ask which of the other remaining points should be held over to a subsequent meeting.
• Heart watcher. This person keeps an eye, or heart, on the feelings that emerge in the group as the discussion continues. It’s quite usual for this person to report back at the end of the meeting, giving a little evaluation. The heart watcher can also interrupt at any point, asking for a short break, or a clarification, or that the group reappraises its language and/or behaviour.
Time for personal talk is really important for a group to develop.
This was started in the early 1980s by Harrison Owen and David Belisle, and developed over a few years at annual Organisational Transformation (OT) conferences held in the USA. At first they used the traditional conference format but after three years Owen did not relish another year of work to manage all the details, and claims to have invented the Open Space Technology over a few martinis in the bar. He never trademarked or patented ‘Open Space’ in any way. He said it could be practised freely by anyone with a good head and good heart.
I have come across more and more groups using this meeting form in various ways over the last few years. Maybe its main value lies in opening up the ways we manage meetings, giving free rein to creativity and experimentation.
At the beginning the participants sit in a circle, or in concentric circles for large groups. Open Space has used variations on this in small groups of ten to fifteen, but it was first developed for much larger groups of 300 to 2,000 people or more.
The facilitator will greet those present and briefly state the theme of their gathering. Then the facilitator will invite all participants to spend the next ten minutes in thinking through and identifying any issue or opportunity related to the theme. When the facilitator announces time is up, any participants willing to raise a topic will come to the centre of the circle, write a short description, just a few words, on a sheet of paper and announce it to everyone. The person who has called out this issue or opportunity then posts the paper in an area of wall designated for the agenda. That wall becomes the agenda for the meeting. When all those who have topics they want to share have announced and posted their topic, everyone is invited to gather round the topic that most interests them. There is no commitment, each person can stay with a group or move on, according to their interest, and how they feel they are contributing or not.
Sessions typically last for an hour and a half; the whole gathering usually lasts from half a day up to two days. The opening and agenda creation session lasts about an hour.
After the opening and agenda creation, the individual groups go to work. The participants organise each session as they go, decide which session they want to attend, and may switch to another one at any time. This supports different styles of participation as many people like to sample before committing to a group, others may be looking for the most productive sessions, while yet others are hoping to pinpoint discussion on an issue. All discussion reports are compiled in a document on site and sent to participants shortly after.
In this way, Open Space Technology begins without any pre-determined agenda, but work is directed by a theme or purpose that is carefully articulated by leaders, in advance of the meeting. The organisers outline in advance a schedule of break times and spaces. The combination of clear purpose and ample break facilities directly supports the process of self-organisation by the meeting participants themselves.
Small groups might create agendas of only a few issues. Very large groups can generate many sessions running concurrently over the course of a day, and longer meetings may establish priorities and set up working-groups for follow-up.
Conflict can be seen as a disease, with a diagnosis and a prognosis. If we think of it as a disease, we might look for some social bacteria, the Rumour bacteria, the Fixation bacteria and the Persuasion bacteria. Our first approach, following this analogy, might be a conflict diagnosis. In order to make this easier we might ask a number of questions:
• What is the basic issue?
• What has happened up to now?
• Who is involved in this conflict?
• What are the personal and formal relationships between the partners?
• Can these partners solve the conflict with their present attitudes?
• Is there something underlying this conflict?
It is often easier to have a third party come in and help with such a process. This facilitator or mediator has several roles and may do one or more of the following:
• Make observations as objectively as possible.
• Be neutral and not moralise.
• Try to see the situation from a distance.
• Be accepted by all parties.
• Develop trust.
• Awaken the desire to take responsibility.
• Raise awareness.
If conflict is a social disease, or a form of pollution, we might consider it in an entirely different way. First of all, it might not be a wholly negative thing. Disease and pollution are, like pain, signals we need to respond to. If we regard them as symptoms, we might see them as useful signals telling us that something is wrong and that we need to find out what is wrong and address that issue.
Just as disease can be seen as a signal for improving health, and pollution as resources looking for a use, social conflict might be regarded as an opportunity for self-growth. It might be helpful to be aware of the following:
• My ideas, where do they come from, are they my own?
• My decisions, how do I make them, if at all?
• My way of talking, how do I say what I say in any given situation?
• My actions, how do they affect my surroundings?
• My strivings, can I lift myself up over the everyday, where am I going?
• My capacity to learn from life, from my own and others’ experience?
• Being aware of the part of my individuality that can pose these questions.
Qualities that we could develop from this kind of training would include listening with loving interest, creating a common picture or a common point of departure, and the ability to act in freedom. We need to develop the capacity to observe, to evaluate, and be able to take free actions. All this demands work upon the self, not in isolation, but in the context of social interaction. These are not lists to be followed slavishly, or memorised by heart, but rather ideas and processes that can be observed, understood and put into practice.
This exercise can be done either individually in a short time, or in groups, spending as much time on it as they want. The exercise is an ascending spiral, itself a powerful Permaculture pattern, and is ideal for an Ecovillage to come closer together and understand the connections between individuals and the group.
• Gratitude. Start a sentence with ‘For supporting me to live, I give thanks to…’ Complete the sentence to give a starting point for giving something in return, generating motivation for positive actions.
• Honour our Pain for the World. Start a sentence with ‘Looking into the future we’re heading into, concerns I have include …’ Again, complete the sentence to create motivation and a sense of urgency.
• Seeing with New Eyes. Start a sentence with ‘Something that inspires me is …’ Hopefully, once this sentence is completed we should find ourselves locating a response to the first two steps.
• Going Forth. Start a sentence with ‘Something I’d love to do to make a difference is …’ Once this sentence is completed, try another one: ‘A step towards this I will make in the next seven days is …’ By now you should have a plan of action. If doing this in a group, a whole list of things you might want to do.
The spiral nature of this exercise comes when it is repeated at regular intervals, each time building upon the work done before, inspired by the actions that have been done since. In an Ecovillage group, this would be a powerful tool. Use it regularly, once a week or once a month. (Based on an article by Chris Johnstone in Resurgence and Ecologist magazine, 283, March/April 2014. See also Chris Johnstone, together with Joanna Macy, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy.)
Having lived for several years in a Camphill village, I would like to complete this chapter on group processes by sharing some thoughts from Rudolf Steiner that have inspired Camphill. The following words were often repeated: at the beginning of meetings, at the beginning of the day, and sometimes even spontaneously in a meeting or a lecture.
Health and wholesomeness only come
when in the mirror of the soul of man
the whole community takes shape;
And in the community lives
the strength of every single soul.
These words are useful in reminding us that there is a non-physical quality about a group of people when they are working together in community. All the different group processes described through this chapter are merely tools to enhance that quality.
The shop at Svanholm.
Founded in 1978, Svanholm is a secular, rural community in Denmark, with a population in 2012 of about 140 people, of which there were about eighty adults and forty-five children.
From 1978 until 2003 they had complete economic fellowship, in which all incomes went to the collective and the individual members received pocket money. Since 2003 they have experimented with members receiving pocket money related to income, set at 25%. The rest goes into the collective, but members need to pay for slightly more of their private consumption than previously.
The Svanholm Estate comprises 400 hectares of land where they practise organic farming with a strong and well-established commitment to the environment. They produce about 300 tons of grain and 200 tons of root vegetables annually. They have about 100 cows for milk and meat, and 200 lambs, plus extensive vegetable production and fruit trees. Committees or work groups deal with economics, work coordination, investments, new members, guests and allocation of housing.
A lengthy membership process establishes trust between the members, and they have a strongly child-centred culture. Svanholm is very established and very stable.
For more information: http://www.svanholm.dk/index.php?id=73
Large community gardens help feed the residents at Svanholm.
At the end of any meeting session or course, it is extremely helpful to make an evaluation. This helps the group look at itself as a group, and is also one of my tools for improving teaching skills and leadership meeting techniques.
A short version is just to go round the group and ask:
• What do you think the group is doing well?
• What do you think could be improved?
This is not an opening for comments and discussions, but a chance for each person to voice their own opinions. I find it useful not to comment on any person’s evaluation, but to simply thank them for what they said and note it for future reference. Even when I receive direct criticism I refrain from answering defensively, again just thanking them for their comments and noting down what was said.
A longer evaluation might entail a series of questions, and then it might be better to have a written form, otherwise it takes a long time to get round the whole group. Personally I have never found written evaluations very much fun to fill out, and hesitate to inflict this on others. However, in case you find it important to have a written version the questions might look somewhat like this:
• Did you hear something today that stood out for you?
• What new ideas or perspectives did you hear?
• What resonated with the whole group; what themes came up in the conversations?
• Do you want to continue this exploration of community?
• Are there any specific actions you would want to take on after what you heard today?
In addition you might want to list some logistical aspects for future organisation:
• How was the food?
• How was the accommodation?
• How was the teaching space?
