Community Observations
Communication, Process and Dealing with Conflict -
the heart of a healthy community
by Diana Leafe Christian
This article, excerpted from Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities (New Society Publishers, 2003), offers the opportunity for deeper awareness about how you can learn from and grow from Conflicts that arise in your cohousing community, plus tips on how to communicate more harmoniously with your neighbors.
Most of us don't realize that our wider society is dysfunctional because it's just ourselves, doing what we habitually do, but multiplied and magnified by millions of people. When we see governments or corporations using manipulative, controlling or punishing behaviors - through threats, terrorist attacks or outright war - it frightens and disgusts us. But when we do the small-scale versions of these same ploys ourselves, we don't see it. We may revile but what about our own choice of words and tone of voice this morning with our partner or child? This is why good process is so important in cohousing.
For life in community to be better than it was before, we've got to be better than we were before. In fact, we need good process skills more when we're involved in cohousing, since the community process tends to trigger faster-than-normal spiritual and emotional growth. The crucible of community tends to magnify and reflect back to us our own most destructive or alienating attitudes and behaviors. We become magnifying mirrors for each other. The more intensely we dislike these attitudes and behaviors in others, the more likely we have them in ourselves (or used to have them), although we may be unaware of it. The more we criticize other people for them, the more likely that we're unconsciously condemning ourselves for doing the same.
The rock-polisher effect -The close and frequent interactions with other cohousing residents or forming group members about how we'll live and work together tend to evoke some of our worst and most destructive behaviors. And potentially, it can also heal them. I call this the rock polisher effect. Rocks in a rock tumbler first abrade and then polish each other. Our rough edges are often brought up and then worn smoother by frequent contact with everyone else's. But the rock-polisher effect can be so painful it ejects some people right out of a forming group, or the group becomes so fraught with conflict that it breaks up. Through good community process we can make the rock-polisher effect more conscious. Rather than suffer helplessly, we can use community as a powerful opportunity for personal growth. The process of sharing resources and making decisions cooperatively in community - and no longer being able to get away with our usual behaviors - is a wake-up call to the soul. Community offers us the chance to finally grow up.
Some cohousing communities, such as Sharingwood Cohousing in Snohomish, Washington., help maintain well-being in the community by establishing a team of consensus and process facilitators whose job it is to train meeting facilitators, introduce process methods and keep an eye out for potential conflicts, intervening when necessary. Get your best facilitators and the people most interested in process, says Sharingwood resident Rob Sandelin. Encourage them and give them funds to get training in and bring back good process techniques back to the group. The investment of time and money in good group process will more than pay for itself in community health and well being over the long run. As you'd expect, the same kinds of communication and process skills that enhance love relationships do the same in community - sharing from the heart, listening to each other deeply and telling difficult truths without making each other wrong. This includes speaking to and perceiving others in ways that allow us to stay in beneficial relationships with them while discussing even the most sensitive subjects.
Nourishing sustainable relationships.
Here are some good process skills communities often use to create sustainable relationships:Speaking more consciously This involves speaking to one another in ways that tend to increase, rather than decrease, the level of harmony and well-being between people. When communication is clean enough, people feel confident they can talk to each other about anything, including disagreements or sensitive issues, and still feel good will and connection. These include using rather than messages, checking assumptions, describing feelings with real feeling words instead of blame-words criticized, manipulated , and using neutral language to describe behaviors rather than characterizing people negatively.
The most effective communication skills I've found are those of Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication process, which help people speak to each other in ways that tell the deepest truths while enhancing good will and deepening their connection. It takes time, energy and willingness to change the ways we habitually talk with people, so that our conversations enhance, rather than diminish, our relationships. At first these methods may feel unnatural. It helps to remember that all communication skills, including those we use now, are learned behaviors, and we can learn new ones.
Creating communication agreements.
Conflict can arise because of the widely differing communication styles and behavioral norms that people bring to community from different regions, subcultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. So some groups agree on and write down explicit communication and behavioral agreements. For example, is jumping in before someone has finished speaking considered a disrespectful interruption, or normal lively conversation? Is coming directly to the point considered respectful of each other's time, or brusque and preemptory?
Check-ins. Check-ins can occur before decision-making meetings, or in separate meetings. Everyone around the circle briefly shares what's going on in their lives or what's present for them. No one interrupts or responds-there's no sympathizing, criticizing or offering advice.
Sharing circles. (Also called wisdom circles, the talking stick process, listening circles, heart shares and the council process.) These are sessions in which people share what's true for them and listen to each other deeply. Inspired by the Native American talking stick process, the purpose is not to solve problems or make decisions, but to explore issues and learn together, share personal stories and become closer to each other, or hear everyone's truth, pain, or joy about community issues. People usually sit in a circle. One person at a time picks up the talking stick or object and speaks from the heart. This often opens the door for others to do the same. Everyone has an opportunity to speak but also may choose not to do so.
Trust by Jack Gibb
I discovered this book in the late 1970's.The ideas he expressed are just as true today as they were then. The need for trust is even more necessary now as our society undergoes a transition in how we will have to live. - Hal
Trust and Fear are keys to understanding person and social systems. They are primary and catalytic factors in all human living.
When trust is high relative to fear, people and people systems function well. When fear is high relative to trust, people and people systems tend to break down.
When fear levels are high relative to trust, individuals and social processes are impaired. The life forces are mobilized defensively rather than the creatively. When fear levels are high enough, person and social systems become immobilized, psychotic, or destructive.
When trust is high enough. Persons and social systems transcend apparent limits - discovering new and awesome abilities of which they were previously unaware.
To trust with fullness means that I discover and create my own life. This can be done by:
-being who I am
- discovering and creating ways of opening and revealing my essence to myself and to others
- discovering and creating my own paths, flows and rhythms
- creating my organic nature, becoming, actualizing or realizing this nature
- discovering and creating with you our interbeing - the ways we can live together in interdepending, community, in freedom and intimacy.
Genuine intimacy is a pervasive human want. It is made possible be our seeing each other as we are without our masks, filters, or facades. The highest level of trust is to assume that the environment is benign and tractable and can be influenced by our own creativity.
The high trust process also allows other people to be where they are, and to be able to join with them in an attempt to see together what is, and to collaboratively look at what might be.
Mutual design of a high quality environment is a high trust way to do therapy, teach school, minister a church, parent a home, (live in a community) or govern a country.
High quality environments can be described by:
- high trust levels
- low constraints
- being ourselves, showing our essence, being able to express our wants, and being able to be with others and create new dimensions or interbeing- (community).
- people can feel good about themselves and maintain high self-esteem.
- a wider range of options is available for possible action and involvement.
- defensiveness is reduced against apparent, perceived, or anticipated attack.
Group living at any level is a collaborative and joint process of discovering. No one knows finally and absolutely the best way of being together. Life in each group is a continuous process of discovering.
Learning comes not from getting in touch with our limitations, getting feedback on our error, or trying to remove deficiencies. Learning comes from strengthening our present ways of being, freeing ourselves from our constraints, going with what we do and feel, being in our own rhythm and flow.
Structures apparently play little or no part in accomplishing the conscious purposes that people have in mind when setting themselves up. The demand for structure is to satisfy a need for predictability, order, security freedom from turmoil, efficiency and fairness. Group members ultimately find that these apparently secure constraints are made of sand.
The problem is that structure simply does not accomplish these ends. Without trust, structure instead produces circumvention, resistance, stagnation and unfairness. If there is high trust, structure is not necessary.
The goal then needs to be: how to create high trust environments. Regular and daily interaction with others as found in cohousing communities offers the possibility of healthier people that can grow out of a healthy community. - Hal