Posted December 1, 2004 @ 2149
PST
Consensus process
as a tool for social and political change
I have trained
and served as a facilitator using both formal and informal
consensus processes. I believe that consensus not only produces
superior decisions that are better supported by members
of social groups, but that the very attributes and attitudes
that support consensus decision making also support progressive
social change and peace. I am interested in how consensus
could be further codified and formalized to use not only
with formally structured groups that are used to using the
more commonly known Robert's Rules of Order (such as businesses,
unions, and professional associations), but also by legislative
bodies, such as municipalities or commissions.
Although my experience
leads me to believe that you can run even very large groups
with a relatively "pure" or informal consensus
process, I believe that it only works well in groups much
over 20 if everyone there has a clear understanding
of the process and has the communication skills needed to
make it work. Furthermore, they must have adopted or accepted
the attitudes required for consensus to work, such as openness
to dialogue, non-defensiveness, mutual respect, joint ownership
of decisions, and equality of decision making voices. With
smaller groups, it is easier for a good facilitator to create
the space and safety needed for clear, honest communication
to work. Many small groups interested in social change,
like co-housing
groups, use consensus. However, it is now my impression
that large groups work better if everyone has a clear structure
to follow, particularly when that group is not used to using
consensus decision making. C.T.
Butler and Amy Rothstein created Formal
Consensus process to achieve just this goal, working
with a large group (the previous link goes to Butler's page
on consensus, which has a lot of information, but the best
place to get an easy to load and print version of his book
is here).
Lately, I've been corresponding with Butler and with other
facilitators, like Beatrice
Briggs of the International
Institute for Facilitation and Consensus to discuss
some ideas about how to extend the work that has been done
on describing a structure for consensus decision making
that could be easily taught to and adopted by organizations
that are unused to the concepts, commitments, and
communication skills needed for consensus work.
It is something that appears worth pursuing, although there
are certainly those who do not agree. Randy
Schutt of the Vernal
Project has stated that he finds Formal Consensus "too
rigid and too similar to conventional voting processes".
I do not agree with Randy on this - I think that Formal
Consensus is, at its heart, much more like the kind of open
process that was described by the Center for Conflict Resolution
in their classic "Building
United Judgment" than it is to "Robert's Rules
of Order". That is because the commitment to hear all
voices, and to cooperate instead of compete, are built into
the structure. The fact remains, however, that within our
current society, some people, and therefore groups of people,
need structure. This is particularly true when adopting
a new way of reaching decisions which challenges their entire
way of relating to each other. Furthermore, I've discovered,
even with very open and well-intentioned groups, the lack
of voting (and thus the apparent demise of the "one
person, one vote" form of equality or fairness) causes
fear amongst participants that they will not be heard, or
that someone (or some group) will be able to override them
or their needs in a way that is undemocratic. Nothing could
be further from the truth, but perception trumps reality,
so clear guidelines help prevent such potentially damaging
road blocks from developing.
Two groups that I've
worked with that use consensus process are the Green
Party (at least in Canada and California,
that I know of, I will have to check out about the rest of
the world.) and the Covenant
of the Goddess, which uses a modified consensus
process with a voting provision (you can click here to view
their charter). The meetings for these groups can be quite
large, but most of the working meetings are small. When we set
up Silver Moon Health
Services, we settled on Formal
Consensus as our decision making method and put it right in
the Articles
of Incorporation, but left wiggle room to modify the process
as needed for the group in our Bylaws. The idea was that the Annual
General Meeting would potentially be large, and we wanted structure
for that, plus it would provide a framework for smaller working
groups to learn how to use consensus decision making over the
long term. We are now wrangling over how to deal with issues like
election of officers in a manner that is compatible with the philosophy
of consensus. I've also taught and facilitated meetings for SWEFA
(the South West Earth Festivals Association, in New Mexico, a
group that has successfully resisted structure if there ever was
one) using Formal Consensus,
with reasonable results. Two things that I learned there is that
it is possible to teach on the fly, although it works best if
some core part of the group has been through training before a
real meeting begins, and that things go best even with a trained
group if the facilitation is consistent - that is not only in
terms of style, but also level of skill. A group that is learning
will have trouble if they are adjusting to different approaches
or to a facilitator's own learning curve.
I
plan to expand on this short essay, but let me leave you with
a short list of links on communication and facilitation resources
which you can explore, which I believe will help anyone interested
in consensus work:
Tree
Bressen's great list of essays and "how to's"
Sharon Ellison's "Powerful
Non-Defensive Communication" website
The
Co-Intelligence Institute website
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