In my last post I talked about the consensus tuneup process Winslow Cohousing has started on.
The task force group that gathered originally wanted to create a definition of consensus, but we hit a brick wall and a lot of people left the task force. I refocused the task force group on working on some key questions.
The first burning question was why do we (still) choose consensus? In fact do we still choose consensus? As we discussed this, we quickly realized that an important related question was: Why do I personally choose consensus? Do I, in fact, choose consensus?
We did a driving needs exercise to try to get to what it was that we wanted out of a group process. I believe that we have big needs that drive us. These are the needs that drive us, sometimes, to crawl over broken glass. My hope in identifying these needs is to provide a haven to return to when the consensus process seems just too much a crushing burden.
For example, my personal driving needs are:
Leadership
Challenge/Learning
Flow
Passion
I personally choose consensus because I believe it is a practical demonstration on how to make the world a better place. We need lots of little experiments to show us the way forward. Groups that do consensus are doing that.