Remembering John Dyer-Bennet

Out of the blue (and maize) I was recently pulled into the thread of an email conversation about raising money to fund the creation of shelters for soccer players and officials at Carleton College, in honor of John Dyer-Bennet who was the long time coach of that sport. It brought back a flood of memories that had quietly been collecting dust in the attic of my consciousness.

• • •

I was at Carleton during the years 1967-71, having gone there straight—and I mean that in every sense of the word—out of high school, and my homogenous Father Knows Best upbringing in La Grange IL, a bedroom suburb of Chicago. College was a time of expanding perspectives and breathtaking lifestyle experimentation. In the four short years I was there the college went from freshman year rules where women were allowed in men's dorm rooms twice a week for two-hour stretches (with the door cracked and at least three feet on the floor at all times—though I never figured out who was counting), to the complete collapse of in loco parentis by the time I was senior, when I was an RA on a co-ed dorm floor.

Amidst this social barnstorming, my school life intersected with Dyer-Bennet (whom everyone referred to, with his blessing, as DB) in two ways. I played soccer all four years and I was a math major. My final year I was one of the team captions and DB was my adviser for my senior comps. In consequence, I had occasion to spend more time in his presence than most, which has turned out to be something I've cherished.

He inspired me in many ways (not all of them as linear as the algebra he taught):

o To value precision (to the extent that it was possible to achieve). To this day, I am a fanatic about punctuation and word selection. Though this didn't start with DB (the roots go back to my father and my high school newspaper adviser, Kay Keefe) I was unquestioningly encouraged along this path by him.

o To enjoy the pleasure of a well-constructed proof (which included the discernment to know when you had one and when you didn't).

o To savor amateur sports, played for the thrill of the game, for understanding the inner game of being tested by the challenge of physical performance, and for appreciating the choreography of coordinating your actions with others in team efforts (lessons from which have carried surprisingly far). There was a purity about Carleton soccer that helped. It was a club sport that received minimal backing from the athletic department. We played on a field that was embellished with little more than chalk lines, goals with oft-mended nets, and simple benches. Crowds were sparse and the rewards were camaraderie and personal satisfaction—not fame on campus or the chance to see your picture in Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd.

o To smoke good cigars (through DB I learned of a source of per-embargo Cuban stogies, from which I'd occasionally buy a box of Fonsecas). It is now 40 years later and there is a clutch of maduro-wrapped Hoyo de Monterreys nestled in a foil pouch in my suitcase on the bed next to me.

DB didn't categorize easily. In many ways he was an oddity:
—As a coach he was a gangly math professor with a hawk nose; not a jock.
—Living in rural Northfield MN (home of cows, colleges, and contentment) he retained a pronounced British accent that didn't exactly blend in.
—When he spoke he often closed his eyes, perhaps the better to see the purity that math professors aspire to when not distracted by the messy world around them.
—He drove an old Mercedes and I still recall my shock at this prudent Brit's willingness to demonstrate to a carload of over-testosteroned teenagers how good it could corner on a rare occasion when his sedan had been pressed into service for transportation to an away game.
—One of the ironies about his having the nickname DB was that those initials were also shorthand for "douche bag," a general purpose pejorative that was, for some reason, extremely popular at the time. (As the man was anything but improper or coarse, this overlay was amusing in the same way that one might smile at encountering an emaciated chihuahua named Stud Muffin.)

Dyer-Bennet started the soccer program at Carleton in 1963, and served as volunteer coach for 19 seasons. Thus, I experienced him mid-stride. He lived to be 86, and tomorrow will be the tenth anniversary of his passing.

The last time I saw him was in 1972, when I visited the Carleton campus to visit my girlfriend, Ann Shrader (with whom I would start Sandhill Farm two years later). She was a year behind me in school, and at least once it made sense to visit her and my alma mater at the same time. I recall DB coming up to me in the library on that visit and making a joke about why I hadn't been able to make more progress in sorting out the nation's transportation issues, thereby demonstrating that he not only recalled me, he knew where I'd settled two months after graduating (I worked as a junior bureaucrat for the US Dept of Transportation during the span 1971-73). In that one brief exchange—it probably lasted no more than two minutes—it sunk in how much he cared about the people he had coached, not just the soccer players and math students he had guided.

At the same time, he was also a private person. I recall the fall sports banquet held at the conclusion of my final season, where we celebrated the year just ended (we were 8-1 that year, losing only to an undefeated Gustavus Adolphus squad), and the captains for the succeeding year were announced. Bruce Tully and I (co-captains that year) had collaborated to give DB a pair of leather gloves as a token of appreciation for his tireless efforts on our behalf. Going up to him afterwards to savor a final moment with my coach, he was embarrassed by the gift, and begged off to say a few words of encouragement to the newly elected captions. While I had wanted more, I needed to let him go and not extend his discomfort.

• • •

So here I am being solicited by friends who's names I haven't seen, whose voices I haven't heard, and whose backsides I haven't slapped in more than 40 years, to honor the memory of a man who meant a lot to all of us.

As I have chosen a life that has not been focused on material acquisition, I am not in a position to contribute to the memorial shelters (fortunately others among our number have done better and the necessary funds have been fully pledged). Still, as I am rich in words, I offer this eulogy from that strength and am thankful for the nudge to do so.

Interestingly, the email thread that stirred my memories and inspired this blog had started with the a subject line that read: "John Dyer-Bennet Memorial," only to morph into: "Update on Dyer-Bennett Memorial!" Ahem. His name was spelled with only one "t," fellas. Somewhere, DB is up there with a #2 pencil poised above our virtual blue book, ready to imprecate us for our imprecision. Some things never change.

About Face

I'm on my way to New Hampshire, chugging north from Maryland on the Vermonter (train #56 if you're scoring at home). This train is part of Amtrak's northeast regional fleet that has recently been upgraded to onboard satellite wi-fi. That means I'll have connectivity all day. Woohoo! (Among other things, that means I'll be able to track all the opening day action of March madness, as 16 first round basketball games will be contested today—it'll be a blizzard of hoops frenzy.)

I finished my reports from last weekend's facilitation training at Liberty Village about 1 am this morning, clearing my In Box before arriving today in Peterborough, where I'll be immersed in weekend consulting with Nubanusit, a relatively new cohousing community that's asked me to do some focused work with their facilitation team. Chugging north through Philly, New York, and Springfield today, I'll observe the novelty of a vernal reversal, as blossoms regress to swollen buds, followed by buds shriveling back into dormancy. It's springtime in the northeast!

• • •

Last night I had a bizarre experience in the course of my final dinner at Liberty Village, which was a community potluck. About 30 minutes into the normal exchange of people sharing the minor ebbs and flows of their diurnal experience, Vince casually mentioned that Ma'ikwe sure seemed to have enjoyed her echocardiogram. What?!

Ma'ikwe is going through health struggles right now as she suffers through a recurring bout with Lyme disease. While the main symptoms have been been achy joints (her arms and legs have been in pain nearly constantly the past month) and low energy, there is concern that she may have sustained heart damage (a relatively common occurrence with chronic Lyme patients) and she's wearing a monitor for 30 days to collect data about the electrical signals to her heart when she suffers an episode of dizziness or tachycardia. In recent days her pain and nausea have increased to the point where she was unable to accompany me on my current East Coast business trip [see my March 8 entry, Wife Down, for more on that].

Yesterday she was scheduled to have an echocardiogram done, as part of the testing sequence recommended by the heart specialist she's working with. Naturally, I'm concerned about her health—all the more so as she's struggling and not yet getting better—and we had talked briefly in the morning, via Skype. I caught her just as she was getting up (she had opened her laptop before making her first cup of tea) and we didn't talk long, but I could tell she'd not had a good night and I was worried about her.

Working on reports throughout the day, I had been regularly monitoring email to see if there was word from Ma'ikwe about how the testing had gone. Though nothing had come in by 4 pm (at which point I left my laptop to help my host prepare a dish for the community meal), I wasn't that concerned. There are many things that can delay communication and it's common for Ma'ikwe to be exhausted by a trip to town and need to simply rest afterwards. I figured I'd hear in due course and wasn't dwelling on it when I went to dinner.

Imagine my surprise then when I accidentally learned about Ma'ikwe's echocardiogram from someone who happened to be sitting at the same table with me. I had casually been explaining to Betsy, sitting next to me, that my partner had intended to come to Liberty Village as well, but had to cancel at the last minute due to ill health. Overhearing that, Vince (sitting at the end of the table) chimed in with news about how much Ma'ikwe had enjoyed her test today.

At first I thought I had misheard (how could Vince, who had only met her twice, possibly know more about what was happening with her than I did?). But then Facebook occurred to me. My wife participates in that alternate reality and I don't. [See my entry, Massaging the Medium, for more about that.] It only took me about 10 seconds to imagine what must have happened. Ma'ikwe had posted something about her experience on Facebook shortly after getting home and Vince had picked it up.

Simultaneous with my confusion (how could he know that?) I was eager for the news. The posting was brief, and I got to see it on Vince's smart phone:
OK, I know I'm not supposed to be enjoying this, but I have to say getting an echocardiagram done is one of the most frickin' cool things I've done in a while.

Reading between the lines, Ma'ikwe's upbeat tone meant that the news couldn't have been bad. Whew. So far, so good. Reflecting further though, she didn't actually say anything about the test results. Maybe they hadn't been interpreted yet (racking my brains, it seemed to me that the heart specialist only visits our county on Thursdays and the test had been done on Wednesday).

After savoring the news that she was in good spirits, I started to have a reaction to my getting a health update about my wife from a casual dinner companion. But then I paused. Maybe there was an email waiting for me that I hadn't seen yet. At that point it had been perhaps three hours since I'd last checked email, so I hit the pause button on the storm brewing in my stomach. In fact, I started chiding myself for being so reactive. It's a good thing that Ma'ikwe is willing to share her story and there was no reason to think I had been left out. Relax, I told myself.

Then I went back to my room.

When I checked email, there was no message from Ma'ikwe. Ufda. Rather than pout, I tried reaching her via Skype. No answer. Hmm.

I figure the phenomenon I was going through is the observe of the German term, freudenschade, which means pleasure derived from other people's misery. In my case, it was latent misery that emerged in the context of receiving good news. What did it mean that my wife had energy to share information about her echocardiogram with 900 of her "closest friends" on Facebook but didn't have the energy to tell her husband about it? I wasn't doing well with this line of thinking.

This morning, however, I'm doing better. I wrote Ma'ikwe about my confusion and frustration as the last thing before going to bed and there was a good response waiting for me when I boarded the train at BWI Airport. She'd been up at 4:40 am (not good) and we've started a dialog about how she protects herself from letting people in too close (even me) and about how it's far easier to jot off a breezy one-sentence Facebook post than it is to unpack the complex anxieties and despair that she must navigate as she attempts to face her health challenges.

Ma'ikwe is a brave woman, and I'm am both amazed and profoundly appreciative of her willingness to tackle the hard questions whenever one of us raises them. The last thing she needs to attend to right now is her husband's bruised ego.

Open Discussion ≠ Open Range

Today is the second installment of a series of three blogs on the topic of meeting facilitation, covering:

—Preparation
—Managing Open Discussions
—Selecting Formats

• • •

Years ago I was asked to work with a community over a weekend, facilitating their annual retreat. I started by observing a session on the thorny topic of how to address tensions related to the phenomenon that members were contributing unevenly to the work of the community. A pair of the group's regular facilitators handled the opening two-hour session and I was fascinated to see what unfolded: the entire time was taken up with two activities: a whole-group brainstorm about how people perceived the issue; followed by small group breakouts where people discussed ideas about how to address the issues named in the brainstorm, the results of which were dutifully reported back to the whole group as the final activity.

In the entire two hours, no attempt had been made to labor with differences (about what was problematic, about what mattered in trying to work toward a solution, about whether some concerns were a higher priority than others, about which solutions seemed most hopeful). The facilitators were afraid to go there!

While there was nothing wrong per se with brainstorming the issues or having people work on potential responses in small groups, the heavy lifting is done in the sorting, weighing, and balancing of input—and that wasn't happening. In the session I observed, the facilitators were using formats to avoid engagement, because they were not confident they could contain it or ensure that it would be constructive.

• • •

While there are a wide variety of meeting format choices (an examination of which will be the focus of my final offering in this series), far and away the most common choice is simply opening up the topic to whatever anyone has to say following the presentation of the issue and fielding any clarifying questions. Frankly, this is often the most efficient way to tackle an issue, as only those ready to speak and who believe they have something germane to contribute raise their hand. When done well, this can be incredibly direct and efficient.

While it may be trivial to set this up (it's often nothing more sophisticated than turning everyone loose with, "Who has something to say on this?"), there can be considerable skill needed to manage this well, and that's the focus of today's blog. It's important that facilitators have an understanding of the lay of the land when making this choice.

1. Problems With Open Discussion
While meetings in cooperative groups are meant as a level playing field, they aren't. Not everyone is equally comfortable speaking in group; not everyone is equally articulate; not everyone is equally quick to organize their thoughts; not everyone is in the same state of health; not everyone identifies as an equal stakeholder on this issue at hand; not everyone is equally emotionally centered (maybe their kid is sick, or they're distracted by a problem at work); not everyone equally understands the group's process; not everyone has equal energy or quality of attention at that time of day. In short, there are many complicating factors that produce potholes and moguls in the meeting playing field.

What's more, in open discussion these imbalances tend to be highlighted. Those who are more comfortable and/or energetic in any given setting tend to dominate, unless the group (or at least the facilitator) is aware of the tendencies and can compensate. As comfort and energy are good things, the strategy for addressing inequities is not to equally hobble everyone; rather it's to make choices that enhance everyone's accessibility to the conversation. While some of this can be addressed in format choices, there's a lot that can be done even in the context of open discussion.

With that in mind, it's relevant to assess how capable the meeting participants are of:
—staying on topic (open discussion is not open mic—people are expected to limit their contributions to comments apropos the topic at hand)
—not repeating
—creating openings for those whose voices are heard less
—hearing the ideas that others contribute
—hearing the heart of what others contribute (think of it as emotional hearing)
—understanding how comments relate to group values (as distinct from personal preferences)
—shifting perspectives to see an issue from other frames of reference (the better to understand the relevance and potency of what others say)
—articulating their reactions cleanly (as opposed to speaking from a reactive/defensive place)
—working constructively with strong feelings
—bridging between divergent opinions

While no one intends to do any of these things poorly, most of us are not quite as evolved as we'd like and we tend to regress—especially on topics that matter a good deal to us, or ones that are complex and heard to follow. In my view, it's one of the facilitator's principal jobs to gently, yet firmly remind participants of their good intentions, providing folks with graceful ways to correct or reframe problematic contributions.

There are two things that groups can put in place that will greatly augment this effort:
a) An articulation of good meeting behavior (so that everyone has a clear idea of what you expect from one another once the bell rings).
b) Ground Rules that spell out the facilitator's authority to rein people in when they behave inappropriately (the boundaries of which have been defined in the previous answer) and to guide the conversation along the cooperative and inclusive lines the group intends to employ in how it proceeds.

2. Inhaling Versus Exhaling
Whenever the group tackles an issue, there will be two main parts of the consideration: a) a full delineation of what the issue is, and identification of the factors that a good response needs to take into account; followed by b) problem solving (discerning which action best balances the factors named in the previous step).

These two steps have different flavors, and it can be terribly confusing if you allow both to proceed simultaneously. If the group lacks an understanding about the distinction between these phases it will commonly happen that someone will offer an idea about how to address a concern as their first response to its articulation. If you allow that to happen the group can easily get lost: should it be focusing on the continued identification of factors (inhaling), or should it be responding to the merits of the proposed response (exhaling)?

Unless you're teaching people the arcane art of mastering the didgeridoo, expecting groups to both inhale and exhale at the same time leads to pulmonary distress and does not promote clear thinking.

Thus, it's important for the facilitator to be able to articulate this distinction and be able to remind the group which phase it is in. This will make open discussion much more productive.

3. Divide and Conquer
If a topic is complex (many of the most interesting ones are) it can often be a boon to the group if the facilitator (in consultation with the presenter) offers a structured approach: a sequence of questions calculated to focus the consideration such that the answers will be stepping stones on the way to the promised land (a solid agreement about what to do). Mind you, this is not meant to steer the group toward a particular solution; it's meant as a way to build a solid foundation for a comprehensive response.

While each of the focusing questions can still be addressed in open discussion, you've (hopefully) narrowed the range of appropriate responses to a more manageable number of variables—the better to hold them all, and the better to figure out how to balance them.

Even if it's not obvious what the right set of questions is, or in what sequence to tackle them, it can nonetheless be useful to ask the group start with putting less food in their mouth at a time, just to minimize the risk of indigestion.

• • •

Now let's return to the group that only attempted brainstorming and small group breakouts during their retreat. Employing the metaphor I just developed above, they were afraid to chew in plenary.

In their case, the group had not given its facilitators a clear license to run meetings, and got push back from individuals when they attempted to curtail repetition or to redirect off-topic comments ("Why are you picking on me?") Not feeling backed up, they backed off, and were at the mercy of each participant's uneven ability to self discipline. The predictable result was a lot of time lost in poorly focused comments (which, of course, was part of their motivation to ask a consultant to work with them).

Beyond that, the group was uncertain how to work emotionally, and the facilitators were unsure of their capacity to do so, even if there had been clarity about what was wanted. Understandably, that led to avoidance. While a group can get away with a certain amount of that, eventually the bill comes due and the distortion and blockage that attends to unaddressed feelings leads to complete paralysis and relationship damage. Yuck!

Finally, the group needed to exercise its bridging muscles, the skills needed to hear divergent viewpoints and then successfully labor collectively to craft a respond that everyone feels connected with.

In the weekend evaluation, I got feedback from the group that they would have preferred more done in alternate formats. In response, I freely admitted that I had slanted things toward open discussion, and affirmed the appropriateness of their instinct to want variety. At the same time, I pointed out that my instinct (as a consultant) was to focus on what they were avoiding. It's my view that groups need to be able to handle open discussions well as one of their options. I thought it would be a disservice if I showcased alternate formats, only to enable them to get increasingly creative on how to avoid doing the hard work with everyone in the room.

While I'm a great fan of variety and attractive presentation, that does not obviate the baseline need to know how to create a balanced diet, appropriately prepare the food, chew it, and swallow it—all without engendering gastrointestinal distress. A good facilitator needs to know how to work with all the basic food groups.

Wife Down

Two days ago, Ma'ikwe and I started out for Quincy IL at 4:30 am to catch the early train to Chicago. It was to be the first leg of our journey to Maryland, to attend the eighth and final weekend of our two-year facilitation training course in the Mid-Atlantic States. On the drive she got nauseous. Though we cracked a window and slowed down on the curves, it didn't get better. Ten miles out, she asked to pull over, so she could get out and puke. Not good.

Back in August 2010 Ma'ikwe got diagnosed with Lyme disease. She underwent a strong antibiotic course at the time (six weeks of doxycycline) and got relief from the symptoms. Though she got demonstrably better right away, her strength and stamina never returned to pre-2009 levels. Over this winter the symptoms gradually reappeared, with the pace accelerating in the last couple weeks.

Ma'ikwe traces her illness to a bout with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (which is tick-borne, just as Lyme is) that occurred 15 years ago. While that wasn't her orientation to her illness in 1997, today she thinks that Lyme disease (essentially a spirochete infection with rather sophisticated defense mechanisms) entered her system at that time and has been there ever since, mostly dormant with occasional flare ups—which have lately been more frequent and more severe. Yuck.

Thus, Ma'ikwe believes she's wrestling with chronic Lyme disease, which is a demon that's the very devil to permanently cast out from the body. As if her symptoms are not bad enough—constant achy joints, especially in the arms and legs; low energy; tachycardia; shortness of breath; low libido—there is controversy among allopathic physicians as to whether chronic Lyme actually exists, significantly complicating the search for a doctor to advise on an appropriate healing regimen.

(Insurance companies love this by the way, as they can use the party line of the Center for Disease Control—that chronic Lyme doesn't exist—to deny reimbursement for treatment. This administrative wrangling is a bitter impediment for the growing group of victims who identify as sufferers of chronic Lyme and are desperately looking for help.)

It has been a godsend for my wife that there is an online support group for chronic Lyme. Whenever some new set of painful symptoms crops up, she can post it to the group and she'll get 10 replies in 15 minutes, where responders are reporting similar experiences and describing what they've done to cope with that presentation. Notable, she gets this near-instant support independently of the time of day she posts her anguish. It has been an incalculable morale boost for Ma'ikwe to know that she's not alone and that she's believed.

My end of this is support. While I have no personal experience with Lyme, and don't know on a body level what she's going through, I believe whatever she tells me and am just trying to hang in there with her as she rides this out. My support is physical (doing some of the recurring chores that have become much less manageable); emotional (listening to her describe what's going on in her body, and helping her remember how current reports match up with what she told me last year, last month, or last week); and financial (both because she can't work as much and because her health care expenses are increasing).

In two weeks, Ma'ikwe and I will travel to see a Lyme-literate doctor for the first time. The appointment coincides with the end of my current business trip, and I'll be able to be with her for the three-hour initial visit, helping to make sure that Ma'ikwe asks all of her questions—and then helping her remember later what the doctor said. I am so thankful that we'll get to go through this together.

As soon as Ma'ikwe puked in the pre-dawn light Tuesday morning, we both knew that there was a serious question to face: did it really make sense for her to push herself to get on the train? We had about 15 minutes to decide. Would her queasiness in the moving car not persist on a moving train? Did her strong desire to be with our class on graduation weekend trump the balking of her body? In contemplating her choice, she went through the anguish of wondering if she'd ever go on trips again (if she gave in to the illness now was it just an inexorable slide into being housebound—it was a grim few minutes)?

Holding her, I asked her to listen to her intuition. I'd done solo training weekends before (14 of them in fact) and would be fine if she backed out. While the trainings are better with her, that's really only true if she's strong enough to participate. As we pulled into the station parking lot and popped the trunk to remove the luggage, Ma'ikwe decided to not go. Suddenly, I was on the train sitting next to an empty seat. While that's not an unusual experience in and of itself, it was a weird one when I expected Ma'ikwe beside me. Instead, I was a little bit beside myself.

As I type this in Maryland, Ma'ikwe is safely back home on her couch, coping in more familiar territory, with myriad friends and loved ones close at hand. She will not have to churn this weekend over when to take a break and when to attend sessions; she can just focus on her health. Looking back at Tuesday morning, she knows that she made the right choice. Just like I did in asking her to be my partner.

Facilitator Prep

Today I'm going to launch a series of three blogs on the topic of meeting facilitation, covering:
—Preparation
—Managing Open Discussions
—Selecting Formats

There are a number of things to do when getting ready for a facilitation assignment. For each topic on the agenda, you need to know:

Objectives
What's wanted from the meeting; what are the desired outcomes? Hint: it's not always to reach a decision about what to do. Is this the front end of a conversation expected to take multiple meetings? Are you looking to clear the air on something about which there's unresolved tension? Maybe your main goal is to agree on a road map for tackling the topic, agreeing on an organization of subtopics and the order in which you'll address them.

History
Are there any existing agreements that bear on the issues to be discussed? Is there any partial product from recent prior meetings that needs to be taken into account? If this topic has cropped up in the past, are there relevant minutes from meetings at which this was considered (no need to reinvent the wheel)?

Pitfalls
Where do the bodies lie? Is anyone in distress relative to this issue (and if so, about what)? What attempts, if any, have been made prior to the upcoming meeting to work through these tensions, and what more needs to be done in order to establish a firm foundation for problem solving?

While investigating these three aspects of an agenda topic creates a solid jumping off point, where will you jump to? Facilitators should create a plan for how to work each issue, which will include a choice of formats and timing. Before that, however, it's generally a good idea to make room for one-on-one (or one-on-two) conversations with the presenter and key stakeholders.

By stakeholders I mean the members of the group who care a good deal about the outcome of the consideration. It may be because their lives or their work area will be substantially impacted by what the group decides. It may be because the group will be wrestling with how to interpret a core value that's near and dear to that person's heart. It may be because the person has a nostalgic connection to the way things used to be done and is struggling with the idea that it's time for a change. It may be that they mistrust the person(s) who is advocating change and are nervous about the possibility of the group making a mistake acceding to their wishes. In short, people identify as stakeholders for all manner of reasons.

Conversations with stakeholders can be valuable in a number of ways:

o What you learn from them may be different (or at least richer) than what you'd been given by the agenda setting committee [see my Jan 25, 2008 blog on Gatekeeping Plenary Agendas for more on this] or by talking solely with the presenter, whose slant on the issue may not be balanced. Thus, these conversations are likely to help you gain a fuller picture of what's needed.

o Stakeholders may not start in a place of trust regarding the facilitator's ability to understand where they're coming from and what's important to them. They may have a story to tell leading up to current events, and it may be helpful for the facilitator to hear that story before the meeting, both to establish rapport and perhaps to save time in the meeting. This is about relationship building and what the facilitator can reasonably do ahead of time to put the stakeholders at ease about whether the facilitator can be counted on as an ally in being heard accurately. (Note: this has nothing to do with whether they'll be agreed with or get what they want—which you can't promise.)

o It can also be a time to give key people a heads up on what you expect will come out in the meeting (that may be challenging for them to hear) or to let them know about how you're intending to explore the topic so that they can be ready for it. Surprises can be fun at birthday parties, but tend to promote unwanted volatility in plenaries.

o If there has been a history of bumpy communications between you and a given stakeholder, this can be a time to address any trust issues, or to assure the stakeholder that you believe yourself sufficiently neutral to be able to serve them fairly. Alternately, if you are not able to make headway on a trust issue, it may be a sign that you should step down as facilitator and get someone else in there. By having stakeholder conversations ahead of time, there's still room to make adjustments, which is far better than suffering a meltdown on the plenary floor.

o If there are difficult patterns of meeting behavior with the person (perhaps they interrupt a lot or repeat themselves), this time can be used to discuss what you can do to point this out in the moment in such a way that the person will feel is friendly, rather than embarrassing. Agreeing on a protocol ahead of time can make this potentially awkward moment go better.

In case it hasn't already become apparent, it's not going to be possible to do a bang up job on prep if you don't allow enough time. Depending on how busy your life is and how available the stakeholders are, you may be smart to start prepping about a week ahead of the meeting. Working backwards, that means you'll need to receive the assignment ahead of that. [For more about this see my Jan 28, 2008 blog: Selecting Plenary Facilitators.] When I see a group choosing a facilitator (perhaps relying on rock-paper-scissors) as the first item of business in a meeting, I shudder.

Now that I've put the fear of god into you about how important stakeholder conversations can be, let's be realistic. It will seldom be possible to talk with everyone, and generally that's not necessary in order to have a good meeting. Do the best you can and try to develop a nose for which conversations will be most essential. The only must-do on this list is talking with the presenter, so that you two are clear about what they'll be doing to introduce the topic, and at what point you will take over. There is often a dance between the facilitator and presenter over what visual aids will be created to support he meeting and who will craft them—make sure you know who's leading and who's following.

Once the stakeholder conversation have occurred, you should be ready to map out of the meeting. This will include how you intend to focus the conversation and the way you'll ask people to engage. The front half of this equation is identifying the questions you'll want the group to address and in what order. Often it makes sense to write up focus questions on flip chart paper ahead of time, so that participants will have a visual reminder of what they're supposed to be speaking to. You should be clear why you're asking each question and how that will lead the group toward clarity about what to do in response to each topic. The theory is that if you know what you're looking for, you'll know when you have it, and therefore when it's time to move the group onto the next question.

The second half of the equation is about formats. The default choice is open discussion, where anyone can speak once the focus question has been introduced and clarified. While open discussion is often the quickest way through a topic—I'll discuss the elements of doing this well in my next blog—there are a number of reasons why you might prefer a different format (which could include brainstorm, card storm, silent meditation, small group breakouts, Go Round, sharing circle, individual writing, and a host of other techniques). I'll tackle the pros and cons for selecting any of these alternatives in the blog after next.

Registered Sex Offenders & Community Membership

Over the winter I was working with a community that tackled the issue registered sex offenders (RSOs) as potential members. It was a tough conversation.

Essentially it boiled down to a clash between a core commitment to providing safety, in dynamic tension with a root desire to be a transformative community that believes in redemption. Yuck! One of the most dyspeptic things a group has to wrestle with are questions of how to balance two basic values that don't play nice with each other in a specific configuration. On the question of whether RSOs could be members, those conditions obtained.

As you might imagine, the community did not spend time contemplating this possibility when it first formed. The back story is that the group is now over 10 years old and has twice accepted members only to discover afterward that the person was an RSO. As you can imagine, both experiences were gut wrenching. While there was no clear evidence that in either case the person did something sexually inappropriate while in residence, there were some unsubstantiated accusations and considerable anxiety.

Until now, the membership intake process did not include inquiries about a person's criminal record, so neither of the two people in question misstated their situation. While it can be argued that they misled through withholding, there was no falsification.

Community vibrancy is based on trust, and trust was seriously eroded when the RSO status was uncovered rather than volunteered. While the two offenders may have honestly felt that this was something behind them and not worth mentioning, it's not hard to imagine the blood pressure spikes that occurred when this got revealed.

Sexual offenses come in at least three gradations of severity (laws vary by state), with federal guidance suggesting three categories:
Level A) All violent sexual offenses, and all offenses involving children under the age of 12
Level B) Nonviolent offenses (meaning non-coercive) involving minors in the 12-18 age range
Level C) Nonviolent offenses not involving minors

The community asked everyone to share in a Go Round whether they'd be open at all to RSOs being members of the community and, if so, under what conditions or with what limitations.

This was a tender and deeply moving circle, where everyone took whatever time they needed to answer and there was careful listening. In a group of 20 people, four spoke about their personal experience as a survivor of child sexual abuse, and a fifth spoke as a parent whose child had been physically abused. While the statistics on abuse suggest that there were probably more people in the room who had personal experiences with abuse, those are the one's who voiced it.

On the one hand, there were a number of people who ached to be able to offer a meaningful alternative to a punishment-oriented überculture—to give people a second chance.

On the other, the survivors reported dread at the thought of having convicted offenders in the bosom of their community. Parents feared for their children and a expressed a profound sadness at the prospect of tightening vigilance on free-roaming community kids if known offenders were inside the perimeter of the community bounds.

This conversation was further complicated by the recognition that the legal definition for sexual offenses didn't map exactly onto the community's norms, where swimming nude and peeing outdoors were acceptable practices, and there was no judgment about a 19-year-old having consensual sex with a 17-year-old. The community was in agreement that these behaviors—which could earn someone RSO status—were at worst minor peccadilloes and not at all on the same level as the horror of forced rape.

So what to do? While there was widespread acceptance with the notion that a blanket ban on all RSO's would probably mean that some deserving folks (who perhaps were unlucky enough to get convicted of peeing by a roadside) would be denied the opportunity of membership, the prospect of looking at RSOs on a case-by-case basis (to winnow out the nogoodniks from those worth taking a chance on) represented an emotional wringer for the sexual abuse survivors in the group, who expected the process to be a re-traumatizing gauntlet. In the end, it was too much to ask the survivors and parents to stretch that far and the community agreed to not allow RSOs as members.

Three people stood aside in that agreement—notably, that trio included one of the survivors—and the group gave all three a final chance to speak from their heart about why this decision was hard for them. I thought it was one of the most touching and unifying treatments of a tough topic I'd ever witnessed.

That said, the community was not yet done with this topic. Does the new agreement translate into background checks on prospectives? What about people who used to be RSOs, but their registration has expired (only Level A offenders are registered for life)? What about people who have committed sexual offenses but not been convicted? What about people convicted of violent crimes but not sexual ones?

In the continuing conversation certain themes emerged. To the extent that there was openness to considering people who had committed offenses, the group was more willing to stretch if the person freely admitted it (lying about convictions will be considered grounds for immediate expulsion), and was able to demonstrate that they'd done some serious personal work to understand what that was about, so that it was far less likely to happen again.

While there is still more to do (how does one demonstrate that the personal work they've done is "serious" enough?), it buoys my heart when a groups opens up a hard issue and gets closer as a consequence of the examination.

Hauling Wood & Chopping Water

I've been spending the three months of winter (mid-Dec through mid-March) at Dancing Rabbit, living with Ma'ikwe. In addition to the preciousness of exploring day-to-day rhythms with my wife, I've enjoyed adapting to the diurnal rituals of living in her house.

Ma'ikwe started construction of her home (dubbed Moon Lodge) in 2009, and bravely moved in that Halloween—which, unfortunately, foreshadowed some horrific nights wintering over in a structure with unfinished and highly leaky walls. When the wind blew out of the north, it tended to congeal the marrow in your bones.

Two years further along, the walls are much tighter (more plaster over the strawbale walls) and cold weather outside no longer presages an arctic experience inside. Still, Ma'ikwe has been going through a second bout of low energy and achy joints associated with chronic Lyme disease, and it's handy that I've been around so much to help with the routine of homestead domesticity while she concentrates on healing. While she still helps out when she can, she can't easily do as much.

Here are the recurring elements of my winter days:

o Each morning I roll up the quilted shades in front of the windows if the sun is shining, and roll them down again at dusk.

o I practice energy conservation (think Little House on the Prairie; not Leave It to Beaver). As Moon Lodge is off the grid, electricity depends on what's generated by a 1440-watt solar panel array. The extra juice is stored in eight deep cell marine batteries. Mostly this is sufficient to do whatever we need, including refrigeration—so long as we're prudent (no hair dryers or electric can openers) and so long as we don't get three cloudy days in succession. There have been a few evenings when the system was shut down and we were reading by candlelight. It's romantic, but doesn't help manage one's email In Box.

o I wash the dishes, usually every other day. While this may seem a plebeian task, there's no plumbing in the house yet, resulting in a complex dishwashing choreography. It begins by hauling a five-gallon bucket of water in from one of two rain barrels strategically parked under the eaves. This protocol works so long as the nighttime temperature doesn't dip too far below freezing, and bounces above it during the day—otherwise the water doesn't tend to flow so well (hence the phrase, "chopping water"), necessitating a a 100-yard schlep to fill buckets at the community's frostproof hydrant.

Regardless of how it's procured, once the water is inside, it gets transferred into a granite ware stock pot that's a constant fixture sitting atop the wood stove. After several hours you have hot water sufficient to wash and rinse the dishes. The waste stream drops into another five-gallon bucket, from which it is conveyed outside.

o I keep the wood fire burning. Beyond the obvious task of adding another chunk when we're down to embers (which chore I share with Ma'ikwe, and is greatly aided by a glass panel in the door to the firebox), this means hauling wood in from the not-yet-finished attached greenhouse just south of the living room, where we stockpile split wood until its needed inside. When the greenhouse supply runs low, this means some personal time with the splitting maul, segmenting drums into pieces that are digestible by the stove. On a bright sunny day, we'll have enough power that I can occasionally run the electric chain saw, allowing me to reduce logs into stove length drums and to splay open the pieces that are too large for the stove and too knotty for the splitting maul. The real monsters make great overnighters once I get them small enough to be eased into the fire box.

In addition to keeping the wood box filled, I also have to maintain a proper distribution of size: we need the right mix of thin pieces suitable for start-up in the morning, medium pieces for maintaining throughout the day, and lunkers (that barely fit) for burning through the night.

o I serve as the back-up hauler of potable water. While this is a primary household chore for Ma'ikwe's 14-year-old son, Jibran, when he can't answer the bell (which happened twice last week when he was stricken with pink eye) I'm the next monkey in the barrel. While we get most of our wash water from the rain barrels, we always go to the hydrant for our drinking and cooking water.

o Jibran & I share the task of taking out the recycling and emptying the household trash, which happen about once a week.

o Ma'ikwe and I share the cooking. If we plan far enough ahead, a fair amount of it can be done on the wood stove, substituting renewable wood for the propane consumed by the kitchen range.

o About every five days or so I sweep the floor, cleaning up the mud and wood scraps that we invariably track into the house.

In short, living at Ma'ikwe's provides all the baseline ingredients needed for Buddhist enlightenment. The relevant zen aphorism goes like this: Before enlightenment, chop wood, haul water. After enlightenment, chop wood, haul water.

I figure the Moon Lodge adaptation goes like this: Before the house is finished, chop wood, haul water. Afterward, haul wood, chop water. It's a subtle thing, enlightenment. Luckily, we don't have to wait for the house to get finished before we can turn the lights on.