The Gift of Good Process—All Delivered Before Xmas Morning

I'll be conducting a variety of courses from now through the end of the year, and I'm laying them out here—both because one or more may interest you, or people you know (and I'd be pleased to have your help banging the drum).

I. Facilitation Training

This is my signature two-year course, which I've been doing since 2003 and have delivered 15 times, reaching about 175 students. It will be conducted via Zoom (which I've experimented with the last two years and feel solid about, based on having conducted 15 training weekends and facilitated multiple group meetings via that medium).

The class meets for eight 3-day weekends (from Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon), spaced approximately three months apart. No prior facilitation experience is required—you just need a positive attitude, an open mind, and a reliable modem. In addition to teaching the basics, the course will cover considerable nuance about group dynamics in a cooperative setting—all of which applies just as well to leadership in cooperative culture.

In addition to receiving approximately 50 handouts, there will be a principal teaching theme for each weekend:

• Working Content
• Formats
• Conflict
• Consensus
• Power & Leadership
• Organizational Structure
• Delegation 
• Challenging Personalities

Half of each weekend is devoted to preparing for, delivering, and debriefing live meetings facilitated by students—as it's my belief that lessons are better grounded when facing live ammunition. The trainers (there will be three of us) will hold your hand throughout and be a safety net as you learn to fly.

Most students come affiliated with an intentional community, but that isn't a requirement, so long as you understand we are teaching you to operate collaboratively and inclusively.

While I am open to students from any situation and with any background, I want to make you aware of the potential this training provides when multiple people participate from the same group—it is much easier to digest and bring home the learnings when you have buddies, and much more possible to shift the culture and practices of your group when the inspiration comes from more than one voice. The benefits are geometric (that is, your group gets four times the boost when you double the number of students).

This is the most fun thing I do, passing along what I've distilled from four decades in the field. At a minimum, this course will make you a better facilitator or help you understand better what good facilitation is. At its best, it will change your life.

The new course is penciled in as follows:

Weekend I          Sept 22-25, 2022

Weekend II         Jan 12-15, 2023

Weekend III        Mar 30-April 2, 2023

Weekend IV       June 22-25, 2023
Weekend V        Sept 7-10, 2023
Weekend VI       Dec 7-10, 2023
Weekend VII      Mar 7-10, 2024
Weekend VIII     June 6-9, 2024

There is still room in this course for more students (we accept a maximum of 18). If we don't reach critical mass (12 students is the minimum) by next month, we'll postpone the start until January, bump back all the weekends and add a new date for Weekend VIII.

The cost is $450/weekend for full students (discounts are available if you pay up front) and $300/weekend for auditors. While both full students and auditors are welcome in all classroom sessions, only full students get to facilitate live meetings during class weekends, and receive detailed written comments about their facilitation. 

If you have questions or want additional details reach me via email: laird@ic.org

II. National Cohousing Conference • Aug 25-28 • Madison WI

Coming right up (next week!), I'll be traveling for work for the first time since March 2000—ending a drought of 29 months. (I used to travel once a month for work—my how times have changed.)

—Aug 25 (Thursday) • I am teaching an all-day (6-hour) intensive styled Consensus 301, aimed at helping groups who are struggling with consensus, to better understand how they might untangle and be get better results. I have been working with secular consensus for 45 years and have a deep understanding of both the problems and potential solutions. In six hours there will be plenty of time to get responses to individual questions.

Click here for details and the possibility of a one-day pass for this offering alone. I believe you can participate either in-person (best) or via Zoom (next best).

—Aug 27 (Sat) • I am offering a 90-min workshop entitled Consensus 101 (9-10:30 am), covering the basics of what you'll need to get off to the right start.

—Aug 27 (Sat) • I am offering a 90-min workshop entitled Participation (1:30-3 pm), unpacking the morass of issues that arise around non-monetary member contributions to the maintenance and well-being of the community. This topic is the single most requested that clients ask me to help with, because of its complexity. I'll lay out the key questions groups need to address in order to clear the fog.

Again, you'll have the choice of registering for just the workshops, or the whole megillah. Click here for your options.

III. FIC Webinars

Continuing an ambitious program of 10-hour online courses sponsored by the Foundation of Intentional Community, all of which have been offered once already this year, here are the ones being repeated in the months ahead. Each course will be comprised of 2-hour Zoom sessions, held at the same time of day and on the same day of the week for five consecutive weeks. For details and registration for each course, please click on the titles, which are hyperlinked to FIC.

—Facilitation (Tuesdays) • Sept 13-Oct 11

—Consensus 101 (Thursdays) • Sept 15-Oct 13

—Conflict (Tuesdays) • Oct 25-Nov 22

—Aging Gracefully in Community (Wednesdays) • Oct 26-Nov 23 (for this course only, I am part of a team of presenters, and I am only leading the first session)

—Membership (Thursdays) • Oct 27-Nov 23 (note that the last class will held on Wed, to avoid Thanksgiving—the rest will be on Thursdays)

In addition to the main entrées listed above, here are a couple of 1-hour appetizers offered free of charge:

• Facilitating Your Group Through Anything • Aug 23 • 2:30-3:30 pm Eastern

In this session I'll walk through how to handle the nasty stuff: topics that are complex and/or volatile. This is a teaser for the 10-hour Facilitation course listed above.

• Understanding How Consensus Works in Cooperative Groups • Aug 23 • 6-7 pm Eastern

The key focus here will be on essential communication skills needed to make consensus sing. This is a teaser for the 10-hour Consensus 101 course listed above.

I hope to see some of your smiling faces soon.

Teaching the Rest of the Year—An Updated Menu

Back in December I posted a sneak preview of courses I'd be offering 2022 (Teaching in the Year Ahead).

While quite a bit of that has come to pass, some things have become more defined, and new things have gelled. So I'm inspired to offer this revised list of offerings for the remainder of the year.

Facilitation Training

As planned, I completed two rounds of my two-year training in recent months (I had been conducting three concurrently), which has made room on my dance card to launch another round. I have the teaching group lined up—all I need is students. Our hope is to start Sept 22-25.

If this interests you or your group, drop me an email (laird@ic.org) and I'll send you a flyer that lays it all out.

FIC Webinars

In addition to what's posted in Teaching in the Year Ahead I will be part of the faculty for a new offering, Aging Gracefully in Community, which will be offered for five consecutive Tuesdays (each session two hours long), starting June 21. To prime the pump there will be a free introductory gathering, May 31, that will last for 90 minutes. Click here for information about the teaser.

Workshops at the National Cohousing Conference • Aug 25-28

I'll be offering three things: 

• An all-day pre-conference intensive styled Consensus 301: Rx for Groups Struggling with Making It Work Well. This will happen Thursday, Aug 25.

Plus these two in-conference workshops (90-min each) occurring during the main event (exact times TBA):

• Participation: Issues in Member Contributions

• Consensus 101: Understanding the Basics

Podcasts

In the last month I've been interviewed for two different podcasts—which is a new platform for me:

Rebecca Mesritz put one together for FIC about Skilled Facilitation, and is available now.

Sen Zahn interviewed me this week as part of a segment on Conflict that she'll be editing for Peace Talks Radio, a program syndicated to 60 public radio stations in the US, and others abroad. As of today, no date has been set for when this podcast will be available.

Fortunately, I like being busy.

Price Setting & Income Inequality

I recently had an exchange with someone who objected to my offering facilitation training for a set fee, and the conversation raised issues I thought worth exploring.

My critic was concerned about income inequality—which I am as well—essentially making the case that people ought to pay more equally in terms of what they could afford (the idea, roughly, being that someone making $25,000 annually should pay half of what someone making $50,000 annually should pay). In his view, sliding scales do the trick and he strongly advocated that I adopt that approach.

While I try to be sensitive to the social change implications of my work in the world, I'm not so enamored of sliding scales as the solution.

My critic pointed out that setting fees at a fixed amount effectively offers well-off folks a discount at the expense of those less well off, since a set price is axiomatically a smaller fraction of assets for those who are better off. While I follow this reasoning and agree that a sliding scale offers some redress, I've come to favor a different approach. Following are various considerations that led me there.

1. In my experience, sliding scales tend to suppress net revenues. That is, the amount offered above the target average does not tend to cover the deficit of those who are paying less. And it complicates knowing when I have a enough students to have a viable class. (That is, the amount I pay Amtrak to get to and from a training location does not vary by how many students I have, but if the amount each student pays is variable you cannot equate a certain number of students to an income-projection.)
2. I like setting the price for my services such that I think it's serious money yet still a clear value. There's nuance in doing this that gets watered down with a sliding scale. (My critic was advocating for a slide where the top is five times the bottom; if I went with that, the top would be embarrassing for me to ask for, while the bottom would devalue what it's worth.)

Part of what I'm concerned with is being a market-maker in my field—setting a standard for the value of high-quality process consulting. A generation ago, when I first got started, there were few practitioners and no common understanding of the value of the work. In addition to establishing a viable business for myself, I've been increasingly interested in making it easier for my students and those who follow to be able to make decent money. With a sliding scale, you are leaving a smear; not a clear mark.

3. I've found it valuable to encourage students to get organizational support for facilitation training, and I believe a sliding scale undermines the motivation for participants to seek this out. (If a person gets a price that's acceptable via a sliding scale, why bother to ask others for support?) 
To be fair, my critic points out that the extra work of enlisting organizational support falls unevenly on those with less income, as the better off are less likely to need help. Still, I prefer this for two reasons: a) it secures support for those with less income other than by my accepting discounted compensation; and b) it enrolls more parties in the investment of process training. If organizations subsidize the training they'll be more inclined to us it, helping to impact the whole organizational culture—which is a prime objective for me in offering the training in the first place.

4. I've worked hard to create a facilitation training model that keeps costs to a minimum (food and lodging for students are exchanged for outside facilitation) and fees go solely to compensate the trainers. In addition, we offer thinking and assistance for students to get financial support from cooperative groups with which they are affiliated (perhaps in exchange for a commitment to practice their new skills or to teach others what they've learned). If that's still not enough, I try to work out a barter in exchange for lower fees.

This mixture maintains the integrity of the price, while creating a viable safety net for those who truly want the learning yet find the price beyond their means.

5. My observation is that people tend to value a thing in proportion to what they pay for it. While I wish this weren't so (and I get the opportunity to work my side of this equation by paying no attention to how much a student or client pays when giving them my attention as a teacher or consultant), I have encountered this too many times to ignore it. People who get a thing cheaply, tend to value it cheaply, and I detest working hard for a client only to have the group respond indifferently because they paid little or no money for the offering.

Thus, I prefer establishing a clear non-trivial marker for value, and then creating numerous ways for people strapped for financial resources to be able to bridge to the opportunity. Does this make it possible for everyone to have straight-forward access to what I offer? No. My approach requires a certain baseline ability to be self-motivated, and an ease in asking others for support (because is is not just handed out), and I'm OK with that.

6. Sustainability is a major catchword these days. For most of my professional life I'd say my work fits under the subheading of social sustainability—what does it take for people to live together closely and happily in cooperative culture, given that we've been raised in competitive culture? In recent years, however, I've expanded my focus to embrace various aspects of economic sustainability—how do we fairly and honorably exchange goods and services such that people are operating in integrity yet are not expected to be wholly self-sufficient?

In this vein, I want to operate as a process consultant in such a way that encourages people to do personal work in relation to the meaning of money in their life—which, I believe, many of us have not done. If I offered a sliding scale for my services, people would have to determine where they fit on the scale, yet I'm not convinced that that examination would go much deeper than comparing their bank account with their sense of fairness. While that's not a bad thing, I want something deeper.

I've been doing that work on my end, and I'm OK asking that others meet me there. If they want my services and don't see how they can afford me, I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and be an ally in helping them find a mutually acceptable solution. I'm just not willing to start by offering a discount.

Talking to My Laptop

Starting July 2, and continuing every week until Aug 13, I'll be conducting a series of webinars about group dynamics every Wednesday afternoon. (See Laird's Greatest Hits for details.)

On the one hand, I'm thoroughly familiar with the material that I'll be presenting—all of the topics have been selected from workshops that I've delivered multiple times:
July 2: Consensus 101
July 9: Conflict: Fight, Flight, or Opportunity?
July 16: Membership: Questions You Should Have Asked Before Joining
July 23: Participation: Navigating the Swamp of Non-monetary Member Contributions to the Group
July 30: The Essentials of Dynamic Facilitation: How to Get Through the Agenda and Build Energy at the Same Time
Aug 6: Power Dynamics & Leadership in Cooperative Groups
Aug 13: Stump the Chumps: Q&A Session with Laird and Ma'ikwe about Cooperative Group Dynamics

What's different is that I'll be talking to my laptop rather than a roomful of faces, and I wonder how that will go.

As I have two hours set aside for each webinar, I think the time will naturally divide into two segments: 60-75 minutes of presentation, followed by 45-60 minutes of Q&A. The big question mark for me will be operating without the visual cues about how my presentation is landing with the audience (my laptop never smiles or even looks confused). Fortunately, Ma'ikwe will by monitoring comments and questions, funneling them to me as appropriate, so I won't have to be tracking chat boxes or hand waving graphics while working through my presentation outline (whew).

In the next couple weeks I'll prepare by walking through each of my presentations, looking for natural places to pause and ask questions of the audience, so that I'll be better able to gauge how well my points are getting across, adjusting as needed.

While we'll be offering electronic downloads of the webinars for people who miss the live presentations (look for this offering on the Ecovillage Education US website), the people joining us on Wednesday afternoons will get the greatest value, as they'll be able to pose their questions on the spot.

While I love working directly with people in the room, venturing into the electronic future seems inevitable. Not only does this give prospective clients a taste of who I am and what I can deliver, it bridges distance and eliminates commuting. What I'll be offering here is a small taste of the online instructional possibilities being offered by MOOCs: massive open online courses, where many people can get access to information inexpensively, and is already impacting university enrollment.

The difference in this case is that the number of webinar participants will be small enough that each can reasonably expect to get personal questions addressed. If this were being offered to 1000 people at once (in a real MOOC) that wouldn't be the case. While there's no question that being electronically connected is not the same as being in the same room, the exchange requires a much smaller investment of time and money and it's good to be experimenting with this medium. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes and having some fun with it.

I hope some of you will join us on the 2nd.

Houston: We Have an Opportunity

Yesterday, Ma'ikwe and I participated in "A Day of Intentional Community" in Houston. The organizer was D'Arcy Bryan Wilson, who is intent on creating a five-family community on the modest acreage her family owns in suburban Pearland.

While Houston is the largest metropolitan area in Texas, it is not the center of progressive thought or community interest (that would be Austin, the state capital). When we asked D'Arcy how many she thought might attend the one-day event, she replied, "Somewhere between 10 and 100." She was right. We had 21. It was sponsored by IC Houston.

Amazingly, when we asked people what they most wanted out of the day, three out of four related that they had been studying intentional communities for years, and were hungry hear from people had actually been doing it. I expected more interest in strengthening the sense of community in neighborhood associations, churches, or work place. And while that was present also, this group mostly wanted to know how to move beyond talking and get something built that had a decent chance of succeeding.

That was no problem for Ma'ikwe and me. We had brought four boxes of Community Bookshelf offerings with us, and we offered four workshops each on various aspects of cmty living and group dynamics. We handed our our spanking new FIC promotional postcards and advertisement for the Art of Community Southwest event we're hosting in Albuquerque May 30-June 1.

Ma'ikwe and I had fun telling stories, providing resources, and generally offering tools and excitement about cooperative living to an eager audience. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was the discovery that there were (not one, not two, but) three groups which had been independently exploring cmty in the Houston area without knowledge of one another. Perhaps the biggest outcome of the day was these groups readily agreed to to merge into one.

This all happened because Ma'ikwe and I had met D'Arcy the previous October, when she attended the Community Day we hosted in Austin following the FIC's fall organizational meetings. Because Ma'ikwe and I were going to be attending my niece's wedding (happening next Saturday in San Antonio), we asked D'Arcy if we could do anything to support her cmty building aspirations when we were in Texas. D'Arcy did the rest. Attendees contributed on a sliding scale of $30-100 for the day. After covering her food costs for the day, Ma'ikwe and I received the rest, helping make our Texas trip more affordable.

In addition, we're doing facilitation training for the Board of Directors of Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin this coming Wed.

It's a great example of accomplishing multiple things on the same trip. Not only does it squeeze more mileage (so to speak) out of the gas consumed on this foray to the Lone Star State, but we're generating income to balance the costs of attending the wedding and doing the work we love into the bargain. Yes, Ma'ikwe and I spend an inordinate amount of time on logistics, yet it's highly rewarding when we can weave everything into a workable whole.

If you are interested in having Ma'ikwe or me talk with people in your area about how you can get more community in your life, get in touch. Sooner or later, we're bound to be coming your way. And with enough advance notice, we can pretty much make anything work.