Navigating the Boundary Between Transparency and Discretion

This past week I received notice that Communities magazine is planning its winter issue on the theme of Privacy and Transparency. Reflecting on that inspired this monograph.

As a process consultant, I frequently get hired to work with groups bogged down in conflict—often intractable conflict, by which I mean the group has tried what it can think of doing on its own, and it's still stuck in the swamp.

Aside from the challenge of inviting groups into the chaotic, yet potent world of emotional exploration (which is always an element of conflict), whenever a portion of my work is done on the side—in contrast with working the dynamic in the presence of the entire group—there arises a question about what, if anything, that gets disclosed in the examination is appropriate to share with the rest of the group.

Coming from the perspective of professional counseling and/or HR concerns, there is often a strong urge to shut it down, promising protagonists that nothing shared in the process of working through the conflict will be revealed to others. While well intended, I think, in the context of community, this is a big mistake.

Better, I believe, is that the group offer support to members working through conflict with the understanding from the outset that a summary of what comes out in the exploration will be shared with the rest of the group. Mind you, a summary—not a court transcript or a Zoom recording.

Here's how I think it should be set up. Someone should be assigned to drafting a neutral summary ahead of time (so that they are doing the work of gathering the needed information from the get-go), and after it has been drafted it should then be reviewed by the protagonists for acceptability before it's disseminated to the group. I think it's fine that this information not be shared outside the community except with the express permission of the people involved.

To be clear, a good summary will include mention of people's emotional responses—that's part of the story. However, I know from experience (having personally crafted any number of these summaries) that you can adequately defang outbursts, such that you're accurately reporting the reactions, yet leaving out any name-calling or incendiary statements. This is not about voyeurism; it's about getting an overall sense of the full picture. Neglecting to mention that people are hopping mad (when in fact they are) doesn't help anyone understand what's truly happening.

Why do this? For a number of reasons:

• It's quite rare that no one in the group is aware of the tension being worked on, and in the absence of first-hand information about what's happening, people will speculate or make up stories to fill the void. A century ago, Mark Twain sagely observed, "A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." Better, I think, is supplying the truth with slip-on footwear with good traction.

• Trust and good relationships are the lifeblood of community. Anything that impedes the flow of accurate information, however well-intentioned, degrades trust.

• One of the ways that bullies control the narrative and undercut attempts to hold them accountable for unacceptable behavior, is by isolating people and thereby dominating the story about what happened between themselves and others. It's their word against yours, and they'll make you pay for speaking out against them. (if you question whether people could really get away with such outrageous behavior, you need look no further than the popularity Donald Trump has enjoyed through outright lying, and attacking anyone who dares stand up to him.) It's much harder for this approach to be successful when everyone is current on what's going down.

• It's not unusual for the parties involved in the conflict to make agreements about doing things differently going forward, and these commitments tend to carry more gravitas when posted publicly (I'm not talking about printing minutes in the local newspaper; I'm talking about sharing summaries on the members-only community listserv).

• Agreements made in the dynamic moment may be abundantly clear, yet that clarity is susceptible to serious erosion if not captured in writing. People's memories tend to diverge over time and hard-earned agreements have a way of slipping away if you're not diligent and capturing them in the moment.

• There can be confusion about what the Conflict Support Team is doing if they never report on their activities. How can the community reasonably evaluate the performance of a team that operates in secrecy?

• When members work through tensions and reestablish repaired relationship, that's a success. Rather than worry about everyone knowing details about how you may have messed up, think of the benefit of everyone knowing how you owned up to deleterious impact, and labored to put things right.

• There is a marked tendency for people to behave better when they know that everyone is watching, or will be told how they behaved in a session set up to work through conflict.

A community is not just a random group of strangers—it's an aggregation of people who have explicitly agreed to create a cooperative culture based on a known vision and common values. They have committed to healthy relationships with one another, and cleaning up missteps as they occur. As a result, there is a different standard of compassion, accountability, and engagement and I am basing my recommendations on what will best serve those goals. Burying dirt under the carpet will not get the job done. It only leads to lumpy floors, and poor footing going forward.

All of that said, you cannot expect group members to be of one mind about this without a conversation about its implications. That means you have to talk about how you want handle this at the time you establish the Conflict Support Team, and before you need to apply it to a specific situation—when the discussion will tend to be seen through the lens of how to manage a particular person, rather than what's best as a standard for everyone.

The Exception that Proves the Rule

One more point. Although I support a baseline understanding that nothing gets disseminated about what occurred in a conflict clearing without the people involved in the conflict signing off on the summary, there is a circumstance where I think protagonists should not be permitted to block the sharing of discovered information—when the facilitators learn that something happened (or is reasonably likely to have happened) that puts the community at serious risk. 

I'm thinking about major financial exposure, illegal activity, compromised member safety, a direct violation of a member agreement… those kinds of things. While such occurrences are rare (thankfully), they are not unknown, and there needs to be a clear path whereby the community is promptly informed about what has been learned, so that it can complete any investigation of events and determine the best course forward. 

Note that if this occurs, the follow-up should be managed by a different configuration of people—not by the Conflict Support Team, as it's outside their mandate.

My Senior Moments

This year I've had the opportunity to be part of a team of instructors delivering a five-week webinar (10 hours in total) entitled Aging Gracefully in Community, being produced through the Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC). The second incarnation of this webinar will happen over five consecutive Wednesdays. It started Oct 26 and will run through Nov 23.

I'm teaching the first and third classes, and preparing for them has provided me the occasion to reflect on where I'm at with my life as a senior—something I strongly advise other seniors to do. I also crossed the threshold of my 73 birthday this past week, which is as good a time as any to step back and take stock.

I stepped down as the main administrator of FIC at the end of 2015, retiring from one of my two careers after a 28-year run. As it happened, I discovered immediately afterwards that I had multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, which knocked me back for a time. After spending the bulk of 2016 in treatment (I benefited greatly from excellent care at a local hospital, and from a stem cell transplant at Mayo Clinic), I have been able to manage the cancer and recover sufficient strength and stamina to resume my other career—the one I haven't retired from—teaching and consulting about cooperative group dynamics.

This ongoing passion is something I've been doing since 1987, specializing in working with intentional communities and working with the whole person (not just the rational part). When I got a second chance on how my senior years might play out (I was pretty far down the well when the cancer was discovered in early '16 and might not have made it back), that served as a wake-up call. Colors were a little brighter, and there is nothing quite like near-death to sharpen the concentration and appreciate the preciousness of what you have. It's an opportunity to strip away the drek and prioritize the joy.

Well, continuing my career in group process was an easy call (so long as I retain solid cognitive skills, knock on wood), as that definitely brings me joy, It's my main venue for social change work, and it's simultaneous my main impetus for personal work. A hard to beat combo.

That said, my relationship to this work has evolved, and never more so than in the last three years. Let me count the ways:

(Actually everything evolves, though we are not always paying attention, or willing to reconsider things in light of new information. I have a good friend who once shared the insight, Don't you sometimes just long for the unexamined life? Hah! Personal work can be grueling! And it's sobering to absorb that it never ends—you never actually reach the top of the mountain.)

• Marked increase in divisiveness and the breakdown of cicil discourse—not just at the macro political level; I'm talking about the dynamics in communities as well.

• Social impact of the pandemic and the strain on cooperative groups as people weathered a long stretch of limiting how much they saw one another in the same room. (This has been especially hard on extroverts.)

• Discovering that Zoom can be an effective delivery tool for teaching and consulting. Not the same as working in-person, to be sure, yet more.nuanced and potent than I suspected at the outset.

• Increased opportunities to teach.

• Balancing immediate needs with strategic planning (it's hard to complete long rang projects when I manage opportunities on the LIFO inventory system).

Here's how all of this had impacted the various segments of of my work:

—Blog and articles

While I've spent markedly less time writing for public consumption the last three years, it's not because I've run out of things to say. It's because I've run out of time to write them, in deference to crafting handouts, client reports, slide shows for Zoom trainings, agendas, professional evaluations, and treading water with email (which includes a sharp up tick in student correspondence). Some of this is remunerative. Most of it is not. In any event, I'm not writing less; I'm writing differently. (Although my blog postings have been way down, I still managed to get four articles posted in Communities magazine this past year.)

—Teaching

Not counting conference workshops (I've done more than 100 in my career) I've been actively teaching since I pioneered my signature two-year facilitation training in 2003 (see below). That said, the pandemic gave a rocket boost to online offerings, and I'm along for the ride. Since 2019 I've tripled how much time I spend teaching. Fortunately, I love it, and it aligns well with my desire to be an agent for positive social change. Unfortunately, it means there's less time for everything else. (I'm even teaching an 8-part series, Learning to Play Bridge, through a local community ed program, and I love that, too!)

—Writing books about group dynamics

This is getting the short end of the stick. I don't prioritizing it, because it's anguishing for me to turn down client requests to protect time for books. My motivation is further undercut by the knowledge that pretty much everything I want to say in a book has already been captured in my blog—it just isn't organized as well as a book would be. Though I haven't given up, I'm definitely noticing that I'm not getting to the work.

—Integrative Facilitation Training (IFT)

I started this course 19 years ago and have now delivered it 16 times. It's the most fun thing I do on a regular basis. The teaching emphasizes an experiential model, where two-thirds of each weekend is devoted to students preparing for, delivering, and debriefing live meetings for a host group, who provides real issues for the students to cut their teeth on, under professional guidance. Students get practice facing live ammunition, and host groups get free outside help with sticky issues—everyone benefits.

I've noticed recently that it's becoming harder to reconcile the active needs of the host with the pedagogical needs of the course. It happens like this: hosts, understandably, want to get maximal benefit from outside help and typically select difficult topics—things where they have struggled on their own. While that is useful training for the students (coping with the nontrivial), topics that are freighted with tensions (often the most troublesome kind) require dealing with the tensions first, before moving on to problem solving, and often it's hard to effect the relationship repair and get deeper into the topic in the time allotted. Thus, students get a fair amount of practice working with tensions (good) but not so much with problem solving (which is a problem).

Most groups are poor at working through tensions, understanding how to productively work issues, or how to use plenary time effectively—all which are things I know how to do and try to emphasize when I teach. In an effort to have the group work where it needs the most help (for example, learning how to use plenary time well) the students don't get as much practice using formats that enhance inclusivity (but come at a cost of slowing things down). It's a dilemma when host needs doesn't align well with what the students need. So this is on my mind right now.

The Next Round of IFT

Incidentally, if you're interested in my thinking about cooperative group dynamics, there is no single better way to absorb (in both your head and your body) the breadth of what I and my fellow trainers have come to understand about this field than by enrolling in one of my two-year trainings, where you'll get to be in a special learning milieu for eight 3-day weekends, spaced approximately three months apart.

While the surface focus of the training is how to understand and make good decisions (as the facilitator) when responding to the complexities and complications of plenaries trying to make inclusive decisions, the utility of the training is much broader than that. 

• The context of the IFT course is understanding the secular dynamics of community, and we are committed to doing that both by discussing and analyzing community, and be being a community for the two years we are together. That means we speak from our hearts as well as our heads; we speak transparently and we speak with compassion. When stuff comes up in class—we talk about it. We teach the moment as much as the curriculum. We strive for a level of engagement and authenticity that is rarely found in this vale of tears.

• We expect everyone to be doing personal work in relationship to the materials. Good facilitation is not just learning formulaic responses, or memorizing scripts. While we offer templates, we don't teach paint-by-number facilitation; we teach heart-centered facilitation where practitioners learn to integrate thoughts and feelings, and to identify and trust their instincts.

• It turns out that facilitation training is also leadership training, as the overlap in skills and mind set are nearly identical. Thus, students can benefit from the training even if they never facilitate meetings, because it will help them fill leadership roles—in community, at work, or even in their family—with confidence and clarity. It also helps students be better followers, and better meeting participants (because they have a better sense of what the facilitator is trying to do).

Note: While I expect to continue training facilitators for as long as I can, there's no telling how much sand I still have in the upper half of my hourglass, so you might want to sign up sooner than later if you think IFT might be a good fit for you. My next training, which will be Zoom-based, will start Jan 12 and there's still room for more as of today. If this tickles your fancy, send me an email (laird@ic.org) and I'll give you the full picture.

• • •

I get it that seniors use their latter years in a wide variety of ways, and I respect that this is a very personal choice. It's not for me to tell others what to do. Nonetheless, for what it's worth, I am offering this overview of how I'm spending a significant portion of mine.

Note I have not written about the other major components of my life: time with my partner, Susan; staying connected with family and friends; indulging in my recreational pastimes of celebration cooking, duplicate bridge, solving the daily NYT crosswords, and travel (tonight I fly to Anchorage for two weeks with a community on the Kenai Peninsula—a place I've never been to before—marking the first time I will have traveled to work with a client in person in 31 months). 

While the pace of my life has changed considerably (remember, I'm half retired), I see no reason to ship my oars and drift off into the sunset. I believe in an engaged life, and that generally means sailing close to the wind. The challenge is how best to do that as conditions around me shift, as well as my capacity and physical limitations. With all these parts in motion, there is a constant need to reassess and make adjustments. It goes with the territory. For all of that, however, there is no question about whether or not to try. I still get up every morning wondering how I can get best into what the late John Lewis characterized as "good trouble."

Resilient Today

Today I want to focus on resilience. In particular, I want to share what the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) is doing to help all of us be more resilient in these uncertain times. But first I'm going to tell a story.

When I moved to northeast Missouri with three friends and started Sandhill Farm in 1974, we were a group of 20-somethings with no experience in farming or rural living. When we announced to neighbors that we were committed to growing food organically, they were amused. As far as they were concerned we may as well have been from Mars.

Forty years later, the neighbors aren't laughing. Sandhill Farm is still there and still farming organically. If anything, the topsoil depth and natural fertility of our small farm has gradually increased over the years of our stewardship. While we hold about 75 acres of cleared land all together, we've steadfastly refused to till more than 15-20 acres—the patches that are flat enough. The rest is too steep and has been planted to grass, which keeps the dirt where it is instead of washing downstream in rainstorms, gradually increasing the size of the Mississippi Delta.

Traditionally, farmers in our part of America's breadbasket would go through a three-year rotation of corn, soybeans, wheat, and red clover. This cuts down on the need for artificial fertilizers, manages weeds better, and makes it harder for insects to establish dangerous populations to assault specific crops. But that cycle didn't produce enough income to handle the debt load incurred by purchasing land and large equipment. In consequence, crop rotations today have collapsed to two years: corn followed by soybeans, and then back to corn. Over time, following that program leads to a drop in fertility and the need for ever-increasing inputs (fertilizer, herbicides, and insecticides) to maintain yields. It's a vicious cycle, which invariably leads to a marked decreased in resilience.

By farming organically and relying on traditional crop rotations, our bill for soil amendments has been much lower than our neighbors, and isn't spiraling up as fast (while the price for anhydrous ammonia goes up like gasoline, when you put manure on your fields you're just paying shit). Also, we rely on open-pollinated seed, which we save from year to year. Our neighbors depend on high-yielding hybrids that are not only expensive but must be purchased new every year.

By farming only on a modest scale, we don't need expensive equipment. Our first tractor—an Allis Chalmers WC, built in 1939—was purchased at auction for one bid above scrap: $210. And it still runs today. We also have our own combine. It's a pull-type Allis Chalmers All-crop, built in 1952. We bartered 7.5 hours of labor for it when the owner decided it was taking up too much valuable space in his machine shed.

While our crop yields were significantly lower than our neighbors, the disparity in net income was softened by our being able to command premium prices for organic food. (In 1974 you'd never see an organic or natural food section in a grocery store; today it's hard to find a modern grocery without one.) 

Not stopping there we took advantage of our access to labor (both in terms of able-bodied adult members and the interns we'd attract during the growing season) to figure out ways to sell value-added products instead of raw goods. Thus, instead of marketing soybeans, we'd turn our soybeans into tempeh and sold that. While we grew horseradish root, we only sold prepared horseradish. With that strategy we needed fewer acres to produce the same income. By buying less land we've enjoyed a lower debt load. In fact, Sandhill has no debt. And none of our neighbors think we're from Mars.

• • •

I told you the story of Sandhill's adventures in resiliency because I think it parallels the work being done by the Fellowship for Intentional Community. Over the course of 30 years FIC has had two main missions. The narrow one has been to be the most up-to-date and comprehensive clearinghouse of information about intentional communities, focusing mainly on the US and Canada. Its second, broader mission has been to promote cooperative culture in a world drunk on competition.

Just as Sandhill was ahead of its time in blowing the horn for organic farming and resilient agriculture, FIC has been ahead of the curve in identifying and promoting the lessons of intentional communities as models of social sustainability. For both entities, what came across as exotic and other worldly in their early years has proven to be prescient and apt as the rest of the world has caught up with the near-desperate need to get off the acquisitive hamster wheel of materialism.

Where Are We (and What Are We Doing in This Handcart)?
The emerging threat today is climate change and the global disruption of "normal" life. The melting of polar ice caps threatens coastal inundation. Places that used to have predictable rainfall now experience years of drought followed by massive flooding. Fruit trees are blooming in February instead of May, and there is unprecedented worry about adequate access to safe water.

Terrorist attacks have come in waves of numbing frequency—from a berserker truck driver on a rampage in the German Christmas market, to a solo fanatic driving down pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge in London; from the renowned hijackers of 9/11 who took down the World Trade Centers, to suicide bombers who are sheathed in explosives for the express purpose of detonating themselves in crowds—extremists are exhorting followers to perpetrate brutal acts of violence, without regard to human life, including their own. It is the triumph of nihilism.
On the political front, in the US there is almost a complete breakdown of civil discourse. There is no longer conversation and thoughtful dialog; there is only polemics and near-constant vilification of "other." Though there is only one Earth, if you listen to the nightly news you'd never know there was any awareness of our being on it together, with only a single future that we must share. All you hear today is breast beating for partisan agendas, and no willingness to recognize that others may hold pieces of the truth, just as well as we.

• • •

Over the decades that FIC has been on the scene (since 1987), there has been a progression of "in" terms: from organic to sustainable to local to today's sweetheart: resilient. While the wrapping is new, the core message is not. We still need to figure out how to get along with each other. For all the reasons touched on in the preceding paragraphs that need has never been more urgent than it is today.

Intentional communities are important—but not because it is the lifestyle wave of the future. In Israel there was a time when as much as four percent of the population lived on kibbutzim; it would shock me if the percentage of the US population living in some form of self-identified intentional community ever got within sniffing distance of one percent. Today, for example, there about 100,000 in the US who are living in community. That number would have to expand by more than 30 times to reach one percent.

The importance of intentional communities is the pioneering work that they're undertaking in the crucible of group living. They are doing the heavy lifting to figure out what it takes to live cooperatively; how to share resources equitably; how to solve problems such that everyone's interests have been taken into account without settling for the winners and loser dynamics of majority rule. There has to be a better way, and intentional communities are in the forefront of the experiments that will light the path.

It boils down to figuring out a different way to be in the world; to harnessing the synergy of groups in order to create a better life for all, instead of competing as individual households and nations for limited resources. This is not about homogenization and one size fits all; it's about creating and maintaining quality while at the same time respecting and honoring differences and learning to live graciously while putting resource consumption on a diet.

If this resonates with you, read on.

FIC in Action Today
As someone who worked in the eye of the hurricane for 28 years (I stepped down from a leadership role with FIC at the end of 2015) I can tell you that the Fellowship never lacked for creative ideas about how to use funds. There have always been initiatives to better get the word out; experiments to conduct, evaluate, and chronicle; and collaborations to attempt. We don't just talk about hope. We test it.

For information about FIC's latest effort click here. They are trying to raise $8000 in order to fund four initiatives aimed at exploring the intersection of community and climate change: two books, a national speaking tour, and the latest issue of Communities magazine (released earlier this month). While they have raised more than half of their target (over $4800) there is only one week left until the perks being offering as incentives will be withdrawn. 

Now is the time to act! I'm asking readers and subscribers to consider donating (remember, it's tax deductible), and to ask your friends and acquaintances to do the same.
 
As a special incentive, for every $100 you donate to this campaign (for which you'll also get the satisfaction of having your oar in the water, pulling for a good cause) I will make a matching offer of 30 minutes of my time that can be used for any of the following:
—consulting about intentional communities 
—advising about cooperative group dynamics
—editing proposals or reports

This offer is good only through the end of the month (it expires at midnight March 31) and is in addition to any perks you claim from the FIC site. So long as you make your pledge or donation before April 1, you'll have one year to redeem the offer of my services.
 
Together, we are making a difference.

How I Place Myself as a Professional Facilitator

The other morning I lay in bed wondering how I'd describe myself as a process professional. In what ways am I distinctive? Here's my answer.

I. My Strengths as a Professional
There are aspects of what I bring to the table where I believe I stand out, independent of what I know about group dynamics.

—Reports
Excepting where I'm giving a workshop or an a la carte training (in which case there will be handouts), I commit to delivering a written report within two weeks. While the report basically recapitulates what happened live and what I said when I was in the room, I discovered early in my career that clients typically absorb only about 20% of what happens, so the written report gives them a second bite of the apple that they can refer to in their leisure. I have high standards for my reports.

—Founder
Some small, but significant portion of the time there are tensions in the client group that relate to a key player feeling isolated or misunderstood as a founder of the group. It is unquestionably a special thing being a founder, and it helps me bridge to those folks that I also have been a founder—of an intentional community, of a national profit, of a community business, of a consulting career.

—Large RAM
For reasons that are unknown to me, I can hold an unusually large number of balls in the air without dropping them. This is an enormously useful skill: taking in a large volume of information and being able to call upon it at will.

—Fast Thinker
There is considerable range in how quickly people process information and are able to separate signal from noise. While I'm not a prodigy, I operate at the quick end of that spectrum, which means I'm at the head of the pack when it comes to figuring out where we are and where we want to go.

—Parent
Some of the group issues I'm asked to facilitate involve parenting. On those occasions it helps tremendously that I have raised two kids in community—not because there is one right way to do it, but because I have personal familiarity with the range of what to expect (and non-parents seldom have street cred with parents).

—Cancer Survivor
This is a new label for me, and I'm not sure yet how it will play out. But if I've learned anything about group dynamics, all experiences come into play at one point or another. I've been a survivor for only a year, yet there have been moments in the past when I was working with individuals who were approaching mortality and it was a challenge to bridge to what they were going through. Now I'm better equipped. ("Did you almost die? So did I.")

II. My Flavor as a Professional  
There are a number of ways that I do things that are distinctive. In some circumstances they are an advantage… other times not so much.

—Compensation
As someone who has lived most of his adult life in an income-sharing community, I've never needed a lot of income in order to make ends meet. That's given me flexibility when it comes to what I charge for my time, which I use to bridge between my services being accessible to clients (affordable) and my work being aligned with my values (if I'm not being asked to build a more cooperative world I'm not interested in the work). On the one hand, I do not want money to stand in the way of helping groups in need; on the other I want this skill to be taken seriously and compensated fairly—both for myself and for the profession.

Over the course of 30 years in the field I've gradually worked myself up the ladder to where I rate my services as worth $1500/day, plus expenses (travel, room, and board). While this may be a bargain in the corporate context, my clients are almost wholly in the nonprofit sector and that's high enough. (If you think that's pricey, consider what lawyers and architects charge: my skill set is far rarer and my work is typically more pivotal to a community's success.)

While I don't offer discounts up front, and I insist that clients discuss among themselves what they can afford and the value of my work (a conversation I don't need to be part of), I tell them I will accept without question whatever amount of money they put on the table—so long as my expenses are covered (my inviolable line is that I never lose money working for others). Sometimes I get full boat; sometimes I work pro bono. On average though, I come out fine.

This is handled differently by some of my peers. Some simply suppress their prices as a nod to affordability (I have a dear friend who refers to this strategy as the pride of poverty movement, where social change workers compete to see who can work for the least). Others embrace the gift economy where no prices are set and groups pay what they think right.

I've come to prefer my approach for four reasons:
a) I've seen how much clients anguish over price; not giving them a number to work from is hard on folks. They want to be fair, yet they don't want to be foolish. If I give them no frame of reference it can be highly uncomfortable.

b) I am a market maker in the arcane field of cooperative group process consulting and I think strategically about those who will follow me. This is a field that barely existed when I first hung out a shingle in 1987. Though my income-sharing lifestyle means I don't need as much, there are plenty of good facilitators who live in single family urban dwellings and they need to make a living, too. By gradually doing what I can to raise the water level, all boats rise.

c) While I wish it weren't so, people pay more attention when they pay more money. And while money isn't much of a motivator for me, I purely hate it when clients don't pay attention. Thus, it helps to establish a healthy bench mark.

d) Since adopting this approach I've never had a client complain about price.

—Casualties
Sad though it is, not everyone likes me, or the way I work. I am very direct, and that can be more octane than some can handle. While I also try to be sensitive and compassionate, I am typically working complex dynamics under severe time constraints. As I do not get hired to play it safe (I get hired to be effective) it often means going into the lion's den. Inevitably, a certain fraction of the time (maybe 3%) what I attempt does not go well (perhaps I didn't have a full enough picture; perhaps my analysis was faulty, perhaps my technique was poor, perhaps the people I most needed to reach had their drawbridge up and there was no way to cross the moat). Most push back comes from people who are embedded in a stuck dynamic and are simply unwilling to have the light shined on their part. For them I am the disrespectful, outside agitator and there is no way I will ever be invited back—never mind that 97% thought what I attempted was brilliant, brave, or at least constructive. In my line of work if you don't hit a home run in your first couple at bats, you'll be on the trading block by morning. (Professional firefighting is not for the faint of heart or the thin-skinned.)

—Quality Control
Most groups have never seen anyone do what I can do and thus are hard pressed when it comes to evaluating whether it's a good value to lay out major resources (both time and money) to hire me. As I've come to appreciate that phenomenon, it has underlined the standard advice I give groups considering professional help: check references.

This field is so young and so thin that there are no standards for accreditation, and I have been so busy doing the work (and the rest of my life) that I have not gotten around much to seeing my peers in action—so I want no part of passing judgment on others. I'd rather let the marketplace handle that. At the same time, I think this work is too important for amateur hour. So it puts me in a tricky position: I want groups to get assistance yet am concerned that more people are putting themselves forward as professionals than who know what they're doing.

(What I can do, upon request, is offer a list of my coaching tree, professional-grade students of mine whose quality of work I can vouch for.)

—Experiential
My approach is overwhelmingly based on what works in the trenches—in real meetings. That's in contrast with work that's grounded in exposure to the literature, or from absorbing instruction from others. In my case the exceptions are:

o  Arnie Mindell's Sitting in the Fire, which does a terrific job of laying out the non-rational aspects of group dynamics, and the concepts of rank and privilege.

o  Caroline Estes, a lifelong Quaker who taught me to understand consensus deeply.

o  Mildred Gordon, who taught me the potential of interweaving the emotional and the rational.

Otherwise my thinking and my practice have been distilled from hundreds and hundreds of meetings, including 200+ professional gigs over a span of three decades.

Taken all together, I have an enormous pattern library to draw on (to the point where it's hard to show me something I haven't seen before). Thus, when you hire me you get a library card.

—Auditory Learner
It happens that my primary intake channel is through my ears. While I've worked hard to be competent with both visuals and kinesthetics, my main medium of exchange matches well with the way meetings are conducted: by voice.

—Writer
I write a lot. It got to the point a few years ago (while I was still the FIC administrator) that I was authoring something heavy duty—an article, a report, a major proposal, or a blog entry—every day. Never mind the three hours I devote to treading water with email every time the sun comes up.

At this stage in my life I've generated:
   over 1000 blog posts
   over 50 articles in Communities magazine
   over 100 reports to clients

The vast majority of this output has been focused on one aspect or another of cooperative group dynamics. When people ask if I'm going to write a book, I tell them, "I've already written several. They just aren't organized yet."

As a writer, I strive to be concise, cohesive, comprehensive, and colloquial. I rely heavily on metaphors (and alliteration).

—Facilitation Teacher
As I've gotten older, and therefore closer to the end of my career, I've become increasingly focused on passing along what I've learned. In addition to writing (see above) I've became much more active as a teacher. 

In 2003 I launched a two-year intensive training program for people who want to learn high-end facilitation. I've now delivered this program in its entirety eight times with three other courses currently under way (in New England, the Pacific Northwest, and North Carolina). Since recovering from cancer, I've been working to assemble the materials for a masters course, which I hope to offer in the next year or two. 

To the extent possible, I prefer to teach from live dynamics (where the lessons emerge from the what's in the room rather than from a script or a lesson plan). For the two years I'm together with students, I offer myself as a mentor—both in class and out. After completing the course, if the student is interested in going further and shows sufficient talent, I offer to let them accompany me on jobs as an apprentice, offering both advanced guidance (1:1 time with the teacher) and valuable exposure as a wannabe professional. Though I didn't have that kind of help when I broke into the field (why would you hire someone you'd never heard of and who has no track record?) now I have a chance to turn it around. And paying it forward is good juju.

—Major Philosophical Positions 
Over the course of my career my thinking about group dynamics has continuously evolved (in fact, it still is). And, as you'd expect, my peers have a variety of styles, different aspects they emphasize, and unique ways they approach their work. Here is an enumeration of ways in which I believe I am distinctive as a professional facilitator, and ways in which hold a particular orientation to cooperative culture.

o  I emphasize working with the whole person. That means the emotional, intuitive, kinesthetic, and spiritual; not just the rational (which is overwhelmingly the only way that most secular groups function in North America—though I suspect this is more by default than the consequence of conscious choice).

o  A professional facilitator needs to be able to work with content as proficiently as with energy. Doing one well is not enough. I cut my meeting teeth in an income-sharing intentional community with no designated leader. As far as I'm concerned that's the toughest nut there is (by which I mean the dynamics there are the most complex and intertwined). It's my view that if you can function well in that setting you can do it anywhere.

o  I've come to the position that you cannot fully bloom as a facilitator without developing and trusting your intuition; your thinking is not enough. Facilitation is more an art than a craft.

o  There is a bewildering array of tools available these days to assist with meetings—with bright, shiny new ones being invented and touted all the time. While I think that robust experimentation with new tools is good, and it's fine to add to your toolkit anything that works well for you, I have two words of caution:

a) You don't need a large tool bag to be a great facilitator; you just need a basic set of tools (formats and the like) that you know when to employ and how to use well. The heavy lifting in facilitation does not come from clever structure; it comes from a deep understanding of where people are at, what they need, and how to reach them.

b)  Beware of practitioners who are in love with a single tool, for as sure as they love their hammer, everything will start looking like a nail and the world is far more diverse than that.

o  The bottom line for facilitation is consistently delivering meetings that people want to come to because problems are solved and relationships are built and strengthened. It shouldn't be just one or the other. When exciting things are consistently happening no one wants to miss the bus.

o  Many groups that are avowedly committed to cooperative principles have not digested the foundational lesson that individuals raised in Western culture have been deeply conditioned to be competitive and you cannot expect cooperative behavior out of those people (which is just about all of us) when they encounter disagreement and the stakes are high. Competitive behaviors can be unlearned (thank god) but that requires personal work to achieve and you are not going to like the results if well-intentioned people attempt to effect cooperative culture while opting out of the personal work. 

o  Facilitation is a lot like midwifery. The point in a group's life cycle where skilled facilitation is most crucial is when the group is in its infancy and still trying to make the transition to cooperative culture. Good facilitators are able to remind the group of its good intentions and redirect inadvertent slides back into the abyss of competitive squabbling. Without good facilitation young groups often founder, get discouraged, and lose heart. As groups become more mature and cooperative behaviors become more ingrained, the need for strong facilitation lessens. Over time the group will develop a strong gyroscope and self correct without facilitator intervention.

o  As a social change agent, when I contemplate how badly we need a viable alternative to competitive dynamics (is anyone inspired by the model Trump is offering?), I figure I can't train good facilitators fast enough—the need is that urgent. So that's mainly what I do (along with articulating the theory). I've retired from everything else (though I still do some for-hire facilitation, both because it keeps me on my toes and it helps recruit students), but I'll die with an intriguing idea for my next blog ready to be fleshed out.

o  Though living in intentional community will never be that popular a lifestyle choice (it's too radical), there is a broad-based hunger for a greater sense of community in one's life—by which I mean more connection, civility, safety, control of one's time, and security. Intentional communities are pioneers in developing cooperative culture and they are important to the wider culture because our society is on the cusp of desperately needing to know how to get along better with one another, and how to equitably share a diminishing supply of resources without sacrificing quality of life.

My Strengths in Group Dynamics
Here are the aspects of cooperative group dynamics where I have developed my strongest reputation; it's what I'm best known for.

—Conflict
I define this as the condition where there are at least two viewpoints and at least one person in non-trivial distress. Conflict naturally occurs when groups deal with real issues and people are paying attention; the question is not so much how frequently conflict occurs, but how constructively you work with it. Most groups are scared to death of conflict and have nothing in place for engaging with it. It's jungle ball and they just hope to survive it.

I've thought a lot about the dynamics of emotional distress and I've learned that I don't freeze or get overloaded circuits in the presence of distress in others. As a consequence I'm frequently hired to help groups work through a conflict, to set up group agreements for self-managing conflict, or to train their personnel in conflict skills. It's also a key component of my two-year facilitation training.

The object of the training is not so much to reduce the incidence of conflict as it is to help groups not freak out when one or more of their members freak out. If we can stop the chain reaction there will be much less collateral damage and we'll be able to address derailments more expeditiously.

Today, if a group finds itself in the midst of a raging five-alarm fire, I'm one of a short list of people who gets called to put the fire out. 

By way of framing, my approach to conflict is unique to me. While I have familiarity with NVC (Nonviolent Communication) and there is common ground between how I approach conflict and the teachings of Marshall Rosenberg, we developed our thinking independently and I have some nuances that I prefer.

There is also a more recent entrant in the field of conflict work: Restorative Circles, whose main articulator is Dominic Barter. I have been introduced to this approach by a professional and have experienced it as a participant three times. While I have peers who are quite drawn to it, I was not that impressed (what I saw was too slow to get to the point, the conversation was not that productively focused on the dynamics between antagonists, the facilitation was too passive, and major issues went untouched). That said, this is an evolving body of work and worth keeping an eye on.

—Interweaving Energy and Content
While many systems for working with groups do not incorporate conflict as part of the theory (for example, sociocracy) I believe there is a growing understanding among process professionals that groups must address conflict in order to offer a coherent system (that is, you can't just duck it or pretend that sound structure and practice will eliminate its occurrence). 

I have worked extensively on what happens in plenaries (meetings of the whole) and the boundary between conflict and regular group business. Under what circumstances should you suspend regular business to attend to conflict, and when (and how) do you return to regular business after you have paused to address conflict? I am not aware of anyone who has more comprehensive thinking about managing this edge with sensitivity and effectiveness.

—Courage
Years ago I had just arrived on site for work with a first-time client when a long-term group member approached me with a question: "I hear you're fearless. Is that right?" Because no one had ever asked me that before and I had never described myself that way, I paused. Then I smiled, looked her right in the eye, and replied, "That's right."

As someone who has been hired to put the fire out, I am not going to stand by while the building goes up. I will give it my best shot every time and I invariably approach work with the attitude that I can effectively cope with whatever comes along—even though that's patently not true. (Thus, there are embarrassing moments when I am the poster child for Alexander Pope's famous line "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.") 

While I may fail for jumbled thinking, or for poor technique; I will never fail for being faint of heart. 

—Secular Consensus
There was important work done in the '70s by the Philadelphia-based Movement for a New Society to adapt the 300-year-old meeting practices of the Religious Society of Friends (which Quakers styled a "sense of the meeting," and was a distinctive and integral feature of how they worshipped) to secular political actions groups—anti-nuclear protest groups in particular.

From that beachhead, consensus blossomed to become the most common way that cooperative groups attempt to make decisions. The intentional community that I helped form in 1974 (Sandhill Farm) blithely adopted consensus right at the start and never looked back. However, that did not mean we knew what we were doing, and there were all manner of growing pains encountered on the road to maturity.

By the time I tentatively ventured into the nascent field of cooperative group consulting in 1987, I had become something of an expert on secular consensus, and there has been a steady call for advice in that capacity right that continues to this day (next week I'll be conducting an introductory consensus training for a forming group in New England for the third time—bringing all their latest members up to speed).

To be sure, my experience in working with consensus has been limited to groups with 100 members or fewer, yet it remains my hands-down favorite choice for how smaller groups can make decisions and organize themselves. While I have ideas about how some version of representative consensus might work well for groups with more than 100 members, I haven't had much chance to test drive my thinking.

Though my advocacy for consensus is solid, it comes with a caveat: to get good results requires an understanding of the personal work needed to unlearn competitive conditioning, and a commitment to training. The skills needed to do consensus elegantly are eminently learnable, yet purposeful effort is required. Don't adopt consensus unless you're willing to put in the effort.

—Depth of Familiarity with the Topic
Finally, I want to reflect on a natural progression that people go through if they persist in applying time and thought to their field. Starting as a professional practitioner, I gradually started teaching how to be a practitioner, which led to my thinking about and articulating why we facilitators do things the way we do. 

Today I am an active theoretician about cooperative group dynamics, which makes me much more valuable than "just" a practitioner. This translates to my being able to accurately place a specific experience in the context of trends, quickly sorting breakthrough from novelty, and extracting the essence of a new thing. It also leads to "seeing around the curve," anticipating what's coming and whether that's a good thing or something to be alarmed about.

• • •

Thus, the danger of Trump is not so much that he's emotionally immature (though, to be fair, if he launches a nuclear attack in a fit of pique, it will render moot a lot more than this paragraph) or anti-progressive in his policies. The real danger is that those of us who know better will be sucked into the vortex of his divisive us/them politics. The danger is that we will start to see Trump and his gleeful de-constructors as less than human. If we succumb to that temptation, it will eviscerate cooperative culture and close out the possibility of a future where we learn to share equitably and are able to get off the materialistic merry-go-round. It is up to us who have done the work to develop the long view, to keep the candles lit in the dark.

I cannot see the future, but I'm far enough down the road to see the trends, and the broad steps we must take to keep alive the possibility of a future worth having. I know how to keep my eyes on the prize and not be deflected by the drama of Trump's everyday dysfunction.

How Quickly Could I Train a Facilitator?

I enjoyed a fabulous brunch yesterday at the Duluth Grill, a well-established local institution that features local, fresh, organic food—some of which is grown in raised beds in their parking lot! 

As the place was packed around noon (we were lucky to be seated in only 30 minutes) the wait afforded our party of four (Elph Morgan, Lorna Koestner, Susan, and me) just enough time to tour the parking lot and all the flora. It happens that Lorna has had a personal hand in the plethora of parking lot plantings and was able to tell us all about them. In addition to a variety of fall-thriving vegetables that are an easy fit with the cuisine (rhubarb, chives, and many varieties of lettuce and kale) there were ornamentals in bloom (cosmos, poppies, datura, mullein, and pansies) and fruiting exotics (black nightshade and white everbearing strawberries) that we could munch on.

When we got inside we found the menu was almost as distinctive as the raised beds. I had the Everything Skillet, Susan went with the Mairzy Doats Bowl, Lorna selected the Rabbit Marsala, and Elph opted for the Salmon Bowl. Yum! 

• • •

During breakfast Elph (an old friend from Ann Arbor) had a question for me. How quickly could I train someone to be a decent facilitator assuming they started with no familiarity with consensus. What an interesting question! He wasn't talking world class; just baseline competent.

I thought about it for a bit, and came up with this response: It all depends on the person's ability to be able to shift perspectives. If they stumble with this basic facilitation skill—the ability to step back from one's own viewpoint to see the same dynamic through the eyes of others (reference Trump, the classic one-trick pony who only sees the world through Donald's eyes)—then it would be a project. While I'm confident I could coach them up to develop that capacity (assuming they aspired to learn it), it would probably take months. 

On the other hand, if the person already had that capacity, I felt I could get them to decent in a single weekend.

Elph was lamenting that he was unable to find any programs to help people learn basic facilitation skills in a cooperative setting (think inclusive culture) in a short time. When I reflected on what I offer, I had to admit I don't have much in my portfolio to meet that need—even though I consider facilitation training a specialty. While I conduct a number of two-year trainings (I have three going concurrently) and I expressly welcome people into my classes from any background and with no prior experience, it nonetheless is a 24-month commitment, which is a fairly steep barrier.

I also conduct consensus trainings (and facilitation trainings) for communities, most of whom would be willing to have one or two outsiders join the party for a reasonable fee, but I haven't done anything to promote this possibility and it rarely happens.

Finally, I do a number of workshops at events each year, and it's common to offer something on facilitation once or twice. But those are just 90-miute introductions designed to inspire, not train. Training requires a sequence that is way beyond the scope of a one-session workshop: 
—Presentation of theory
—Demonstration of principles and skills
—Practice under supervision
—Flying solo

Over dinner last night I discussed with Susan my intention to follow up with Elph to see if we could put together a prototype facilitation training weekend for dummies, where the target audience is people who are interested in cooperative culture yet have no particular background in consensus or community living. I have a long train journey coming up next week (when I rumble from Los Angeles to Quebec by way of Vancouver BC) which should give me the perfect occasion to piece together a proposal.

If you, the reader, have interest in participating—or know someone who might be—please let me know and I'll make sure that you're informed about what bubbles up. Contact me directly at laird@ic.org.

Elph also asked me what I had available in writing about consensus facilitation. I told him (as I tell everyone) quite a lot, though it's scattered among my blog entries, Communities magazine articles, and client reports. Now that I've retired from administrative work for FIC and have my multiple myeloma under control, I'm laboring regularly on organizing my writing into books. Elph encouraged me to not dawdle and had this advice about what would be a useful presentation to him:
—Elucidation of principles
—Step-by-step guide to execution (think cookbook)
—Stories that breathe life into the above

As I'm still in the organizing phase (trying to figure out what I already have and what's missing), I admitted that I haven't yet given much thought to layout of the material. That said, Elph's sequencing appeals to me, so we'll see what develops. His request that I include stories has special resonance for me. I view stories as the oldest vehicle extant for transmitting information and the easiest way for people to retain lessons (there's a reason that traveling minstrels were so popular before the invention of movable type or the internet). 

Fortunately, after 30 years as a professional facilitator, I have lots of stories. All I have to do is pay attention.

Picking Up the Pen Again

After a hiatus of 16 months this week I have (finally) resumed work on authoring books. While this is a large task and won't end soon, it doesn't advance unless I do the work. Happily, I now have the time and motivation to set aside two half days a week (Tuesday and Friday mornings) to establish some momentum on this. And who knows, if it goes well enough I might throw more time at it. This last Tuesday was my first day back in the saddle.

I notice (with chagrin) that I have allowed all manner of things to get between me and this task since Jan 3, 2015—the last time I'd worked on his prior to Tuesday:

—divorce
—relocating (twice, no less: first to NC, then to MN)
—heavy workload (both as a process consultant and as FIC's main administrator)
—cancer
—preference for things I can easily complete (I have a marked tendency to favor tasks I can complete in one or two sittings; as a result, longer term projects tend to languish)

Cancer has helped me digest the uncertainty of how much time I have left in this veil of tears, and given me the impetus to shake things up a bit, pushing to the side the less important to concentrate on those things that might do the most good in the world. In essence, my writing will be an attempt to draw together what I've learned over the last 66 years—especially over the last 42, my time immersed in community.
Although I've become a steady writer, almost all of that has come in short pieces: articles, reports, and blog posts. Now it's time to draw them together by theme, fill in the blanks, and develop a uniform voice.

As I envision it, the work will flow in stages.

Step 1: Review what I have
Ironically, in order to produce a quality book, the very first thing I need to do is a ton of reading. Both of my work (see below) and of my contemporaries on the same subjects, to see what is is already out there.

With respect to reviewing my own work, I can't imagine how this would proceed without a computer, where it's all stored in one place and relatively easily accessed.

This necessitates rereading: 
—all 982 of my published blog entries (from December 2007 forward) 
—all my reports to groups that hired me as a process consultant (from 1987 forward)
—all my published articles (mainly for Communities magazine, for which I've contributed six or seven annually since FIC became the publisher in 1994)
—handouts for my facilitation training program (there are about 100)
—handouts for the dozen or so standard workshops that I offer

It's a gob.

To be sure, there is considerable overlap among these sources, some writing is more about whimsy and bemusement than trenchant insight, some I no longer believe, and some is irrelevant. So I anticipate that there will be an enormous amount of winnowing.

Step 2: Sort my extant writing into themes
When I first conceived of writing a book, it didn't take me long to figure out that I was really talking about a number (or possibly a series) of books. So I sat down and thought through what all the topics might be and came up with 17 different categories! 

It was important to have that framing done at the outset so that everything could be sorted and logged as I reviewed it. Now, as I read something, it either gets consciously (if lovingly) dumped, or placed in one or more of those 17 categories—all of which are potential books (if I live long enough and remain sufficiently motivated).

After the sorting, I'll review the raw material for each topic and contemplate whether there is enough there to warrant a book, proceeding only when my head and belly both say "yes!" (I'm confident that the book total will ultimately consolidate into a number far smaller than 17.)

Step 3: Develop each book individually
All those passing the previous hurdle will be worked from two ends: a) what have I already written (that I still believe is germane and true) and what are the holes; and b) if I started from scratch on this theme what do I think I have to say (I want to guard against missing some big picture, whole forest elements by focusing too much on individual trees).

It's possible, I think, that some of what makes it past Step 2 will stumble in Step 3 and get washed up on the shore. That is, once I get down to the nitty gritty of what I have to say, I may not be all that impressed, resulting in my pulling the plug on a particular theme.

Step 4: Bring in the red pencils
Once I'm satisfied with an overall outline, I'll pause and bring in editorial assistance to help me with conceptualization. I already have one or two friends and peers lined up who know me well, know my subjects well, and have editorial skill and experience. They are willing to help me assess what I have and what's missing.

Once we are agreed on what needs to happen it will be my job to fill in the blanks, craft bridging language, develop supporting graphics, etc.

There is a large creative opportunity lying in this segment of the work, where I need to make decisions about how to reach my audience. Effective writing is much more than cogent ideas well connected; it is also finding ways to make my ideas accessible and compelling to the reader. That means deciding who my audience is and how I think my work will be used.

While I'm sure I will rely on stories to supply vivid examples of the points I want to make, I have a choice between developing a fictional cooperative group that I can use repeatedly throughout the book, or actual live examples from my years in the field.

Step 5: Complete a draft and get it edited
This section could take a while unless I'm highly disciplined. My sense is that it will be important that I work steadily here to bridge the gaps, establish the connections from one point to the next, and flesh out the main ideas.

Following this stage will be another round of review, done at a finer level. First, copy editing, and then proofing, until everyone is smiling.

Step 6: Get the book laid out
Here I'll rely on friends and compatriots even more. While I will unquestionably have opinions about layout (as well as title and cover design—hell, I have opinions about everything), I will defer to others who are more skilled than I am in these arenas. Graphic design is not my forte.

Step 7: Identify a publisher
There are some interesting choices here and I am undecided at this point how best to proceed. Essentially there are three forks in the road: a) self-publish; b) ask FIC to publish; or c) seek an alternative press to publish. Although potential income is a factor, my biggest focus will be on the help I can expect in promoting the book. I don't particularly want to take the lead on that, yet I have a healthy respect for how much of a difference good promotion and marketing can make in a book's reach, and I want my books to be well distributed.

Further, I'll want enough editorial control that the publisher won't monkey with my main points. It's fine for them to ask questions and to push me about things they find unclear or disagreeable, but I don't want there to be any doubt about who's driving the boat.

How I Write

While quite a number of people dread writing and try to minimize expressing themselves in that medium (I'm sorry, texting and tweeting don't count, as they're more like composing shopping lists than the script for Schindler's List), among those of us who embrace it there is considerable variety in how we approach it. In the hopes that it may be instructive, today's essay will illuminate how I do it. 

First of all I want to make a confession: writing is not a skill that came to me naturally; I've taught myself to do it. Though that may be unexpected from a guy who has authored a regular column in Communities magazine for decades and has posted 900 blogs in less than eight years, in college I had a minor reputation for talking my way out of writing assignments. Literally. On a number of occasions I went to the professor and successfully argued that I make an oral presentation in lieu of submitting a paper. I still had to prepare, of course, and I still had to make cogent points, but I dreaded public speaking less than writing so I thought of this as a creative coup.

Slowly, over the course of the last 30 years, I've trained myself to be an effective writer. In fact, today I write something substantive almost every day (and I'm not counting my commuter rush of email traffic—not the least of which is my thrice daily intimate correspondence with my new partner, Susan, where the bulk of the investment in our burgeoning six-week-old relationship has been epistolary). "Substantive writing" could be a blog, a magazine article, a cogent summary of a complex topic, a comprehensive client report, or a nuanced proposal. If a day goes by where I don't have my writing oar in the water, then the next day I have to pull the boat twice.

In any event, here's how I approach my craft. I find it useful to think of writing having three distinct phases. Though the actual work may be accomplished in one sitting—depending on timing and inspiration—it's helpful to understand that each of the phases has a different mind set and that it's often productive to complete one phase before moving on to the next.

I. Outlining
This is the big picture. What do I have to say? Why is that compelling?

The first germ of what I'll write about can come from a number of angles:
—It could be philosophical (for example, many topics arise from my working with groups as a consultant and having an issue come up that I don't think I've treated thoroughly before). Thus, I might be writing about the theory of cooperative group dynamics, or articulating what I consider a best practice.

—It could be poignant (arising from a riveting personal experience: either something I witnessed or that involved me). These tend to be stories about how I learned a lesson, or how I'm struggling to make sense of one.

—It could be whimsical (telling a story of something entertaining or amusing; life is full of spontaneous oddities that are delightful to share). Though rare, there are occasions where I start with what I think is a terrific ending and then backfill all the rest to get there, like when I found myself coming home by train in mid-December and Mr and Mrs Claus walked through the dining car in full drag. When we got to my stop and I was the first one to get off there were 100 people with cameras and lights waiting to greet me in the sleepy town of La Plata MO—all hoping that I'd be Santa Claus.

Pretty much everything I write falls into one or more of a small number of categories:
o  Cooperative group dynamics
o  Community and sustainable living
o  Personal journey (major markers in my life and the learning associated them) o  Humor/entertainment

Next I try to sketch out the main points in a stream of consciousness—just banging down ideas and phrases as fast as they occur to me. (I can always excise ineffective thoughts and rehabilitate lame phrasing later). If the sequencing of ideas matters I often capture it in this initial rush.

It's not unusual at this stage for a topic to get richer and more complex once I delve into it, though sometimes the reverse obtains (where close examination reveals that I have nothing that interesting to say and my once-exciting concept is exposed as fool's gold).

II. Crafting
In the second pass, I try to flesh out the outline (put meat on the bones). This is typically done one paragraph at a time. Sometimes it's a slog (like house-to-house combat); sometimes it flows easily (like a float trip down the river of creative expression).

This is where the art of writing is most prominent. Each paragraph needs to meet strict personal standards for being to the point (laser focused), elegant (lean of words without being obscure or ambiguous), and grabby (with metaphors and images that are evocative and apropos).

Is there sufficient context? Is there a personal story, the telling of which helps place the reader in the narrative, or grounds the point (such as my encounter with Santa above)?

III Copy Editing
In the final phase I'm using an old toothbrush to clean the grout on the bathroom floor. Have I used some words too often (I don't count prepositions but you can't use "scintilla" or "maximal" more than once in an essay)?

Have I chosen the right words (sometimes the phrasing is not quite apt or the words don't convey the right flavor)? This is where I drill down on grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

I read the essay aloud to see if the meter is right. If I stumble somewhere, I rework the rough spots (like sanding wood).

This final phase is about polishing, craftsmanship, and technical skill, not so much artistic expression.

• • •

If all goes well, by the time I've weathered the gauntlet of all three phases I have a nugget worth publishing—and that goes down so easily that the reader hardly notices that serious effort was expended in its manufacture.