Dark Nights of the Cooperative Soul

Over the course of my 37 years of community living (and 24 years as a process consultant) there have been about half a dozen times where I've been embroiled in difficult dynamics with another person that have persisted for years, where together we have been unable to turn a corner in how we interact. It just never gets better.

As someone devoted to thinking about and assisting others in understanding and navigating challenging dynamics, this is humbling stuff. When everything I try fails, then what? I'm haunted by the spectre of my blind spots laughing at me. What am I missing?

One of the most delicious ironies about this dynamic is that I can often see how I would reach out to the other person in the moment of maximal estrangement, or how I would reach out to the distressed person that is myself, yet I am neatly disqualified from engineering either bridge-building operation. My antagonist typically is in no position to see my attempts to reach out as well intended, and any effort to guide others about how to hold me when I'm feeling isolated just comes across as self-serving. There is a Cassandra-like quality about this, where my demonstrable skill at working conflict is uniquely inaccessible when I'm a player in it.

Still, there is work for me to do. How do I step back far enough from the dynamic to get an accurate glimpse of how I'm feeding the fires of dissent—all the while lamenting how badly I'm being treated? Usually, I need to go through a period of venting. This typically works best alone (perhaps through journaling; perhaps through a long walk where I conduct a stream-of-consciousness monologue that no one else needs be subjected to) or with my long-suffering wife (who at this point understands that there are times when I just need to unload and am not looking for a response), whose sole (soul?) task is to hold me through the night.

These tend to be dark nights of soul, where I sit in misery and despair until I exhaust the fuel of the latest outrage and in the cold pre-dawn must still find my way to a constructive response. How to find courage that is uncontaminated by revenge or the tainted desire to be right?

I try to see my protagonist as simply someone in pain, doing their best to cope. I try to open my heart to a possibility that I dread: that I am actively contributing to the dysfunction; that I can make different choices and perhaps get different results. I need to consult more than my head and my heart; I need to consult with the heads and hearts of others. I need allies to be constructive. How can I ask for support without asking people to take sides?

I need to steer clear of the cesspool of assigning bad motivation and stick with identifying the actions that don't work for me. Along the way—and especially if the journey is long and arduous—I have the option to exit, to walk away. While I yearn for relief from the struggle and the sense of being vilified, where can I be assured that this will not happen? I have learned over long years that it's important to make such decisions only after my anger has cooled and I can exit at peace (or can be at peace with asking the other person to exit—I have done both).

Many years ago (before I got together with Ma'ikwe) I faced an important relationship choice where I was sorely tempted to find out what was possible with a new partner. I sat with the possibility for weeks before making up my mind that it was right for me to go ahead. It meant ending the intimate relationship I was in and the break-up was messy (which was not hard to foretell). As it turned out, the new relationship didn't gel and before long I was partnerless, which was not at all what I had in mind. However, I was nonetheless at peace because I had done enough personal work before breaking up with my existing partner.

The main fruit of my laboring over whether or not to pursue the new relationship was my realizing that I was not exchanging my existing relationship for a new one; I was exchanging my existing relationship for a chance at a new one. While I was sad that the seed didn't sprout, I at least knew going in that all I had been promised was a seed. Thus, whenever I contemplate exiting as a response to persistent challenging dynamics, I've learned that it is important to do so freely, and without placing any burden of expectations on others to justify my "sacrifice."

In short, I need to be truly at peace with moving on, or else it's a sure sign that my work is not yet done. I'm telling you, this personal growth stuff can be an absolute bitch.

Fear Strikes Out

Here's a quiz. What does the title of today's blog* have in common with Sandhill's Anniversary? (I'll give you a hint: Annie will find this an easy question—it's the same as what she'd say if you asked her to pick a number between 1 and 100.)

The answer is 37! (In five more years, of course, our anniversary will coincide with the answer to the universe and life, according to Douglas Adams… but I'm getting ahead of myself).)

The original four people who comprised Sandhill's modest beginning—Ann Shrader, Ed Pultz, Wendy Soderlund, and me—arrived on the land to start our life together on this day in 1974. Yesterday we celebrated Land Day (we always pick the Saturday nearest the actual date) with perfect spring weather and about 80 friends (arriving on 25 bikes and a dozen of cars) who joined us for a treasure hunt, maypole ritual, potluck dinner, contra dancing, and half a dozen rounds in a sweat lodge lasting into the night. It was interesting to observe that a majority of yesterday's celebrants were not yet born in 1974, much less interested in community living. What a journey!

I feel a bit like a grandfather oak, admiring all the acorns who came to the party (as well as the robust saplings of Dancing Rabbit, Red Earth, and the Possibility Alliance—members from all of which helped us eat and dance and laugh).

As a mathematician I like 37 because it's prime (just like my age, 61). For me, indivisible numbers are auspicious, and represent an opportunity to do something fresh and potent. Consider it "prime" time. When my age was 37, for example, my second child was born (Jo), I helped found the Fellowship for Intentional Community, I started a self-insurance fund for income-sharing communities, and began my career as a process consultant. It was a big year. I can hardly wait to see what my community cooks up at age 37.

* The title reference is to the name of an autobiography and a biopic movie based on the life of baseball player Jimmy Piersall. He played in the major leagues, mostly as a centerfielder, for 17 seasons. Though he came up with Boston, he did a three-year stint with the Cleveland Indians during the height of his career (1959-61)—a stretch that coincided precisely with the pinnacle of Annie's tomboy fascination with baseball. Jimmy was a star on those Indian teams and became her favorite player. He wore 37 on the back of his uniform and that became Annie's good luck number. While Annie's interest in baseball had long since waned by the time I met her in 1969, her lucky number has endured to this day.

Nailing Distress

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

This centuries-old proverb cautions about the potentially large consequences of the accumulated effects of small problems left unattended. There is a strong parallel here when working with active distress in groups. It goes like this:

For want of a bridge there is no traffic among the protagonists.
For want of traffic there is no collaborative problem solving.
For want of collaboration there is weak buy-in with agreements about what to do.
For want of buy-in the implementation is crippled.
For want of wholehearted implementation the problem is not solved.
And all for the want of a bridge.

Thus, whenever I'm working with distress—which is probably the single most common dynamic I'm asked to tackle as a process consultant—I've learned that there's little chance of substantive progress until and unless I've built bridge to each player and can successfully maintain it. As a starting place, it's imperative that I'm able to establish to each party's satisfaction that I've understood the gist of their experience and can represent this accurately as the conversation unfolds. That's the foundation for the bridge.

While this may not sound very profound, it's actually tricky.

o This doesn't work unless the person agrees that you've heard them accurately. It's rarely sufficient to just nod your head or assert, "I understand." Often, a person in fulminating distress feels isolated and misunderstood. To counteract this, it's usually necessary to offer a verbal summary that captures the essence of their story and to get their recognition that you did a creditable job. Remember: it's their story and you need to get it on their terms.

o There is an important distinction between content and affect, and you need to get both right. Batting .500 is great is you're a major league baseball player, but not good enough if your facilitating conflict. It's more than parroting the words or weaving together all the threads, you need to connect to the story viscerally.

When establishing affect, it's been my experience that it's often helpful to work with passion. Some facilitators attempt to be even-tempered all the time, in the mistaken belief that their calmness will keep people from being less triggered in a volatile situation. To the contrary, I've found that if you're accurate and even-handed that you can be fully demonstrative and it won't come across as provocative or taking sides.

Don't try to stay in the middle; try to stay connected to both ends (this is a very different strategy). Don't be attached to truth or outcomes; instead be guided by relationship and the need to keep all parties exchanging information that can serve as a salve (rather than as a salvo).

o When you ask conflicted parties for movement (that is, a commitment to an action step that is different than what they've already been doing) keep your eye on the bridge abutments to make sure they're still intact. You can lose an otherwise serviceable connection by making too large a request too soon.

o Sometimes, the way a person expresses distress can itself be triggering, and your first impulse may be to comment on their negative judgments or aggression, which you find offensive and out of line. While you have my sympathy, that rarely works. First build the bridge; then discuss their choice of expression.

Bridge building is an important facilitative skill at all times, yet you'll have to learn to be an engineer in adverse conditions if your going to facilitate conflict. Not everyone has the deftness or the moxie to attempt to quarry foundation blocks and set them in place when the winds pick up and there's furniture flying. Luckily though, there are some who willing to lean into the wind and perform in harm's way. They are the ones who are out there trying to nail distress.

The Morel of the Story

I got home just in time.

I arrived about 12:15 on Saturday and everyone (including this season's interns, Michael & Sofi) was eating lunch. After unloading my luggage and traveling paraphernalia, I said hello to everyone (I'd been on the road for over a month), had a glass of milk, and put on my boots. By 1:15 I was in the woods hunting for wild mushrooms. While about 25% of what I found were past peak, I found a number of prime specimens and my three-hour stroll netted a tad over three pounds of morels. Whew! I wasn't too late.

While there are occasional aberrations, in northeast Missouri morels pop up only in a fairly tight 10-day window starting in late April and drifting into the first week of May. Though I was arriving at the early end of when the season typically occurs, there is enough uncertainty about timing—due to the vagaries of moisture and temperature (fungi like it wet and warm)—that I was nervous. I hate missing the morels. [For more of my personal journey with morels see my blog of May 7, 2008, The Morel Imperative.]

At Sandhill Farm we do mushrooms two ways: a) we cultivate shiitakes on 42-inch sections of oak logs, stacked to form a serpentine picket fence under a shady maple grove; and b) we hunt morels during their ephemeral season of manifestation. As it happened, on Saturday we harvested both, and our fungal cup runneth over. While cultivating shiitakes is essentially about technique, teasing morels out of the woods is more of an art form. Think of them as the yin and the yang of mycological farming. Most of the work with shiitakes is in the set up; most of the work with morels is in the walking and developing the magic eye needed to discern the little darlings as they peek out of the leaf mold or from underneath a mayapple canopy. While you can find one boldly out in the open from time to time, most fruits are shy, requiring a technique where you peruse the same ground from different angles when you're in suitable habitat.

While there are patterns to look for (medium to full-sized silver maples are indicator trees), there is no guarantee where they'll appear. Spots can produce steadily for years and then inexplicably go dry; certain stretches can be a bonanza one year and then never again. Every so often you'll encounter a singular morel in a location you've never found one in before and with no apparent second fruit within 100 feet. Mostly though, if you find one mushroom you're as likely to find ten. The mycelium propagates underground (following some mysterious biological impulse) and it's highly likely that if conditions are right for one fruit that the same rootstock will produce more nearby. Thus, whenever I encounter one morel, I slow down to one-quarter speed to look more carefully for buddies. They're almost always out there, if you can just tease them out.

My triumph of this season was walking through a patch of woods where I'd had some consistent luck in the past, yet was reporting no joy on this occasion. I was almost through and about to give up when I noticed that the downed tree I was about to step over (as I attempted to effect my exit from the copse) was a maple. Walking back to the base on instinct, I discovered a flush of morels ringing the edge of the root ball disturbance. Jackpot! Noticing two additional modest maples veering in a direction I hadn't walked (how had I missed those moments before?), I followed the trail. With one morel in sight of the next, I collected about 40 mushrooms before the vein petered out. It's humbling to reflect on how close I was to walking right by and missing the whole mess.

Today is my day in the kitchen, where I'll get the opportunity to make pasta (from eggs laid by our chickens and from flour ground this afternoon from our wheat), flavored with a sauce made by cooking down my precious morels in butter and olive oil, seasoned with onions, garlic, sage, and homemade black currant wine. Don't you wish you could come to dinner?

In Service

While I've always meant for service and community to go together, sometimes they're at odds. Sometimes attending to service keeps me away from my community home.

One of the reasons I live in intentional community is that it offers an excellent platform from which to be of service. With shared living, it's possible for some members to take their hands off the wheel (of driving things at home) for stretches of time because there are other members to take their place. Then, when you come back to focusing at home, others can get a break.

Sometimes this means traveling to do things elsewhere; sometimes it means redirecting your attention without even missing a meal at home. Either way, it's uniquely possible in community to free people up for concentrated periods of time, to be of service to needs other than those on the home front. This is an important quality-of-life feature that is precious to me about community living.

This topic is up for me right now because I've paused on my way home from 29 days on the road to honor a last-minute request from a friend to help her prepare for a move. I checked with home (both my community and my wife—which requests are not processed identically) and got the green light to stretch my road trip by an additional three days, spent mostly moving boxes to and from a storage locker and a community donation site.

I'm thankful that I have room in my life to by there for friends in need. Thankful that I don't have 9-5 M-F employment, and therefore the flexibility to shoehorn this detour into an otherwise fully subscribed life. It's good to take a moment to realize that while it's my arms moving the boxes, it's backed up by many arms at home making my good Samaritan act possible.

The friend I was helping does not live in community, though she has in the past and clearly misses the relationships and support that are at the heart of it. Part of my time with her was listening to her talk about:
—Her struggle to fit together the disparate pieces of her life.
—The choices she faces in how to make a living as someone north of 60.
—The calculus she's using in trying to determine where to live.
—Her everyday experiences and observations—something that she doesn't dependably have the chance to share with others.

To be sure, she was looking for a stevedore, yet the listening may have ultimately counted for more. I'd listen and reflect back what I'd heard and what made sense based on our two+ decades of knowing each other. It's what friends do.

And I appreciate that my friend gave the the chance to be there for her these past 72 hours. It's a gift to be needed.

The Pause That Refreshes

—Manchmal eine Pause

That's what Coca-cola came up with to export their long standing catch phrase, "the pause that refreshes" into Germany. It literally translates into "sometimes a pause" and is what I want to explore today—when, sometimes, it's a good idea to pause when laboring with a tough issue, rather than keeping your foot mashed on the gas. I got this wrong recently, and I want to share my cautionary tale.

One of the most common complaints about consensus is that it takes too much time. As a group process consultant and professional facilitator, I specialize in up-tempo productive meetings. I've learned a great deal over the years about why groups flounder and what they can do about it. However, occasionally I get in trouble even when I appears everything went fine. Sometimes, I don't pause in the presence of a yellow light.

Recently I facilitated an all-day set of meetings for a group that was exploring a new business venture, and we uncovered a cornucopia of concerns on our way establishing solid footing. In the course of the day we unpacked multifaceted issues, drilled down to root values on the trickiest ones, and then handed off to various committees the assignment of drafting specific language or developing detailed responses that the whole group could review before formally adopting. There is a definite art to knowing how much work to attempt in plenary and when it's more efficient to hand over the wordsmithing and fine-tuning to a team—if you delegate too soon, there's not a firm foundation and the work that comes back is at risk of being overhauled; if you delegate too late, you've squandered plenary time while committees languish. All and all, I felt good about the work we'd done to walk that line.

However, it was more complicated than that (you could make the case that it's always more complicated than that, but that's the subject for a future blog). In addition to the business issues themselves, the consideration was complicated by the presence of unresolved tensions that some community members had with one of the people who was willing to serve on the business management team. Even though he appeared to have the right skill set for the job, there were serious questions about how readily and thoroughly he shared information.

In the evening, when we took time to review the day's work, one member reported feeling we'd moved too quickly in approving the composition of the management group. She needed more progress on the unresolved tensions as a pre-condition for moving forward and hadn't been able to articulate that reservation earlier.

This was a tricky moment for the group. On the one hand, nobody wanted to ram anything down the throat of a questioning member. On the other, people were saddened by the prospect of watching the day's work unravel and losing the buoyant feelings of serious accomplishment that had accompanied it. What to do?

As it happened, the unresolved tensions had already surfaced in the day's conversation, but the would-be member of the management team declined to discuss the tensions in plenary. This was not an across-the-board "no" mind you; it was an I'm-not-willing-to-examine-those-tensions-in-this-setting "no." Having identified that this work was needed and could be done later, we chose to move on. While the person wanting that examination allowed us to continue under those conditions, ultimately she recanted in the evening.

It's instructive to take a moment to break down this dynamic, where we made a poor choice while everyone thought they were acting in the group's best interests:

—From the Perspective of the Group
The group mainly wanted to maintain forward momentum on a complex issue. We weren't ducking anything, yet neither were we insisting. We were on a roll, and people were liking the combination of engagement and accomplishment. It would have been highly awkward to have pulled the emergency cord and asked that the work be suspended until the tensions got addressed.

—From the Perspective of the Objector
The person with the reservations wasn't sure enough of her concerns to make that request. She was savvy enough to understand that there would be a cost to asking for a hiatus and she wasn't certain in the moment that she wanted to pay it.

Not everyone processes information and feelings at the same rate, and those differences can get accentuated by the presence of an experienced facilitator, where the pace picks up. It's not that people were being missed—knowing that the objecting woman was sitting on concerns (she was not passive) I was tracking her constantly to see whether she was on board with what we were doing. It was more subtle than that. She had been hesitant to ask that things slow down because she wasn't yet sure of her analysis. Being uncomfortable does not always translate into "go slow," and clarity about what underlay her discomfort didn't emerge sooner than the evening session.

—From the Prospective of the Management Candidate
The person who put themselves forward to serve on the management team was willing to discuss the uneasiness with their management style, yet had learned that doing so in plenary was a poor setting for them. It was too excruciating being in the hot seat. So this person asked for an alternative venue. He was taking care of himself and still being responsive. While it may be an open question whether any substantive progress will be made in a clearing session to be held later (prior attempts to mine this issue hadn't produced much gold), I don't have any problem with the request to handle critical feedback in a smaller group setting. You want people to have options.

—From the Prospective of the Facilitator (me)
While I'm reasonably satisfied with what I was tracking during the consideration of the business issues, it was also the case that I had been explicitly asked to demonstrate working on distress as an outside facilitator. While I offered to do so when the objector asked for that, I didn't see the potential trap when the management candidate deferred.

What I understand now is that the objector had little faith in the group's ability to work through the conflict (which had proven persistent and resistant to resolution) on their own and was pinning her hopes on what I could do as an outside gun. The timing of the group's work with me was such that it wasn't possible to schedule anything extra with me once we agreed to not work the tensions in plenary, so the choice to work the dynamic later necessarily meant proceeding without me and the objector had little faith in the outcome.

In retrospect, I went too fast when asking the group if it was willing to continue working the business issues while the tensions were on hold. In the dynamic moment, it was hard for anyone to think through the consequences and make the case for stopping without being at risk of escalating the tensions that we had just agreed to not examine. Talk about a pickle!

This was one of those cases where the subject (making delicate decisions about the business) was held hostage to the unresolved tensions, and in my desire to give the group as much product on a tough issue as possible, I drove past the caution flags.

Fortunately, the objector was brave enough to come back to the topic in the evening, as her concerns coalesced into a clearer objection, and the group agreed to place a one-month delay on the day's decisions, to give everyone time to digest the implications, and to give the objector and the candidate the opportunity to have that small-group conversation about their unresolved tensions.

Even though the pause came late, at least this time it didn't come too late.

When Unwelcome Behavior Meets Unwelcome Advice

I recently had an interesting correspondence with a couple members of a cooperative house. It started with the following email:

I'm trying to find help for my co-op in a difficult situation. Though we have been a cooperative since 1981, we have no agreements or group norms about how to handle situations where guests are behaving badly.

While guests are normally respectful and welcome, on two separate occasions one particular house member—a woman with a serious drinking problem—brought home a young man (different one each time), they drank until drunk, she left them in our common space to sleep, and the guys went into a different woman's room uninvited. In On the first occasion, the man drunkenly tried getting into the woman's bed until she screamed for him to leave, which he did. On the second occasion, the inebriated man opened a mother's door (with her kid sleeping not far away), took off his shirt, put her daughter's shirt on, and climbed into bed with the mother. She screamed and got him out of her room. On both occasions the host woman was passed out drunk.

One of the assaulted women asserted that she wanted to deal with this on her own by talking to the woman who hosted these two men, but unfortunately didn't get around to it. When one of the men came back for a subsequent visit, we confronted him and he denied everything to the point of accusing the mother of lying. On the basis of nothing having been proven about inappropriate behavior, the hosting woman wants to bring him back as a guest.

There are many new members in the house who don't have much experience in cooperative living and have never dealt with these issues before. I am looking for help.

We have sought mediation, but the host woman with the drinking problem never shows up to those meetings. I'd like to stay because the other members are really wonderful, yet I don't feel safe.

I responded as follows:

While I'm learning of this situation only through you, and I know there will be other sides to the story, here is my advice based on the assumption that you have given me an accurate picture of events. This sounds like an awful situation, which essentially boils down to a house member acting inappropriately and the house not dealing with it well.

There are several points to look at:

1. Do you have clear house agreements about members being responsible for the behavior of their guests? And if so, is being drunk, passing out in the common space, and entering people's rooms without permission unacceptable behavior? I'm assuming that's so, but I'm checking (the point being that it's hard to hold people to standards that have never been articulated). There is also an issue of safety here, which I imagine is something that the co-op means to value (whether you have words to that effect or not).

2. All groups, in my opinion, benefit from having an explicit commitment that all members need to offer all other members a channel by which they can offer critical feedback about people's behavior as a member of the group. In addition, I'd add that members be expected to make a good faith effort to work out conflicts in which they are named—even if they don't think there's a problem. It sounds to me that you don't have such agreements and now it's hard to approach the woman with a drinking problem who occasionally brings men with poor judgment home. If you did have such agreements, the hosting woman would be expected to show up at a mediation involving their behavior. Mind you, she wouldn't be compelled to agree with another person's story of what happened, or that she'd need to do something differently, but she would be expected to make a reasonable attempt to work things out. In some groups I know, failure to show up for such attempts could be considered grounds for expulsion—if the pattern is strong enough or the conditions are dire enough.

3. It's my view that even if the woman member with the drinking problem weren't bringing strangers home, there'd be a problem. While a house member's alcohol consumption may generally be a private matter, there's a place where an individual's behavior becomes a group issue, and I'd argue that that line has been crossed and that the group has the right to demand at least moderation in her drinking to the point where she's present when she brings guests home and is willing and able to protect the house from her guests acting inappropriately.

This is a reasonable norm for all house members, and even if the woman believes her guests and not the claims of her housemates about what these men did, I doubt it would be hard to get everyone to agree with the following:
o house members are responsible for guests behaving responsibly
o guests are not to enter private rooms without express permission
o guests should not be in the house if inebriated
o house member safety is paramount; it there's any doubt about what's happening, the guests will promptly be asked to leave and you'll sort it out later

Beyond all this, I'm amazed that this woman with the drinking problem is still there. Have you asked her to leave? If she's not willing to tackle her drinking problem (and see that her behavior when drunk has unacceptable consequences for the rest of the group), I wouldn't want any part of her as a house member.

• • •

When the woman posted the above to her fellow house members, this came back (with my subsequent response to all parties interspersed):

I am a current resident at the co-op in which another member recently wrote to you concerning a problem we are going through.

I would like to discourage you from giving advice to others. I am not currently involved in the situation but as an outsider who has actually met both parties I can assure you that what you received was a very one-sided review.

I am fully aware of having heard from only one person, and that other stories may be substantially different. My advice was based on what might be done if the statements given to me were true, including the following (all of which could be disputed):
o That the woman described has a drinking problem.
o That on at least two occasions men she invited into the house were drunk and the woman went to sleep while the men entered other women's rooms without permission.
o That the the issue was not brought up to the woman with the drinking problem.
o That the group is not clear about what responsibilities house members have for the behavior of their guests.
o That the group has not discussed when an individual's personal behavior (in this case, drinking) becomes a group issue.
o That the group is not clear about how to work interpersonal tensions between members.

To the extent that there is not agreement on the above, then it's entirely appropriate to back up to the point where there is agreement on what's happening and go from there.

The woman who wrote to you is one of the people involved in the disagreement. Your one-sided advice has really "fed the fire" and probably made this already intricate situation worse. You mixed some very sound logic ("Do you have clear house agreements about members being responsible for the behavior of their guests?") with your own inexperienced personal opinion. Like ending the entire letter the wrap up, "I wouldn't want any part of her as a house member."

That would be true for me if I believed that the statements from the original correspondent were true.

Please remember you have never met the woman being labeled as the problem. And you have never met the woman who wrote to you. Taking one's word at face value is dangerous. Look up "straw man." I appreciate your willingness to respond to this matter but would suggest you either leave out personal opinions or just don't advise personal conflicts in the future.

I'll willingly accept your chastisement about not being careful enough to make clear that my advice was based on the version of events that were given to me, and I'll freely admit that I am in no position whatsoever to make a claim as to their veracity. Further, I would be happy to rethink things in light of other viewpoints if I were involved.

However, giving advice in conflicted situations is what I do professionally and I'm not about to stop because someone doesn't like my thinking.

• • •

There has been no further exchange than this and that may be the end of what I hear. Did I do any good? Did I make matters worse? I don't know and I may never know. It is one of the most frustrating aspects of being a group process consultant—I rarely hear what happens afterward.

The one thing I do know, however, is that it can't be right to not talk about it.