Personal Empowerment & Leadership Skills

Celebrating Life:
Art & Creativity

Local, Bioregional & Global Outreach

2b. Facilitation Skills: Decision Making and Conflict Resolution
The Art of Facilitation	How to Make Good Decisions	Understanding and Learning from Conflict

“What if we saw meetings – understood as gatherings to discuss issues of shared importance and to make collective decisions – as a basic human need, like food, sleep or sex? What if meetings were treated not as a boring obligation, but as essential for survival? What if meetings connected us to our psychic depths, to our local community, an to the great mistery?” – Bea Briggs

Decisions everybody can support

To build a healthy group or community, the questions of governance — “Who decides?” or “How will we decide?” — must be collectively answered. Making clear choices about the fundamental issues of power and process can transform a diverse group of people into a strong, stable, loving community. Not having a fair, participatory decision-making method early in a group will almost certainly generate conflict over power imbalances at some point.

Power imbalances can be greatly reduced by using a decision-making method that spreads power equally and offers checks and balances against power abuses. Consensus is the method many groups of equals and communities have chosen to make decision; but it doesn’t work in all cases and needs special training to be really effective. If consensus cannot be applied, it is a good thing to know what other options we have.

Bioregional Congress

Circle meeting during the bioregional congress in Earthaven ecovillage - 2005