For better or worse, I have taken leadership on the project of trying to start up a cooperative business whose main purpose will be urban farming in underused spaces: backyards, front yards, abandoned lots. For now, I am the one organizing meetings of the little group of organizers, I’m responsible for keeping records of the outcomes of the meetings, and I’m the main driving force behind the whole project. I’m not completely comfortable in this role, and I often don’t know how best to structure the process so that everyone feels able to contribute and to disagree when necessary. I don’t want to monopolize the discussions, although I am the one with the most fleshed-out vision of where we’re going. It’s hard to find the right balance between going off in too many directions and just walking blindly down the first path you find. I’m getting very tired of being involved in discussions and projects that use one of those two strategies — more frequently the latter one, with the path being chosen by the alpha person in the room at some early meeting.

I don’t want to have to learn too much about facilitating group work either; maybe this is a foolish prejudice, but there is something about applying these consensus-building tools that smacks too much of the corporate mindset. Can’t we achieve the same end state by applying good old-fashioned discussion, argument, consideration of multiple possibilities, winnowing of choices, and so on? ~~~