I live in a cohousing community and work with many others as a facilitator, trainer, and consultant. The most common issue for which communities hire me has to do with work – or more accurately, how to get members who aren’t doing their agreed-upon share of the work to get with the program.
What is alternately fascinating and vexing to me is that while these groups spend endless hours coming to consensus on complicated policies and guidelines about every possible aspect of community life, they are extremely reluctant to build in consequences for noncompliance with those policies.
Now, anyone who has been a parent, teacher, manager, or animal trainer knows the value of clear consequences, positive or negative. (I am a big fan of Karen Pryor‘s work in this regard.) So what is this all about in our cohousing culture?!?
In a fascinating TED talk, Jonathan Haidt discusses the five components of morality: harm/care; fairness/reciprocity; loyalty to the group; respect for authority; purity. Liberals tend to score higher on the first two; conservatives on the third and fourth. (They differ in purity – conservatives focus on sexual behavior while liberals focus on food and environment.) I maintain that cohousers are high on group loyalty yet low on respect for authority.
He also mentions research indicating that while people will behave in a sharing, altruistic way (for the benefit of the commons) for a certain amount of time, eventually they will stop doing so if there is no punishment for selfish behavior.
Think about driving. Most of us follow most of the rules most of the time. (Given how much time we spend in our cars, it is quite remarkable how few crashes there are!) Most of us break some of the rules some of the time. We don’t need or expect enforcement or consequences every time we break a rule; but we do know that a ticket is possible and we do get them occasionally.
When discussing consequences for noncompliance with cohousing agreements, over and over I heard the phrase “I don’t want us to be policing each other.” It is as though our only mental model for holding each other accountable is Cop vs. Criminal.
What might be some more useful models for us to contemplate?
>I wonder if Diana is thinking that accountability is somehow synonymous with punishment? And, the discussion is not about children but adults who have presumably made a conscious and free choice to join into a group process and agreement for doing the work of community. Certainly there needs to be flexibility and compassion for special circumstances, special needs (the older, the infirm), etc and a clear set of values, agreements, and expectations is a solid place to start from.
My community (10 years old) is in the process of reinventing this now and hopes to build upon it.
I would characterize the energy in our community as generally conflict avoidant which seems to empower and enable the persons who are more assertive or controlling or have a sense of entitlement to have more power than is healthy–since it inevitably leads to resentments. I guess if we had a good and agreed upon process for conflict resolution it would help a lot.
I wonder if co-housing has a special attraction to persons who are conflict avoidant due to their strong need for affiliation and acceptance which co-housing implicitly promises? Especially when these needs represent unresolved life issues then it can help create a organizational culture which becomes dysfunctional around conflict resolution.
In my community the social control mechanisms used are the age old ones of gossip, ostracism, isolation–even in the face of a general expectation that if you have an issue with someone you should go directly to them. Certain persons are known as the ones who, if you cross them or don't agree, you will get on their s**t list and they will recruit and expect their friends to treat you similarly–literally, "if you like her I won't like you any more." I'll leave the gender dimensions of this dynamic for another time.
For all of the above I would be in favor of the public "tasks and accomplishments" board so it is visible to all and also an accountability process.
Really interested in others thoughts and feelings about any of the above–and suggestions.
>Thanks, Amy, for clarifying. By "consequences," I did indeed mean to include both positive AND negative. Positive reinforcement does tend to be more effective than negative reinforcement; but at times I do think negative reinforcement is appropriate.
Of course, in the absence of formal/structural/administrative consequences, there always ARE some kind of natural consequences, as Naomi says. If you don't live up to your agreements, people get cranky with you! Ideally, they would talk to you and give you an opportunity to self-correct.
However, many folks in community are conflict-avoidant; rather than confronting someone directly, they will gossip, withdraw, etc. Sometimes things drag on and on and squidge out in weird ways, that end up being more damaging to the relationships involved than if someone had just confronted the original offender directly in the first place. This is why I sometimes think that having some kind of clear, simple consequences – such as Naomi's chart or gold stars or a $2 fine or whatever – would be "cleaner" energetically than what often happens…not to mention FASTER!
>Points well taken, Eris.
I lean toward Diana, who goes for rewards instead of punishments. However, must point out to Diana that Eris is not talking about rewards/punishments exactly but consequences.
In raising children, we often signed an agreement about behavior. I worked hard not to make promises to my children that I couldn't keep. In our house, keeping your word was an important value. So if the children agreed to something, they felt obligated to follow through and keep their word. Because if they broke their word to me, then how could they make a fuss if I broke mine to them?
>Is punishment really more effective than reward? I've managed to raise three really awesome children by focusing much more on reward than punishment as a feedback mechanism. Likewise at ny job, although there's always the unspoken threat of the biggest punishment – getting fired – I find I'm most motivated by rewards: bonuses, public recognition, plum assignments.
>This is great and so on point for the community I am a member of. We are devolving around this as one of our core issues.
From the ground up it starts with agreements that persons choose to live by and then are held accountable for.
We are looking at the notion of "affinity groups" as a way to reinvent ourselves and create agreements around work.
The bottom line question may be that if choose to agree and dont do what you agree to then what are the barriers and do the person want to overcome them and, if they don't, is this really the place for them to live.
Charlie
>Hm. . . I don't live in cohousing, since there aren't any cohousing options in Birmingham, AL, but I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently. You bring up an interesting issue.
That said, depending on how the work is divided, it seems like there could be natural consequences to not doing your fair share. If you and two other people agreed to show up at a certain time in a certain place to complete a certain task, and you just don't show up, then the other people will resent you, likely talk about what a good-for-nothing you are, and possibly confront you. As a result, you sacrifice your relationships and your reputation when you don't do what you've committed to do. (I think that this requires small groups established beforehand. An individual may not be missed in 20, but would be in 2-4.)
I do think that some people would benefit from a more (or less) structured work share. And that work shares need to be well defined, so that it's clear when it's done and when it's not. In the beginning, when members are being honest, they probably know which one they need! (I need structure myself. Am I a naturally organized person? No. Do I need deadlines to get things done in a reasonable amount of time–yes.)
Oh–and would it be too much to have a publicly displayed chart? Check yourself off when you've done your share for the week? Everyone can *see* who didn't. (Consequence = public humiliation.)
Or, whoever didn't get their work done or did it last gets the most unpleasant task for the next week?
Golly–these last two almost seem like manipulative behavior modification techniques. You'd think that they wouldn't be necessary! (Or maybe not. . . . )
Thoughts?