Conflict management resources from Heartwood Cohousing

The Reef
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Hello @reef-conflict,

Noting that you are working on ways to improve our conflict management mechanisms, and noting that we have a foundational principle of trying to learn from others who have come before us, I figured it could be useful to point you the rich collection of documents of Heartwood Cohousing.

Heartwoord Cohousing got started much longer before us. They turn out to be masters at documenting and at Open Knowledge, and we have used their documents quite extensively to make our own Governance Document.

On the conflict management front I would recommend at least the following documents (though there are many more):

Here’s a couple of things that stand out to me:

  • Interpersonal agreements: I find this approach quite wise. It’s just a short list of principles and values, agreed by the community, that people want to honour in their community. It looks like common sense of course, but I think that the process of co-creating a document like this can be a good foundation when things get rough later on.

  • Prospective member checklist: we often joke about the people from Earthsong Cohousing, who said that participating in a cohousing project will be the most expensive self-development course you will ever have taken. In Heartwood they just write it down as a plain commitment: at the bottom of the “yes I want to become a member” document, a bit above where it says “sign here” members who enter commit to “work on my personal growth”. I’m not necessarily suggesting we do the same (even though), but I do find it interesting that they put this out there so openly.

  • Non-compliance guidelines: when a member is found to not live up to the agreed guidelines or when somebody is repeatedly in conflict and there is a pattern, and mediation didn’t work, they escalate things by creating an “Accountability Task Force”, which is a bit the equivalent of a dedicated helping circle. If after a while it turns out that the Task Force didn’t succeed, or that the problem persists or reappears, it can be brought to a dedicated “Community Meeting”.

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Again, very useful Lee. I’ll share the link to this post in our working document and we’ll integrate the ideas in the ‘conflict guide’ proposal that we want to present in a plenary after the holidays.

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