Carl Moore - The Community Store

Order Carl's
Facilitiation Manual
Online Now!

Community: A group struggling with its differences

Welcome to The Community Store!

The Community Store offers facilitation skills and conflict resolution services - adapted to the needs of specific groups (especially communities!) - to build consensus and get things done.

We are needed because humans are social. All of us belong to many kinds of groups and often establish our own identity by the groups we associate with. When faced with a problem we can not solve alone, we work on it with other people. Sometimes with people we know well -- members of our family, good friends, people at work -- and sometimes with strangers. Even though our attempts to get something done in a group may frustrate us, we continue to join them. Because we want to, because we may be required to, or because we know that the only real solution to the problem will come from a group effort.

The obstacles that get in the way of a group's productivity are predictable, but that does not mean they can be avoided.

Have you and the others in your group sat down at the beginning of a meeting, expecting to get a lot done, but the group gets stuck on the first idea that comes up. All of the ideas that could (and should!) surface somehow don't. The group does not accomplish what most of the people attending the meeting were hoping they would accomplish.
What do you do when one person dominates a group's discussion? You are forced to hear the same stories over and over again. The group can't get done what it wants to do because it seems to be continually adjusting to the dominating personality. The negative impact of such a person is especially difficult when it's the boss or the most senior member or anyone else who has high status.
Or what about the converse. The group doesn't do as well as it could have done, because not all of the voices in the room are heard. People with good ideas don't speak up. They are shy or intimidated or believe that someone else is likely to say what they would say, so why should they speak up and risk being embarassed.
Maybe the group does bring up and consider a number of ideas. Perhaps everyone contributes and no one hogs the air time. Even then, haven't you experienced the frustration of coming to the point of making a decision and people resist making a decision. Especially if it is a hard decision.

The Community Store is commiited to inventing and adapting strategies and processes that help to address the predictable, reoccurring problems that get in the way of group productivity.

Carl M. Moore, Ph.D.
The Community Store
16 Camino Delilah
Santa Fe, NM 87506
505.820-6826, 505.982-5974 (fax)