Facilitation Skills for Community Decision-Making

Facilitation is the practice of creating and holding structures and processes within which connection and decision-making can happen effectively. In the Facilitation Skills for Community Decision-Making Course, instructor Karen Gimnig will guide you in balancing the need to make decisions efficiently while still valuing relationship-building and connection.

This course is an overview of facilitation as used in communities for group process and decision making. These skills will also be relevant to other low-hierarchy groups like coops and nonprofits that make decisions by consensus or sociocracy.

We’ll start with a deepening understanding of the role of the facilitator. What does a facilitator do, and what should they avoid doing? From there we’ll move into the most common work for intentional community facilitators: the “business meeting”, where many topics need to be covered in one meeting.

Within community, there is also a need for facilitating a single topic over several meetings, which we call “process facilitation”.  We’ll wrap up with a deeper look at conflict as it appears in meetings, including how to prevent it and what to do when it arrives.

This course will include ample time for interactive discussions and breakout room exercises. Optional homework will give participants an opportunity to practice the skills we are introducing within their communities.

Students are strongly recommended to purchase The Cooperative Culture Handbook, which is full of facilitator resources. Throughout the course, the instructor will rely heavily on the book as a reference for exercises and materials.

After registration, course participants will receive a 15% discount on The Cooperative Culture Handbook.