Workshops & Consultation-Workshops

Diana’s Workshops and Consultation-Workshops are designed to be a lot of fun—with lively presentations, experiential exercises, role-plays, and musical skits. (See “What Participants Say.”)

A Workshop has a standard format and is either (1) open to the public, or (2) private, held specifically for one or more forming community groups or existing communities. Workshop Endorsements.

A Consultation-Workshop is an event tailored ahead of time specifically for an existing community or forming-community group, based on their particular needs as determined by phone conversations, emails, surveys, etc. ahead of time. It is presented in workshop format. Consultation-Workshops can contain most or all of the same information, presentations, and experiential exercises as a Workshop. However, while Workshops have a standard format, Consultation-Workshops are based on the needs of the group. The fees are the same for both. Consultation-Workshop Endorsements.

Phone Consultations are also available for forming-community groups and existing communities.

Diana’s 1-1/2-hour Ecovillage Slide Show can be an adjunct to workshops, for example, as a presentation the evening before the workshop.

You’ll find descriptions of three different workshops, below. Fee information.
1. Starting a Successful Ecovillage or Intentional Community
(one- or two-day Workshop or Consultation-Workshop)
2. Consensus and Facilitation
(one- or two-day Workshop or Consultation-Workshop)
3. How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community (one day)

           
1. Starting a Successful Ecovillage or Intentional Community

This can be a one-day or two-day event. Participants will receive a handout booklet.

The first day, “The Heart of Healthy Community,” usually held on a Saturday, is foundational. It is designed to benefit forming community groups as well as existing communities, and groups with property as well as those with no property yet. It can be presented as a stand-alone, one-day event.

The second day, “Property Purchase, Financing, Zoning, and Legal Entities,” usually held on a Sunday, is designed for participants whose forming community groups don’t have property, or they do but they haven’t worked out ways others can buy in.

Saturday: The Heart of Healthy Community
This first day focuses on how people can work well together to co-create a thriving community, with methods for communicating well and dealing effectively with conflict. This includes “structural conflict” as well as interpersonal conflict. While some of this material is covered in Diana’s book, Creating a Life Together, much of it is new since then.

(1) Reducing and eliminating “Structural Conflict.” Identifying and briefly discussing six crucial organizational structures that, when missing, can cause failure in forming-community groups or wrenching conflict in existing communities.
    These structures include • Common Mission and Purpose • Clear Agreements in Writing • Fair, Participatory Decision-Making Method (and if it’s consensus, getting trained in it before using it) • Valuing and Using Both Head and Heart Skills • Good Communication and Group Process Skills (including accountability methods, and having a conflict-resolution method in place from the beginning) • Well-Organized New-Member Policy (including selecting cofounders and new members who will be a good match for the group and its goals).
     Some structures are explored in more depth, such as Mission and Purpose (including the musical skit, “That’s Not Community!”), and Decision-Making, Power, and Governance, about how the most number of people can get most of what they want, most of the time.
    Diana considers the single most helpful part of this workshop to be the “Board Game”—learning about the crucial, mutually influencing relationship between a group’s mission & purpose, its decision-making method, and its new-member policy.
    This section also notes the many kinds of community practices—agenda planning, well-crafted proposals, meeting evaluations, decision logs, labor requirements, labor credit policies, and many more—which can make all the difference in helping communities keep morale high and reduce stress.

(2) Creating Communication Agreements. Creating such agreements increases energy and satisfaction in meetings and helps reduce the level of distrust and hurt feelings that can result from people having differing communication styles during meetings. Experiential small-group exercise.

(3) Helping People Stay Accountable to the Group. Three effective, no-shame/no-blame ways to help each other stay accountable to group agreements, and how to use a “graduated series of consequences” process when people consistently break agreements. These processes help raise the level of trust in the group and reduce the amount of resentment and demoralization that can occur when people don’t abide by their agreements. Includes role-playing exercise.

(4) Building a Sense of Trust and Connection. These first three methods help reduce the kinds conflicts that can devastate a group and quickly erode trust between members. A group can also do processes that specifically build trust and connection—so when conflict does arise it’s much easier to deal with than if trust levels were lower. Experiential whole-group exercise.

(5) Dealing Effectively with “The Challenging Person.” Sometimes a group has a member who is so challenging that some people want to leave the group (or do leave!). This is a highly effective, relatively widespread (but usually not consciously applied) method to gently—and with no shame or blame—encourage the person to change their ways . . . or to, on their own, decide to leave.

(6) Cultivating Your Social Capital in the Group. If you have high “social capital” personally, you will most likely be listened to and your ideas for the community considered seriously. If you have low social capital, no matter how articulate your proposals or relevant your ideas, your ideas may be dismissed or ignored. Fortunately, there are things we can do to increase our own social capital and hence personal effectiveness in a group . . . and help the whole community thrive. Role-playing exercise.

Other topics touched on in the first day include the Rock Polisher Effect, the Lightning Rod Effect, the Future Community Success Assessment Tool, and How we can use the Empowered Member/Disempowered Member model and Robert Gilman’s insights on “multiple centers of initiative” to understand and benefit our community and ourselves.

Sunday: Property Purchase, Financing, Zoning, and Legal Entities
As noted earlier, the second day is designed for forming community groups that don’t have property, or they do have property but they haven’t yet worked out ways others can buy in.

Includes: Case histories—how two successful communities found and financed their property. When an individual or couple owns the land. Triple-net lease. Raw, developed, and turn-key property. Cost, zoning, members, mortgage payments, jobs. Three sources of financing. Three ways to own property.
When one person buys or finances the property. Personal loans. Owner financing. Revolving Loan Funds. Determining the group's assets. Helping less affluent members afford it. Income and expenses. Can people afford to live there? The relationship between individually owned parcels with deeds and the community’s ability to choose its members—and why this is important. Checklist for legal entities. LLCs, 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Land trusts, conservation easements.

How zoning works, seeking a zoning variance/special-use permit. Urban refugee syndrome. Learning from cohousing designers. Community buildings. When sustainable is building not really sustainable?

Creating a village-scale economy.

2. Consensus and Facilitation

This can be a one-day or a two-day event. Participants will receive a handout booklet.

The first day, “Consensus Decision-Making: How It Works,” usually held on a Saturday, is foundational and can be presented as a stand-alone, one-day event. It is designed to benefit forming community groups and existing communities who would like to learn the consensus decision-making method or get additional consensus training.

The second day—“The Effective Facilitator”—is designed to either follow the first day in a two-day workshop, or to stand alone to benefit people and communities who want to improve facilitation skills.

Diana has taught this workshop and portions of it to various cohousing communities in Canada and Mimbres Hot Springs Ranch in New Mexico. She has facilitated consensus meetings for various communities and for Earthaven Ecovillage, where she lives. Her consensus teachers were Caroline Estes, CT Butler, Bea Briggs, and Tree Bressen.

Saturday: Consensus Decision-Making: How It Works
This workshop is lively and fun, with a few short musical skits and a stand-up-and-move Board Game: “A Proposal’s Progress.” Topics include power, decision-making, and governance; how consensus meetings function; requirements for an enjoyable, productive, upbeat meeting (trained participants, good agenda-planning, well-crafted proposals, and a skilled facilitator); supporting, standing aside, and blocking; and three special features, “What Community Consensus Trainers Advise about Blocking,” “Is Pure Consensus the Best Choice for Your Group?” and “How Some Communities Use Closely Related Alternatives.”

Sunday: The Skilled Facilitator
This skill-building workshop includes more short musical skits, as well as participatory exercises on agenda review, stacking, summarizing, responding to various kinds of meeting situations, and dealing with various kinds of disruptive meeting behaviors. It focuses on the facilitator’s basic underlying attitude: inquiry and requests.

3. How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community

This one-day workshop on joining community also includes musical skits, role-plays, and experiential exercises to help people find and join the community of their dreams. It includes material from Diana’s book, Finding Community: How to Join an Intentional Community or Ecovillage.

Topics include: how to research communities on the Internet (and how to separate the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’). Your criteria for communities to join, and how to find communities that match your criteria. What it costs to join, and what it takes personally to live in community. How to plan community visits, how to be a “great guest,” and how to get the most out of your visits. Evaluating your visits (and debunking common assumptions and expectations). An “Insider’s Guide” to choosing your community. The membership process, and how to enter your community gracefully.
Includes handout booklet.

More information :
Workshops and Talks at Conferences and Fairs
Fees
What Participants Say