Page 16 - C.A.L.L. #42 - Spring 2017

My interviewees noted that this commitment to resolving conflicts is greatly enhanced by deliberately
working on relational skills, which leads to the next lesson:

Step 6: A community focused on inner and outer peace works on communication and group
process.

When I asked Marty about how to sustain an intentional community, he replied “communication,
communication, communication. More communication.” Similarly, the main piece of advice he said he
would give to a fledgling intentional community is to “maximize communication.” Along these lines,
Marty feels that Shannon Farm’s approach to group self-governance has been helpful in promoting
peaceful interactions and personal quality of life. He adds that “the desire and effort to incorporate new
members [into this process] is critical”, as is “not being afraid to address difficult issues.”

And difficult issues, of course, will arise in
community. Roger, who has often found himself in
leadership roles throughout his life, notes that his
“tendency to act like a god” has created challenges
for himself and others at Lake Village. But he’s
stayed at the community and faced the conflict
instead of hiding or running from it, which, to all my
interviewees, seems to be a critical aspect of
effective group process. For Roger, as he finds
himself “on the other side of 80 years on the
globe,” his years of experience in directly facing
conflict at his community has helped him
understand more deeply what it takes to build
Group process is crucial to intentional community peaceful, cooperative relationships.
building. Sandhill Farm.
In his interview, Laird provided specific details on
this endeavor when he described how Sandhill developed its approach to group process and decision
making – an approach that Laird feels has served the community well over the decades. For example,
they started having an annual retreat in the 1990s to engage, in Laird’s words, in “long-range planning,
tackling thorny issues, doing interpersonal clearings and generally resetting the gyroscope.” Laird feels
that a hugely important part of these retreats was bringing in a neutral outside facilitator who helped
them “do the heavy lifting” when they “wrestled with topics where no member was neutral.”

My interviewees’ communities use a variety of approaches to engage in decision making – consensus,
sociocracy, a planner-manager system, and more. However, what seemed more important to
interviewees than the specific decision-making process was to teach and support the development of
conflict resolution skills.

Laird feels that one of the most important reasons that Sandhill has been able to pull through rough
patches is that they’ve understood the importance of strong social and relational skills and have
deliberately invested in getting better at them. Key skills that Laird mentioned include to learn to
articulate what you think and feel, to own your own shit, to hear accurately what others say and see an
issue through another’s lens, to see bridges in conflict, to reach out to others, to distinguish between
bad behavior and a person being ‘bad’, and to be sensitive to the ways you are privileged. As Sandhill
got more skilled in these ways, Laird feels that they were better able to resolve tensions and make good
choices that allowed the community to continue. In their group process, how things get done, and how
relationships are treated, are more important than what gets accomplished. Laird says that “by being
committed to cooperative culture, we are committed at a root level to trying to resolve disagreements

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