When Does Consensus Work?

by Raven Glomus

I have long been a subscriber to Communities magazine.  In Issue #155, way back in the Summer of 2012, Diana Leafe Christian wrote an article that started a multi-year, back-and-forth disagreement that played out in the pages of the magazine.  It was called “Busting the Myth that Consensus-with-Unanimity Is Good for Communities Part I”.  Consensus consultants Laird Schaub, Ma’ikwe Schaub Ludwig, and Tree Bressen were apparently shown the article before publication and wrote responses that were published in the same issue.  The cycle of articles and responses played out over several issues spanning a couple of years before Diana settled down into writing articles about how sociocracy works.

I have a memory that in the last article before she moved on, she wrote what I will call a ‘truce’ piece. (Although maybe I imagined this article because I can’t find it in my collection of Communities and didn’t see it in the online collection.)  What I recall is that, after there were many stories of consensus working published, she admitted that consensus could work under certain circumstances.  And even if that article was only in my imagination, she sort of said something similar in her very first article when she pointed out that consensus consultant Tim Hartnett noted that “the smaller and more homogeneous the group, the easier it is to reach agreement using consensus-with-unanimity”.

Basically, I think that the reason Diana Leafe Christian knew of so many communities that were having trouble with consensus is that most, if not all of them, were large, diverse cohousing and/or ecovillage groups. I know of many communities that have used consensus for years with little difficulty, but these have almost always been either small communes or co-op houses.

Consensus, in many ways, requires a large degree of trust among the participants and it needs folks who have deep commitments to shared principles.  Especially since one of the few reasons that you can block a decision is when it violates a community’s core principles, you need to have people who share a commitment to and understanding of those principles.

As Diana Leafe Christian points out in a later article (“Consensus and the Burden of Added Process”, in Communities Issue #158, Spring 2013) there are lots of people who didn’t come to community (especially cohousing or ecovillage community) to build deep connections with others and don’t want to spend lots of time doing process.  Folks in these communities often joined for things like neighborliness or to live more ecologically or sustainably. Consensus works far better in a group that is committed to working through process with each other.

I believe strongly in consensus decision making and I have been advocating that we use it in our community, Glomus Commune.  However, I am not a believer that any method works for everyone or every community.  

I don’t have a real problem with sociocracy, for example, although I wouldn’t say that I completely understand  it. I do know that Ms. Christian advocates sociocracy for better decision making and when I studied it, one guide said to start by creating a couple of circles in your group and then find a way to intersect them.  A circle, apparently, should consist of about six people. However, when your whole community consists of six people, it seems hard to imagine creating two separate circles. It seems that sociocracy works better with larger communities.

In summary, I believe that if you have a small commune or co-op house, that is based on some shared principles, consensus decision making may work very well for your group.  I am certainly not saying that it’s the best thing for every community.

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