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Enabling People to Transistion Land
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Enabling People to Transition Land for Longevity, Profitability and Resilience by Cindy Eiritz, Land Regen Group; Jeff Goebel, About Listening and Associates
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ave you heard of Community Consensus Institutes? You need to. It is a gamechanging social technology for knowledge sharing and peer to peer support. With community consensus, the facilitator is “a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage.”
In building consensus, the facilitator has minimal input beyond asking questions that work in line with human physiology. When humans are faced with some sort of stressor, their brain immediately goes into survival mode, fight or flight, or freeze. The mind does not go to their hopes and opportunities for the stressful event. The consensus building process recognizes this natural automatic response and quiets the survival mode through acknowledgment of the situation. Once this is done, the brain is more able to move to best possible outcomes, which is a higher brain function and assess what is good for the community. The consensus building process works with this natural process to move participants to their desired outcomes. Participants are asked a series of deceptively simple questions about what they want, why they seek that particular outcome and what stands in their way. The process, which entails deep and respectful listening, unleashes a powerful change of state. Conflicts arise when one party feels their perspective is being ignored or walked over. By creating a frank and open dialogue in a safe environment, a new shared
outcome organically emerges. Once people have a common goal, their joint efforts are more conducive to positive results. The Community Consensus Institute is an experiential training program that builds participants’ ability to successfully resolve conflict using a consensus building approach. Jeff Goebel of About Listening and Associates (who leads Community Consensus) has developed a highly effective program of respectful listening, visioning and planning that attains complex and long-lasting change through 100% consensus with all parties. He is one of the few world lead facilitators of the late Bob Chadwick’s work. See Finding New Ground, Robert J. Chadwick for this work.
Why Consensus Building for the Land Regen Group? “Land Regen Group” is an Australian company dedicated to rural people and natural systems engineering in agro-ecosystems. As part of their approach the Land Regeneration Group will be using consensus www.thesolutionsjournal.com | Fall 2020 | Solutions | 41