This
process can be useful applied to large, public Condo disputes,
where groups of owners and their lawyers have taken public positions
about their side on the dispute.
Consensus Building, often referred to as a complex mediated negotiation,
is a process that seeks agreement between the different stakeholders
in a public or social dispute, who contribute on the basis of
good faith to find a solution that meets the interests of all
participants involved in a public dispute.
Consensus building stands within the boundaries of win-win solutions,
in contrast to the adversarial options offered by imposed decisions,
the product of zero-sum thinking, identified as a condition that
encourages social conflict.
Decisions, consequently, are reached through “consensus”,
this is, through the construction and approval of an agreement
with which all and every stakeholder can accept, support and comply.
It is also constructed over the concept of involving the owners
as stakeholders in the design of the specific procedures, training
and developing an agenda to resolve the particular issue.
As a practice, it is becoming more popular as a way to address
complex, controversial social and public issues where multiple
interests are at stake. Texts and how-to manuals explain how to
organize groups, manage meetings, and accomplish tasks.
These procedures use the tools of alternative dispute resolution,
such as mediated negotiation and the insights of the worldwide
bestseller Getting to Yes (Fisher and Ury, 1981), which outlines
how to reach mutually beneficial agreements.
A decision is "communicatively rational" to the degree
that it is reached consensually through deliberations involving
all stakeholders, where all are equally empowered and fully informed,
and where the conditions of ideal language are met (statements
are comprehensible, trustworthy and reliable and offered by those
who can legitimately speak. rational decisions, then, are those
that come about because there are good reasons for them rather
than because of the political or economic power of particular
stakeholders.
The process involves three basic phases:
• Pre-negotiation, a negotiation or consensus
building stage and a post-negotiation and verification final phase.
(Susskind & Madigan, 1984). During pre-negotiation, representatives
of stakeholders must be identified, ground rules, procedures and
agenda must be agreed on, funding and training must be provided,
fact finding must be approached and an initial statement that
collects the main concerns of all stakeholders must be produced.
• During the negotiation phase, underlying
interests are determined and then different packages or options
are prepared, to arrive at a final agreement.
• Post- negotiation involves implementation
of agreements, the design of a monitoring system, a process for
renegotiation and adjustments and, finally, evaluation of the
entire process. (Susskind, 1999)
What is Facilitation?
Very simply put, facilitation is helping a group to accomplish
its goals. There are a wide range of perspectives about the
ideal nature and values of facilitation, much as there are a
wide range of perspectives about the ideal nature and values
of leadership. For example, some facilitators may believe that
facilitation should always be highly democratic in nature and
that anything other than democratic is not facilitation at all.
Others may believe that facilitation can be quite directive,
particularly depending on the particular stage of development
of the group.
