Choosing a New Housemate

Choosing a new housemate after interviews

**There should be an “debrief slot” reserved after the last interview for doing this process. Ideally this would be the same night as the last interview, but not necessarily.

Choosing a new housemate is one of the more consequential decisions we make as a community. Especially in a small community like ours that operates on consensus, the personality, opinions, energy, habits, humor, etc of a new housemate will have a big impact on all of us.

Housemate decisions can also be very difficult. We often have differing and conflicting priorities for who we want to join the community. It is also harder to find creative compromise solutions. At the end of the discussion we will have a room to fill and need to choose a person to fill it. 

This process is meant to help us navigate this particularly important and challenging process together.

Important values to hold in this process: 

• everyone gets to participate in the discussion

• everyone consents to the final decision

• applicants aren’t left waiting for too long.

Tools

Proposals:

• A proposal can be:

  • To accept someone as a housemate

  • to eliminate someone from consideration

  • or to break for the time being with some plan for how to come to a decision later

• The facilitator will ideally track the group’s conversation, and if it seems like there may be enough consensus around choosing or eliminating someone, will make that proposal.

• If it seems like there may be a consensus but the facilitator is not sure what it is, they can also ask the group if anyone has a proposal

• Proposals are voted on with an up, down, or sideways thumb.

• All thumbs up, and a proposal passes.

• If any thumbs are down, the proposal doesn’t pass.

• If there is more than one sideways thumb, more discussion is needed.

• If there is only one sideways thumb, the facilitator can ask the person if they want more discussion or if they want to move forward with the proposal.

Rounds: We go around in a circle. Everyone has a chance to speak and share their thoughts, uninterrupted. We can ask clarifying questions, but aspire to each wait for our turn to speak rather than responding to people directly.

Mirrored rounds: A mirrored round is similar to a regular round, except that every time after someone speaks, someone else in the circle tries to share what they said back to them. A simple way to do this is to have the next person to speak first mirror what the last person said. If we end up doing multiple mirrored rounds, it can be beneficial to have someone else do the mirroring each time. After someone mirrors, the original speaker can make any corrections, clarifications, or add something that was left out that they think is important. Sometimes it can be hard to understand what someone is saying because of how they are saying it. Having someone else mirror can help increase understanding for the whole group.

Silence: The discussion can get difficult and heated at times. Taking anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes of silence can help everyone recenter, and can be used anytime the group or the facilitator think it will be beneficial.

Spectrums: This tool is best for choosing between two options. Three or four options are also possible but might require a larger space. Designate two locations (or more if deciding between multiple options), and have people stand on a spectrum between the options. If they feel very strongly that they are only ok with one option, they can stand at the far end. If they feel torn between the options, they can stand in the middle, and if they are leaning in one direction, they can stand part way between the middle and that option. Once we find our places we stand there for a couple of minutes to read the room and see where everyone is at. This tool helps us get up and move around, which can shift energy and perspectives in the midst of a discussion.It can also help us gather information non-verbally. This tool also helps establish how strongly people feel about different positions, which can be harder to express verbally at times.

Values check: Make sure our housemate search priorities have been reviewed and updated by the current group before starting the decision process. Look through the “high priorities” that we all agreed on, and compare the people we are considering based on those priorities. Do this first as each person individually, and then share out with the group. Does anyone emerge as a clear better fit? If not, consider repeating with the medium, and if necessary the low priorities.  

1. Choose a facilitator. The role of the facilitator includes:

   • Making sure that everyone has a chance to speak, are not interrupted, and feel comfortable sharing

   • Keep an eye on this process and keep the group moving along this process

   • Help the group generate proposals

2. Everyone takes 5-10 minutes to gather their thoughts, write down some notes, and choose their #1 pick. Ideally we would have a copy of Values, Principles, and Aspirations and housemate search priorities available for people to look at and reflect on and some easy access to every applicants’ google form responses. 

3. Everyone writes down their #1 pick on a piece of paper and passes it to the facilitator. If anyone does not feel comfortable with any of the current options they can write “none”. The facilitator tallies the #1 picks and reports to the group

   • If there is consensus on one person, we invite that person to live with us! We can have some discussion or not depending on the feeling of the group.

   • If there is not full consensus on a #1 pick, we continue to the next step

4. We do a Round, everyone gets a few minutes to say why they picked their #1 pick, why they might have hesitations about other people’s #1 picks, and/or their general impressions for the group

   • Please be brief, this go around is more about establishing where we’re at than trying to convince the group.

   • Try to quickly reference things other people have said rather than repeating them.

   • This is more of a share out than a discussion, let’s avoid interrupting or responding to people’s comments

Facilitator check for proposals

5. Spectrum. If we still haven’t made a decision, we can try a spectrum exercise to get a better sense of where people are at

6. Mirrored round. Useful for giving everyone a chance to share any new thoughts and giving us a chance to hear people’s thoughts framed another way.

7. Silence, to let people digest and reframe information. If needed this could also be a good time for a quick break.

Facilitator check for proposals

8. If we still don’t have any proposals, or none of the proposals have passed, we can repeat steps 5-7 to see if that reveals new information that shifts our perspectives.

9. If we’ve gotten this far and still don’t have a decision, it might be useful to add more information into the room. Try one or more of the following.

   • Do a values check

   • Contact people’s references, if we haven’t already. This will likely require breaking for the day and deciding on logistics of who contacts who and when we reconvene.

   • Do a second round of interviews

10. Hopefully by now, if we haven’t come to a decision, then at least the crux of why we are struggling to decide has come to light. There are too many possibilities for what that may be, but consider shifting the conversation from the particular people to focus on what is making it hard for us to make a decision. What we need to resolve this issue will vary case by case.