We’re living in a remarkable new age of professional propaganda where lies have become as common as truth. We’re in the truth telling business, however, and the challenge that we face is that it’s usually easier for charlatans to make fake information more melodramatic, attention-getting and interesting than it is for us to make the… read more →
Similar to the benefit of expressing some humility is the benefit of not sounding like you know it all. When experts are dealing with concerned, anxious people, it often feels like the more answers the experts can produce, the more confident and convinced those nervous people will be. But the fact is it just doesn’t… read more →
We work with clients who are expert in their respective fields, and they’re understandably confident in what they know. But in this new age of anti-science and the demonization of expertise, that confidence is often mistaken for arrogance by an angry, skeptical public. When experts need to establish themselves as trustworthy and credible, a certain… read more →
One of the best and most useful skills to develop in public engagement, facilitation, and conflict management is the ability to ask dialed in, compelling, clear, to-the-point, interesting questions. Great questions result in great answers, and questions that sound more like some kind of ham-fisted, bureaucratic interrogation usually get lousy or useless responses. For some… read more →
In the work that we do and in the classes that we teach, we increasingly run across people just starting out in this biz. Newer facilitators tend to be nervous about the idea of dealing with volatile situations and people with strong feelings on competing sides of issues. They’re usually looking for clear assurances, magic… read more →
This story was penned by an experienced academic and practicing mediator, but everything in it really resonated for me and I thought you might like these six basic lessons.
You may have noticed that the public sector workforce is changing – a lot. Of course, there’s always an ongoing turnover in people, but federal agencies in particular are seeing a major loss of institutional knowledge and new people are filling management positions with little experience in actually dealing with and managing people. People skills… read more →
Competence, integrity and empathy are key ingredients when it comes to who we trust, which explains why many people have a difficult time trusting those who hold power over us. Read More …
Most of our clients are in the bad news business – you may be one of them. Delivering less than desirable news to citizens is an unfortunate part of government. People often don’t like the changes that government imposes on them for the sake of the greater good. So delivering this kind of less than… read more →
Our inability to communicate with each other is spooky. (Gratuitous Halloween reference.) By every reasonable, credible, objective source that I can find, it can be safely said that nearly 97% of experts know that the climate is changing rapidly and human activity is a major contributor. But climate denial is a multi-billion dollar industry employing… read more →