Stop, Sort of, Using, like Modifiers
Now that we’re all on the usual path of New Year self-improvement, I suggest we consider the following. These verbal tics are easy to pick up; it’s time for all of us to lose ‘em. Read More …...
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Proving Your Public Participation Chops
If you’ve worked in public engagement for a while, you should seriously consider the process of becoming an International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Certified Public Participation Practitioner (CP3) or even a Master Certified Public Participation Practitioner (MCP3). My partner, Doug Sarno, and I were two of the first ...
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Bill Gates and Elon Musk Aren’t Happy with How People Think
We spend a lot of time thinking about how people think…or not. Or more precisely how people feel as opposed to think. It’s often tough for thinking people to wrap their heads around people’s emotions and feelings, and apparently Bill and Elon think/feel the same way. But I think ...
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Nudging Egos to Get the Point Across
Smart people don’t often take kindly to criticism about how they communicate what they know so well. The challenge is that subject matter experts (SMEs) are usually more accustomed to communicating with other SMEs than they are in communicating with people who aren’t SMEs. When you know a subject well, ...
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Midwest Nice and the Other Not-as-Nice Parts of the Country
Growing up in America’s cheese state and having lived, and then worked, all across this country has shown me that people, although similar in many ways, are weirdly different in specific parts of the U.S. It appears that we have three very different personalities: friendly and conventional, relaxed and creative, ...
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A Great Public Engagement Story
With all due respect to my civil engineering pals, I’m not sure that I could have thought of a subject less sexy and interesting than storm water management, and then I ran across the story below. Okay, maybe sexy is pushing it, but if you’re looking for public involvement success ...
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Who’s Trusted the Least
We’ve shown you many times here that trust in institutions – non-governmental organizations, big business, news media and government – is at generally historic lows. Recent Pew research into trust finds some interesting variations like public school principals being the most trusted and ethical by several barometers. Police are ranked ...
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Five Things You Might Do That, Unfortunately, Reduce Trust
Trust building requires the right behavior from the builder. It’s not always all about you, and it requires you letting go and being accessible, reliable and objectively truthful. It’s not that tough. Read More …
Getting people to trust you starts with you trusting them. It can’t be done blindly ...
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10 Best Lessons from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a lovely, thoughtful film. Whether you or your kids grew up watching Mr. Rogers or not, go see it. Especially this holiday season, given our current state of public discourse and general political discombobulation and the work that we all do. You’ll feel ...
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Rewiring Democracy
If you’ve not yet read this, I’d encourage you to do so. Matt Leighninger and Quixada Moore-Vissing summed up the current state of affairs nicely in this paper from Public Agenda. As they said, “When citizens do not feel their voices matter, particularly when they have made the effort to ...
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