Do you have trust issues? Do you look both ways when crossing a roundabout? There is a conscious effort by those currently in power to create mistrust and divisions within the U.S. population – us versus them. They’re trying to create a kind of national Stockholm Syndrome.
By some ...
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For months, we’ve said we’d avoid getting dragged into current politics in this little blog, but we would not just accept lies, and we’d continue to focus on better ways to engage people and tell the truth well. The daily announcements and rhetoric coming from the current Washington regime can ...
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One of the best quotes I’ve heard comes from George Bernard Shaw, who said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” It means that it’s common for us to think that people will interpret what we say and write just as we intend ...
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Doing public participation has never really been easy. We’ve occasionally worked for organizations that truly believe and value the benefit of including citizens in their plans, but more often than not, clients tend to view public involvement as more of a necessary evil. Professionals rarely relish the idea of sharing ...
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When you’ve finished delivering your presentation to an audience of three, or three hundred, there is often that rather uncomfortable moment when you’ve run out of things to say, the audience is staring back at you wondering what’s going to happen next, and you’re wondering the same thing.
This ...
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“There are no stupid questions” is a popular saying that we use to encourage people to ask questions that they might be afraid of asking, and used in that context it’s a perfectly nice and helpful thing to say. But, the truth is, there are lots of stupid questions, and ...
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I promised myself not to pontificate again about government not communicating to people very well, although it rarely does (… and you see where that’s gotten us). Don’t get me wrong, there are some truly gifted communicators working in government, but they’re usually working with one hand, both feet and ...
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Every day we wake up to news about another White House assault on experts and reason. The systematic dismantling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the work and proven policies of most other science ...
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Empathy has always been rightfully regarded as a key ingredient for successful community engagement and building trust. Craig Spencer said in the New York Times recently, “America’s leaders are increasingly casting aside empathy and compassionate care as dangerous liabilities. Elon Musk has called empathy ‘the fundamental weakness of Western civilization,’ ...
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Lots of contentious issues bring Google-Experts out of the woodwork; people who claim to have counter facts because they’ve “done their own research” on the subject. It’s absolutely true that people who are affected by projects or initiatives do indeed bring wisdom and oftentimes ground-truthed knowledge that is really valuable ...
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