I have to admit I’m getting just a little emotional writing this because finally … after all these years … I get to marry two of the more important and instrumental things from my professional and personal lives. Better meetings, meet better beer. Beer, I’d like you to meet meetings. ...
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The truth is that life constantly changes. Almost all public participation issues and conflict are the result of change; mostly about the changes that you need to initiate and people supposedly need to accept. It’s equally true that we all tend to hate change, especially when someone else or some ...
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For just a brief moment, you might have thought that this “brief” headline was referring to underwear – if that got your attention, mission accomplished. This is actually not about underwear, but it is about the importance of being brief. In this age of hyper communication with everyone vying ...
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We’ve talked in the past about the importance and differences between sympathy and empathy, particularly when dealing with emotional, resistant, or angry people. There’s a third component that plays into dealing with these tough situations and as public policy proponents and facilitators, we need to be emotionally intelligent enough ...
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The latest results from the ongoing Edelman Trust Barometer, as usual, don’t bode well for people’s perception of government. There were hopeful signs a couple of years back that people were starting to feel a little less cynical about government in general, but the pandemic seems to have taken ...
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In last month’s newsletter, we mentioned that flaws – mistakes – are forgivable, but bad intentions are not. People who work in and with the public sector are usually motivated by the best of intentions; it’s usually why they choose to get into this line of work in the first ...
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You’re doing stressful work with stressed out people in an especially stressful time. Did I mention that we’re all stressed? I’m not trying to diminish the real challenge that many people are facing these days, but doing the work that you do is important and not for the faint hearted. ...
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We’re always looking for tips and strategies that we think will make your job easier and more effective. Sometimes these tips can be complex and some require a fair amount of time and work to master. And then there’s this. ...
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People tend to run from conflict like they’re fleeing the scene of a double homicide. Truth is that most negotiations feel like a conflict to people so we tend to avoid learning much about it. But negotiation just doesn’t have to be as contentious as we think it is. ...
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COVID-19 has now killed more than 900,000 people in the United States. We knew what needed to be done to prevent many of those deaths, but victims were unwilling to take those steps. Knowing that COVID kills ten times as many people as the flu, people still defy the evidence, ...
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