Lots of things changed on November 8, not the least of which was our time-honored tradition of conducting and relying on public opinion polls as reasonable predictors of outcomes. It was fascinating on election night to watch as it slowly dawned on the media that their entire paradigm had shifted; ...
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Community development is in trouble. By that I mean people who work for government and who help develop communities are in trouble. Not every public sector agency or employee, of course, but these are difficult days for those who believe that the pursuit of facts, truth, reason, building communities, and ...
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Ground Rules for Citizen Engagement
Across the US, civility is declining. We could argue about why, but the bottom line is that our communities’ capacity to have constructive conversations about things that matter is not what it used to be. People are not interested in finding agreement and some even ...
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As you have perused our website, you have been treated to several blogs about consensus building. What is it? What isn’t it? How do we achieve it? Why does it take so much time? What are some specific techniques to help you and your group gain consensus?
The Red, ...
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Facilitation Training
Every person who attends a meeting is an individual and it is essential that you not assume everyone is the same. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an assessment tool designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The questionnaire was ...
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In September, TPC presented a session at the IAP2 Annual conference in Montreal to explore key issues facing the future of public participation. When everyone is connected to everyone else and opinions can be posted to the world from your phone, does anyone really care about coming together to talk ...
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I’m thinking about the deplorable dissolution of respect and empathy for other people in our country these days. Who isn’t, right? Here’s a brave conflict resolution strategy from our northern friends that we could do well to take seriously.
I’m exceedingly fond of Canada, having grown up a slingshot distance ...
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For the past thirty years, I have specialized in angry people. As a public participation specialist, I am often called in to communities that are hurting. People are facing real problems—living next to hazardous and radioactive waste sites and other environmental issues, seeing property diminishment from development, loss of jobs ...
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The mainstream news media, and politics in general, has had a love affair with the word mandate for the past several presidential news cycles and that should make all of us a little crazy.
Elections are decided by vote, still probably the cleanest and most efficient system that we’ve come ...
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How are consensus decisions developed?
Consensus becomes possible within groups that are committed to honoring each person’s contribution. The collaborative problem solving process involves a shared commitment to listen 
respectfully to each other and the choice to allow each unique perspective to inform the whole view. A consensus-building group will ...
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