If you’re ‘lucky’ enough to deal with public confrontations and tough meetings in your work, you know that managing your own emotions and reactions is one of the challenges of the facilitation profession. I hope you’ll find the following useful....
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Most people working in public service come to it with advanced degrees. They’ve usually learned a specific way of presenting factual information and arguments. That scientific method works great for scoring good grades but not so much for public presentations and documents. Leading with the main point is important. If ...
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Spoiler alert: Although it wasn’t intended to be, I see this next piece of research as a pretty good argument for skillful facilitation. The social dynamics of the groups seem to be the root cause. This only references one study from Virginia Tech, so take it for what it’s worth, ...
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Good issue and stakeholder assessments are key to planning and executing effective public participation projects. The more we really know about the issues and nuances and the more we learn about the people who will be or think they’ll be affected by some action or plan, the more we’ll understand ...
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Working with the public and facilitating groups, especially oftentimes upset people, isn’t for the faint of heart – it takes courage, and courage requires confidence. For most healthy people, I think confidence can ebb and flow; it isn’t an absolute constant, and sometimes, when confidence is a little low it’s ...
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Eventually we’re going to have to figure out how to talk to, deal with, and work with people that we don’t agree with or maybe even don’t like very much. That’s going to require (re)developing a skillset that feels like we’re losing. I’m seeing more being written about the need ...
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Warren Buffet said, “Trust is like the air we breathe – when it’s present, nobody really notices; when it’s absent, everybody notices.” The components of trust are important to recognize: think authenticity, rigorous logic and empathy.
Most of us don’t trust social media, but most of us still ...
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There’s an old lawyer axiom that says, If you don’t have the law, argue the facts. If you don’t have the facts argue the law. If you don’t have the law or the facts, just argue. You’ve probably noticed that truth and facts are having a tough time these days. ...
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One of the behavior changes that we talk about is giving affirmation and respect to people. And no, I don’t mean pandering to bad behavior or bad ideas, but giving people some respect for the way they feel and even maybe some empathy for the fact that the system runs ...
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