I’m sure that my first grade teacher, Sister Mary Mercy, wouldn’t happy if she caught me saying this but let’s face it, some people are just jerks. Look, I’m a committed believer and practitioner of respecting people’s opinions and treating others with civility, regardless of how they honestly feel or how misinformed they might be. But the fact is, there are people who are just full of B.S., and dealing with them is a challenge. I finally found an idea. Read More …
Public participation, when done effectively and authentically, actively engages people in the conversation or issue that you’re trying to resolve. The Core Values established by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) does a good job of defining what that really means and differentiates public involvement from traditional public relations. Engaging people requires a different… read more →
Most conversations about controversial issues are waged as if whoever gets the most words in is declared the winner. And, really, how many conversations aren’t controversial these days. This story resonates because it supports a lot of things that we’ve said in past newsletters. Check it out. Read More …
Over the years, I’ve responded to lots of requests for a facilitator with very specific expertise in some kind of technical field or another, like transportation, public lands, public health, education, mining, environmental contamination or whatever the topic might be. Clients are most comfortable feeling that you know what they know, but I’ve always found… read more →
To many people, government is this big, scary, secret and intimidating institution run by a bunch of robotic bureaucrats. There are consequences for that perception – that government has allowed to fester – and we see those ramifications playing out now before our very eyes. Fixing the disconnect between the government and the governed needs… read more →
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 three guinea pigs to complete this… read more →
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 examples, try this one. Read… read more →
One of the best and most useful skills to develop in public engagement, facilitation, and conflict management is the ability to ask dialed in, compelling, clear, to-the-point, interesting questions. Great questions result in great answers, and questions that sound more like some kind of ham-fisted, bureaucratic interrogation usually get lousy or useless responses. For some… read more →
In the work that we do and in the classes that we teach, we increasingly run across people just starting out in this biz. Newer facilitators tend to be nervous about the idea of dealing with volatile situations and people with strong feelings on competing sides of issues. They’re usually looking for clear assurances, magic… read more →
A recent Pew research study finds that Americans tend to have a positive image of the work of research scientists (which is great news), but don’t think much of the ability of those scientists to communicate (which is entirely fixable). Once again, it corroborates what we’ve seen for years. Some of the best, smartest scientists, engineers and… read more →