Public and community engagement, involvement and participation is what we are doing as consultants. It is also what we help others do most effectively. We work with teams, companies and agencies on reaching consensus through public participation and collaboration. We usually find ourselves bridging divides by creating spaces where people are willing to participate to build solutions. Community engagement builds consensus. And below you have some of the best of the news and tips that we have found about how to engage communities. Or what happens when you do not. The latest news handpicked by our public sector consultants, all wrapped up with a sometimes snarky – yet always informed – perspective. Enjoy!
Having actively worked for and now consulting for both corporate and public service organizations, I’ve watched how big institutions can soon start to think in an insular way, which tends to be fatal to their mission and success. Once big government agencies start focusing solely on their own culture and ...
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Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the details and nuance of what we do for a living, so once in a while it’s good to take a breath and remind ourselves of the bigger picture of how good, effective meetings need to happen....
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Government agencies are supposed to be the epitome of how a society organizes and authorizes things to be done for the common good, which, although necessary, easily gets out of hand, intimidates constituents, sometimes feels very arrogant and really ticks people off. So one of the dozens of things that ...
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Melania Trump went to the border to look at the kids several days ago and wore a jacket with the above word graphic on the back. The rest of us are left to wonder; was it supposed to be a statement of solidarity, a protest, ...
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Good communication and engagement starts with connections and that typically requires conversation. Our focus on tools and electronic media has resulted in our degraded skills in interpersonal communication. It really is a craft and here are 10 rules for getting better at it....
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The Participation Company recently had the honor to be involved in workshop facilitation and share their risk communication training with the Los Angeles District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their local agencies responsible for levee operations and maintenance.
As excerpted from the ...
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A lack of communication by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) appears to have been a key factor in U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro’s decision to dismiss charges filed by the federal government against Cliven Bundy earlier this year. A clearly ...
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John Godec was asked to give a facilitation skill training to the IAP2 via webinar. As this training was for a sold out group of members, we thought that you would enjoy having this training for yourself.
This is part 3 in the series. If you missed the earlier two ...
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This newsletter offers varying ideas and approaches for engaging and communicating better with the public, including presentations, words, (re)building trust, opposition, better meetings, conflict resolution and all the related subjects. But the real core of our (TPC’s) consulting and training practice is building and nurturing dialogue among people. Sometimes there’s ...
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John Godec was asked to be part of the IAP2 webinar training on the topics of facilitative mediation, emotions and outrage. He talks about what a facilitator does to deal with people’s emotions. Since this training was for a sold out group of members, we thought that you would benefit ...
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