Conflict is part of the human exerience – it’s baked into our DNA – and lasting solutions require resolving conflict. Here you can read the best information on conflict resolution strategies, hand curated by our experts and trainers in public solutions. People don’t always agree, and resolving those disagreements is key to what we do in public participation. Resolving conflicts takes a lot of “soft skills,” more so than just facts. Data rarely changes someone’s mind. To do that you need humility, respect, authenticity and transparency, qualities that are necessary in dealing with the public for your government, organization, or business. These are the newsworthy articles that we have found contribute to this conversation on conflict resolution. Enjoy, dear reader.
We talk about (re)building trust in government a lot in this newsletter and it will be interesting to watch the long-term reputation ramifications of the partial government shutdown – still underway, as of this writing. Public trust in government continues to erode and increasingly permeates down into state and local ...
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Government exists to provide for the common welfare. That means government is usually in the business of resolving conflicts for the greater good – or at least it’s supposed to. The greater good is frequently complex and almost always means compromise or some kind of consensus. But even when public ...
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I spent most of my earlier career years interviewing lots of different kinds of people about lots of topics, which was fertile training ground for the kind of work that we now do. So if you’re interested in getting better at drawing the values, needs and interests from people that ...
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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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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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Sincere apology is a necessary part of dealing with emotional people when those people have been wronged. How do you think Kevin Johnson did?...
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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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Recently, John Godec was asked to be part of the IAP2 webinar training. It was his great honor to present facilitative mediation, emotions and outrage to a sold out group of members.
Since it was a sold out group and a dynamic discussion, we thought that you, our dear reader, ...
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For a while now, it’s seemed clear that public participation is under assault at the highest levels of U.S. government. Functioning democracies share power with the governed. Of course there are arguments that politicians are obligated to wield their power on behalf of the people who elected them, therefore public ...
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