From engineers, planners, scientists and medical professionals, to policy analysts and academics, technical ‘experts’ play a critical role in most conversations and consultations.
 
Can they get lost in the detail – yes.
Can they become too focussed on a narrow set of options and possibilities – yes.
Can they forget how to speak plain English – absolutely.
 
BUT … before you think this article is going to talk about the usual way of ‘managing’ technical people in consultations, think again.
 
For most of my career I have developed and facilitated engagement processes where the purpose is to get the most from communities and external stakeholders. Yet, unless we get the most from the technical people, the community discussion can be at risk of becoming one-dimensional. It’s the same risk if there were just the technical people in the room.
 
But when our thinking moves to ‘managing’ the technical person, we miss a critical reframe that is needed.
 
It is hard for someone who has spent many years studying and then many more years practising their craft, to be put in a position where they feel like their work is being ‘assessed’ by a group of lay people. For people passionate about their chosen field, it is understandably confronting, at times belittling and often frustrating … so their resistance to engage is likewise understandable.
 
In many instances the engagement practitioners become the translators; we help make the technical world accessible to the public. Yet, what if we had another role to play?
 
One of the most toxic environments we can set up in consultations is one of ‘right and wrong’. When consultations feel like the technical teams’ work is being criticised and assessed as either being ‘right and wrong’, the sessions become a recipe for defensiveness, arrogance and invites a nasty battle of intellect that few people win.  Indeed, the world of ‘right or wrong’ sets everyone up for a binary conversation that guarantees there is only one winner. But what is the alternative?
 
The alternative is not about ‘right and wrong’ but ‘and/both’.
 
In many situations, both the community view and the technical view are right. The planned infrastructure could be designed in the right way, but it may not work for how the community live; the planned program may be the most efficient way to deliver a service, but it may not account for the human journey through that service.
 
​When we set up consultations as ‘right or wrong’, we make one critical error in our approach to engagement and facilitation … that error is not understanding what we are actually asking community/consumers and the technical people to do during a consultation.
 
What if the role of the technical person was to bring ALL of their expertise, experience, capability and wisdom? If what they offered the room was celebrated, not in a way that positions them as superior, but as people who speak a certain dialect that we all need to get to a viable option?
 
What if the non-technical people were also invited to bring ALL of their experience, capability and wisdom? If what they offered the room was celebrated, rather than feared or in a way that positions them as superior but as people who speak a different dialect that we all need to get to a viable option?
 
If we celebrated the fact that we need the diversity of views to deliver better solutions rather than creating environments where it becomes about ‘who gets their way’, it removes the drive to drop into “right & wrong”.
 
From the way technical people see the world, they are right. From the way lay people see the world, they are right … so what if we started with the possibility both are right AND both may be missing the perspective of the other way of looking at things?
 
It is an adjustment, not just for technical people, but for communities as well.
 
When there has been an historical imbalance of power, where the technical person makes all the decisions, consultations can become hijacked by people thinking that this is now their chance to dominate. But history shows us that, the way to address a power imbalance is not to flip the switch and feed all the power to the other side.
 
For example, our problems with gender inequality are not going to be solved through the creation of a female dominated society. It’s the over reliance on one frame of thinking about life that leads to imbalance of many kinds. Of course, it is important to remember that for those who are used to power, even offering balance in the power dynamic will feel like imbalance at first – that is a discomfort I can live with!
 
My favourite introduction at consultation sessions at the moment, is that we are here to be explorers and not lawyers. People have watched too many TV shows where lawyers ‘own the room’, outsmart their adversary, stretch the facts and deliver the clever and stinging insight that wins over the judge or jury.
 
We seem to be losing role models for how to explore different world views. You don’t see TV shows where someone spends time with an open mind and heart exploring something that was not previously understood. The open heart in this instance is a willingness to be wrong, a willingness to find out that our ‘right’ is right for us but may not be ‘right’ for everyone.
 

 

 
The date is Tuesday 22nd February 2011 and the time 12.51pm, and the City of Christchurch, New Zealand is about to be changed forever. It took a 6.2 scale earthquake, 10 seconds to liquefy the soil and destroy much of the city and surrounds. 185 people lost their lives and large tracks of land have now been deemed uninhabitable.
 
While it is not uncommon for people to come together in a crisis, something quite remarkable has emerged from the rubble … a community-led vision for both the short and long-term rebuilding of the physical and social infrastructure of the city.
 
Vacant land, where buildings once stood and are still waiting to be rebuilt, has been turned into parklets and playgrounds. Some have even been turned into paid parking, where the funds are quarantined for other community development activities.
 
There has been thought given to active transport (cycling, walking, e-scooters) to reduce the pollution from cars, work done to initiate urban farming that delivers a paddock to plate supply chain within the CBD and even returns the waste back to the paddock for composting. This is a self-sustaining commercial venture that demonstrates sustainable ways to reduce food miles.
 
By all accounts the people of Christchurch have grabbed the opportunity to review and regather with both hands. It’s not perfect, and I am sure there are still plenty of issues, more healing and rebuilding to be done … but the start that they have made is inspiring.
 
However, there could be a deeper lesson for engagement and facilitation practitioners to consider here – the way in which physical structures lock in a certain way of relating and being with each other.
 
Many of us face ingrained systems and thinking that serve as a speed bump or even a dead end on the road to change. But the example of Christchurch could be showing us two things:

1. That institutions and people can change ingrained systems and ways of working.
2. That what locks people in is not just the structure of institutions but the physical structures we create.

What is intriguing in the Christchurch example is that the walls of these institutions came crumbling down before the institutions and systems changed. On some level it makes perfect sense. If the people and systems building the buildings are locked into a certain way of living, then those buildings will be created to support the system that is there.

Think about the hallowed institution of government and the protocol that surrounds how elected officials interact and what it does for the quality of decision making. There is something about Humans that seems to be hard-wired to maintain and even defend the status quo. It is not until people seem to be quite literally broken that our humility kicks in and we become willing to work in a different way.

But could we consider if this level of change can be achieved without the need for tragedy?
 
In a world where everything counts, change may need to be considered on a deeper level than just the mental desire to do something different. Step out from the safety of those meeting room tables, turn off those power points and look across the room, sit in circles so you can see each other and you could even look at the photos on the walls and the messages they are sending.
 
If we want people to free up how they and/or others think then it seems incumbent on us all to explore the subtle changes we can all be making to help people move together differently, rather than doing the same thing and expecting something different.
 
If people respond with discomfort then maybe, that is the start of a change you are looking for … What habitual structures do you have for working with groups that may be a rut?
 

 
For us that process always starts with the following four questions:
 
(1)What does engagement need to achieve to be of value to the organisation?
 
Engagement is predicated on the need for the process to be meaningful for the community and stakeholders and while this should never change, the best way to avoid tokenistic engagement and to strengthen the organisation’s desire to engage, is to ensure the outcomes and processes are meaningful for the organisation. 
 
(2)What does quality engagement look like from the organisation’s point of view?
 
This question flows on from the first and asks the organisation to get more specific about what quality engagement looks like. One issue with engagement is when decision makers dismiss the engagement outcomes by trying to invalidate the process as a whole. More often than not, it is because there is not a clear and agreed measure of quality.
 
(3)What does quality engagement look like from the community/stakeholder point of view?
 
Engagement is not one way and the quality lens, likewise, needs to look out as much as it looks in. There is nothing like asking the organisation to put itself in the shoes of the community to deepen the understanding of how they might engage.
 
(4)What is the organisation’s current engagement mindset and what does it need to be?
 
You can’t define the change you want, without defining the change you want! Embedding engagement is no different and there is no one size fits all; each organisation will be at different stages and have different drivers and goals. While there are some still having the debate about the need for engagement, there are certainly many more that have already recognised its value and benefit.
 
Organisations first ask ‘why’, then they ask ‘how’ and then some even ask, ‘how else’. 
 
Over our time working with embedding engagement , we have discovered four main approaches that organisations take to engagement and that having a conversation internally about the kind of approach you currently take and the one that you want to take/need to take is a critical first step when wanting to make engagement normal.
 

​As a way to support you to make engagement normal in your neck of the woods, this dial can be downloaded here.
​

My truth, your truth, our truth, THE truth … in this post truth era of ‘alternative facts’ it would seem that the most needed commodity on the planet at the moment is the hardest to find.
 
People and societies are asking for a clear way through the many complex and challenging issues we face. Climate change, the rate of family violence, depression, dementia, obesity, slavery (aka. human trafficking), the degree of trust in governments and religious institutions, the ongoing intolerance and discrimination that occurs due to race, religion or gender, corporate greed, abuse of the elderly, to name but a few.
 
The list of issues and the many more not listed, suggests that we need a different approach or maybe we need a very, very old approach.
 
When the suggestion is made that a different approach is needed, it is easy to get general head nodding and agreement, but then the need to actual look at what we personally believe or the need to change what we personally do and the age-old battle between power and truth plays out … Here are two short examples, a few hundred years apart, to set the scene for the next part of this exploration.
 
Dr Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor who lived in the mid 1800s. He was concerned about the deaths of women who gave birth in the hospitals where he worked. He discovered that the hospitals where autopsy were also conducted had higher rates of death. Even though they did not know much about bacterial infection at the time, he implemented a regime of hand and equipment cleaning that led to the reduction in mortality rates of these women.
 
Today we take this understanding for granted and would scoff at any suggestion that this was anything but good practice, but the medical profession of the day did not take kindly to the suggestion that they may be somehow responsible for the death of their patients.

Power trumped truth and Dr Semmelweis was run out of town. In that moment where lives were on the line, those who had taken an oath to protect our well-being chose power over truth.
 
We might write this off as an issue from centuries ago but the reality is, the same thing happens today – the politicisation of climate change, the lobbying by the food industry against any changes to the levels of sugar in foods, the protection of sensationalistic journalism over reporting of facts and balance.
 
There are many more examples in modern times where evidence is dismissed, manipulated or simply vilified to avoid admitting an seemingly uncomfortable but simple truth … 'we got it wrong'. In many regards it’s no big deal, people make mistakes all the time; the adult option is to learn and move on, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
 
Who hasn’t been involved in some kind of project where the ‘powers that be’ determine that something should be a certain way, yet all the evidence suggests that this is the wrong direction?
 
As a society we have placed more value in appeasing the power base than we have in building collective understanding. It is an approach that is exemplified by the adversarial models of the Westminster system, the legal system, and even the academic realms focus more on the rigorous defence/prosecution of an idea rather than collective understanding.
 
The basic premise makes sense: test your idea rigorously and the best ideas will survive. But when power and the need to be right get in the way, it becomes okay to bend the truth, to ignore or make up facts, to incite outrage and to stack the deck. One side takes I step away from truth and the other takes two. We justify it by saying that, if we don’t, the other side will, and in doing so give another crank to the flywheel that keeps things ticking along as they always have.
 
We glorify this adversarial approach in TV shows and continue to reward fear-based campaigns and media articles with our reactions and indignation. However, the community has become tired of being manipulated like this; but rather than change the systems that support this way of operating, the community is  beginning to use the same strategies against the decision makers.
 
Organisation complain of less civility and genuine interest in understanding at public consultations. The public have gotten better at inciting and threatening those in power and the bullied have become the bullies. It makes community leadership a fraught position where it is fatal to have made a mistake in the past or show any glimpse of fallibility or uncertainty. Community leaders are pressed into the relentless demand for quick solutions that relieve and appease. Everyone wants an answer but no one wants to do the hard work that it takes to keep communities and organisations strong.
 
But humility, vulnerability and uncertainty are the hard work that makes communities strong. We need places for people to explore what they don’t know, we need places of humility where it is okay to start a conversation with ‘we’ve got it wrong’, rather than ‘this is why I am right’.
 
 “The descent into right and wrong, is simply a sign of the absence of truth.”    Liane Mandalis
  
The reality is, there is no magic bullet. No three step program that will bridge the divide. The principles that have underpinned quality conversation are not new, just not always followed; so here is a simple memory jogger:

1. NO BLAME/NO FAULT: We all have thinking errors, biases and our own ‘power’ structures that we unconsciously protect. Truth is a humility this lies beyond those structures. There is such a thing as a unified truth and understanding that groups can arrive at, but only if arriving at that place is desired more than being right.
2. LIVED EXPERIENCE IS EVIDENCE: Science is one form of evidence and has an important role to play, but our own lives and experiences are also evidence. What is felt is also evidence or at least a starting point for another way of understanding. If we only rely on scientific evidence and do not explore our lived experience, nothing new is tried and we end up in an intellectual battle, limiting our exploration of what is needed and what is possible.
3. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE: In any system we all have a role to play. Pointing fingers is the easy part, taking responsibility for our part is the doorway to understanding others and allows for others to explore their own role. 
4. GO TO THE BIG PICTURE: While there are many who stoke the fire of individuality, humans are social beings and do better as a collective. This means there is something to learn from each other in every problem or issue. We ignore this because it feels too big, but we don’t need to change the world before looking at the learning, we just need to look at the collective learning and apply #3 (personal responsibility) – we only change the world when we change our world.

 
Of course, there is more to say on all of these and more to explore … but at least we are having the conversation.

​A number of years ago, Lorenz Aggens offered us the Orbits of Participation. A concentric circle model that explores the different roles and types of influence community members and stakeholders might have in relation to project decision making. His Orbits of Participation laid out five different roles that show an increasing level of influence from those that are at most ‘Aware’ of the project but not seeking or likely to have any influence; to those who might be ‘Reviewers’ of any options, outcome or report; followed by those who would be ‘Advisors’ to the project, offering either expertise or local knowledge to those who are the ‘Creators’ of the options being considered and finally the closest to the project are the ‘Decision Makers’.
 
The orbits of participation It is an elegant model and one that is used around the world as a stakeholder mapping tool. These orbits offer an important perspective on influence over decision making and even on different roles that may assist with balancing power differentials, e.g. shifting people closer to or further away from the decision maker role.
 
However, the orbits of participation stop at the decision making and don’t flow through to implementation. For many projects, getting to the decision is an important goal but when the decision relates to services and program, implementation is where the real work begins. A recent engagement program within the Health Sector on a Healthy Weight Action Plan brought this to fact into the spotlight. As we mapped the engagement process, we knew that we could not talk about the decision making process without talking about implementation.
 
Strategies and plans are important, but it is often the implementation where things fall over.
 
Thus, the Orbits of Implementation were born. The obits of implementation are an exploration of the different roles and levels of influence that people and organisations may have over the delivery of any given plan, strategy or initiative.
 
In the tradition of Aggens, they follow the same concentric circle model but brings its focus to implementation. They are not offered as a replacement for the Orbits of Participation but as a complement;

​While the case could be made for a different order, the following rationale is provided for the layout:
 

• Funders/Sponsors: Without funders or sponsors any project or initiative is dead. As such, while they may have less direct involvement in the implementation, they are central to it going ahead.
•  Coordinators: They are the people who are the closest and most influential to the initiative as they help to set up the systems, process and pace of what is being delivered.
•  Deliverers: They are the ones closest to or at the coal face who have the direct responsibility for the consistency of the delivery and the alignment to the project’s/initiative’s objectives. They experience firsthand the practicalities of what is needed for its delivery. They carry significant influence, either through their alignment to the initiative’s objectives or in opposition to it.
•  Champions: They bring their ability and willingness to influence others and support the project/initiative. Their role is about brining other to the project and to be advocates and ambassadors within their own circles of influence. While their influence the more outward than on the project, it can be argued that their willingness to offer this type support would be limited by how much influence they have had on the project design (see Orbits of Participation).
•  Evaluators: They carry their own realm of influence and it could be argued that, being more removed from implementation, places them in a more neutral position from which to conduct the evaluation. In most cases, their influence, while critical, is less immediate.

 
How to use the orbits
 
If you have an engagement project where implementation is a key risk, consider the Orbits of Influence alongside the Orbits of Participation. It is common that people’s willingness to take on an implementation roles is limited by their level of involvement in the original decision making process.
 
For example: You may find that involving people as ‘Creators’ (Orbits of Participation) may be a useful way to build a group of ‘Champions’ (Orbits of Implementation) when it comes to implementation.
 
So. mapping the desired required implementation role can help identified if there are people that have been left out of the decision making process or may even influence what role they have in that process.  

We have found it a useful tool and interested in your reflections as you get to know the orbits.
​
You can download a template of the Orbits of Implementation here

I can’t recall the last time I facilitated a workshop where the focus wasn’t on finding a solution, making a plan and developing priorities. We listen to the experts, we hear views from the room, we talk about what we want, hope for and need and we diligently set about making plans. It’s all good productive stuff.
 
But I am wondering more and more about the power of NOT knowing, the power of NOT jumping to a solution. Maybe even not getting to a solution in the meeting at all.
 
It’s the long-lost art of pondering. Sitting with a topic and reflecting on it from many sides and allowing the answer to emerge, rather than focusing on picking the best solution.
 
Solutions are great, they relieve a certain type of pressure, they give us hope, when they seem deliverable and fit within what people can get on board with. But as Peter Senge, one of the exponents of learning organisation models says;
 
“Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions”
 
The problem with solutions is that they come with an existing set of filters or said another way, bias. Time is precious, the demands placed on organisations is growing but unless we are willing to come to a conversation and NOT know the solution, we end up driving for what will relieve and not what is really needed. It is the ultimate way to limit creativity and deep thinking.
 
So, the alternative could be about stepping into the power of NOT knowing.
 
Being willing to deeply acknowledge the fact that after many years of trying, we simply don’t know! There are so many issues that society has not really moved the needle on and so many issues that we seem to need to revisit, time and time again.
 
“Burnout doesn’t occur because we’re solving problems; it occurs because we’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over” Susan Scott
 
What would happen if we allowed ourselves the honesty, humility and space to dive deep into not knowing. The aim is not to build a morbid sense of defeatism but rather discovering that just how much we know about what we don’t know!!
 
Why is this problem still a problem – for your organisation or community?
What is the organisations role, what are other people’s roles? How many solutions have we tried and why didn’t they work or if they worked why didn’t they stick?
 
This is not about finger pointing but being humble enough to name what is and isn’t working. No one person carries the responsibility for something not working, leaders need teams, teams need each other. We all affect each other in overt and subtle ways. The key to this conversation is the focus on both collective and personal responsibility.
 
What does this problem, remind you of? – is this a trend that you have seen before?
 ​
Putting profit before people, fitting people into overly ridged systems, making decisions based without considering the people we are affecting.
 
There seem to be overarching themes to many issues, that are often dismissed as being part of the human condition, but what if there is more to explore?
 
It’s fair to say that NOT knowing irks most of us, and this is not suggesting we don’t deal with crisis or keep people suffering until they learn their lesson but recognising that something different needs a different direction in the conversation.
 
Sometimes we need to go backwards to go forward!
 
This can be hard to do once you have invested in getting a room full of people together that are well trained in solving problem and is about realism and not defeatism. Humans are naturally innovative and purposeful, so the answers will come but only when we ask the right question.
 
Solutions are not always what they seem and with today’s complexity we need to be able rekindle our ability to let ourselves NOT know
 
By Joel Levin

For the past 30+ years I have been working with groups of all shapes and sizes and there are a few golden rules for those looking to stretch their facilitation skills. Facilitation is an absolute privilege that requires care and consideration when stepping into the role. You get to be a fly on the wall in some incredibly and at times intimate discussions and with that comes a responsibility to take that role both seriously and lightly because you often need both! Here are some foundations in facilitation that sit at the core of the facilitators work to consider;

Our facilitation skills course focuses on all of these foundational qualities.

​Our advance facilitation skills course, takes the final step and begins to explore the outer circle. The moments when you need to step away from trying to control the process, trying to keep things on track and need to be able to rely on the most powerful tool in a facilitators tool bag…awareness.
 
Awareness of the group, of how the way any given process is working and of how you are throughout it all.
 
The reality is we do all of these things all of the time, and there is no place better to start developing your skills than to give it a go! 

Having a bird’s eye view across sectors, regions, disciplines and levels of management in my work is amazing. Over the years I have grown to appreciate the passion, commitment and dedication that people show regardless of which sector they work in. It turns out that no sector has a monopoly on passion or commitment. It is also evident that no sector has managed to crack the ever-elusive goal of work life balance. In fact, it is becoming clear that despite all this passion, people’s energy reserves are running at an all-time low. As such and without being an alarmist, this blog is diverting from the accepted approach of talking about what we do and is going to look at how we do it.
 
Regardless of the dedication and our ability to work ‘smarter’, without looking more deeply at how we look after ourselves, we end up running on a wet marble floor, it looks fancy at the start but eventually you’ll slip and fall.
 
But how do we grab hold of something that can be so personally confronting and a minefield of strict regimes, New Year resolutions and battles of will? It makes little sense that self care can be turned into a battle or dogma, after all its self-care. Yet for some reason we can replace beating ourselves up with work, with beating ourselves up about our diet or lifestyle choices. 

Self care, isn't a chore, it's a daily choice, NOT making the choice to self care is what turns life into a chore.  It becomes a leak in the boat, that make it run slower and less able to move through the water. If we can see we have a hole in our boat, we have choices, fix it, patch over it or buy a bigger bilge pump and wonder why we are wasting so much fuel and money on pumps.

For some reason, most of us do the last two. In fact we have gotten so good at patching over things or spending money on 'bilge pumps' our view of what is normal has shifted over time.
 
For example, it is now ‘normal’ to have work emails ping into the home through smart phones, to the point that we never really turn off. It is now ‘normal’ to walk around with a take away coffee cup, in fact not only normal, it is a social ritual. This was not the norm 10 years ago so how does it become normal?
 
The reason these things become ‘normal’ is that we are very clever at finding ways to cope with the next level of stress/distress being presented. We are incredibly skilled at offsetting stress and pressure with supplementary fuels like sugar, alcohol, caffeine, over or under exercising, getting lost in movies/books/TV/ computers or creating energy through emotional drama. 

This approach is the equivalent of patching over the issue or buying a bigger bilge pump. We ending up spending lots of time and money on these things but they never actually plug the whole. In fact, sometimes they add more holes to the bottom of the boat.

What gets tricky is working out if what we are doing if supporting us or masking the issue. Try this exercise, choose one of the supplements you use and imagine if you only used that one all of the time, in fact what if you increased the ‘dose’ to make up for not using the others. How long before your body said ‘something’s not working here’? Would your body still say having that supplement is a good thing?

We seem to have an innate ability to know how much of each supplement to use so as to not trigger a response from our body that might suggest that chosen supplement is not the best for us.  Indeed we are resilient and smart we are able to hide a deeper question  -

“Is how I live/work really normal or is it just something we have gotten used to?”
 
The simplest cross chek we use, is to look around and see how others are doing. If most people have an energy drop in the afternoon, it must be normal, if most people use supplementary fuels, it must be normal. But by using this approach, we can all incrementally keep dropping our vitality and increasing our suppliments.
 
What is societies current sense of normal achieving in terms of vitality and well-being?
 
Since 1980, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of people with diabetes[1]. In fact lifestyle diseases are now the number one cause of death globally[2]. When the number one cause of death gloabbly are preventable lifestyle choices, surely the question needs to be asked, how has this become normal?
 
It seems that we are becoming so good at ‘coping’ that we are masking a broader decline in our well-being.
 
Maybe we need to reset the benchmark for vitality?

• Is it possible to consider getting everything done in a day/week and not rely on caffeine, alcohol or refined sugars etc.? Is it possible to get to the end of the day/week and not want to hide away in a book, screen, bottle of wine or sporting contest?
• Is there a normal level of vitality that we had as children but have long forgotten?

This is not about suggesting a life of abstinence, but rather an honesty about why and how we choose to do what we do. Because without this honesty we progressively and ever so incrementally spiral down into 'new normals' without really clocking the overall change. We can then find ourselves justifying, defending or being critical of any suggestion that life was anything but normal.
 
In recent years, there has been a wonderful mental health campaign called R U Ok day, where people are encouraged to show they care enough to ask people they know if they are okay.

So for this month, take a moment and ask yourself,

• Is your current vitality ‘normal’ or something you have gotten used to?
• Are you  ‘solutions’ and something makes you feel better or do they contribute to a self sustianing vitality?

​If you feel better ask yourself “better compared to what?”


[1]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-07/australia-urged-to-consider-sugar-tax-amid-grim-diabetes-stats/7305804
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-28/lifestyle-diseases-the-worlds-biggest-killer/2695712

 
Yes, there is a song from a bygone era of wide ties and bad haircuts and while the line is corny, the sentiment is true, particularly when it comes to organisations wanting to engage the community or other stakeholders.

In day-to-day life, apologies can roll off the tongue, ‘sorry for the bump’, ‘sorry for being late’, ‘sorry for missing the wedding anniversary (again).’ In fact, consider the people you have more respect for, the ones who pretend nothing has happened, or those that genuinely apologise from the understanding that they did something wrong?

For most of us, the person that is willing to show humility is elevated in our esteem, rather than diminished. In part because we all know it can be hard to swallow our pride and in part because it reminds us that none of us are perfect. 

However, while we appreciate the power of apologies on a personal level, organisations get very nervous about the prospect of delivering one. The most common reason given is that it might increase the chance of litigation, yet researchers are putting this myth to bed.

One study showed that a genuine apology resulted in 73% of recipients being more inclined to accept an offer/settlement (which is not always money) but when the apology was ‘half baked’ (my words, not theirs) this dropped to 35%. If no apology was given, there was a 50/50 chance. This awareness is now becoming standard operating procedure for the medical profession with their 'open disclosure' policies. 

This is interesting for other sectors to consider. ... in essence, if you want to engage people and are getting some form of push-back or outrage then there is a good chance you have done something wrong. This means that apologising may be an important step in the re-establishing of the relationship.

Yes people can react for different reasons and it is important not to take the blame for something you didn't do, but jumping to defense and denial becomes a sure fire way to inflame the situation.

Which means, we need to be careful that it doesn't become a strategy to try to manipulate. We are seeing this more and more, we also see apologies being made by celebrities, politicians and sports stars who have fallen from grace front the media with an apology, only to repeat the same behaviour.  

So apologise, but it needs to be done in a genuine way. We need to be willing to name the mistake, claim it and let them tell you how they have been affected by it ... some may say it's a courageous move, but others (like the health sector) know that it makes good sense because they know it works.

The upcoming public course on Strategies for Dealing with Opposition and Outrage in Public Participation will present more on this strategy and the other 5 strategies developed by Peter Sandman.

​At a recent International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) breakfast in WA, three leaders presented their views on leadership in engagement; their insights were too valuable not to be shared more widely. The speakers were:

• Dr Shayne Silcox,  CEO of the City of Melville
• Anthony Vuleta, CEO of the Town of Victoria Park
• Catherine Ferrari, General Manager Customer and Community, Water Corporation

This is what I gleaned from their contributions:
​

Rather than having every decision go through management, this approach is about giving staff the authority to use their expertise and understanding. 
Dr Silcox called this an empowerment warrant.  Which was not just about working with the understanding that staff should trust their judgment but making it clear to them that he will back them, when they do.

Having an engagement policy was seen as an important step in having your staff on the same page BUT the policy needs to be lived. This means that it needs to be up for review and that staff are given the chance to practise and apply it.

Mr Vuleta has given staff from across the organisation the chance to be trained and get involved in engagement projects. There are people facilitating workshops from across the whole organisation, at the same time not learning an engagement policy exist but how it is lived and breathed in real life.

While organisations may have a team of people with engagement expertise, engagement is not something that is just for them.  Ms Ferrari made the point that different parts of the organisation can begin to think that ‘engagement is their job’ but the fact is, engagement is everybody’s job. 
The more your technical/project people have the responsibility and exposure to engagement the better they understand how it works in their context. 

What was truly surprising was that all three leaders were genuinely confused that other leaders could not or did not see the inherent value in engagement. It was noted that at times it does take a painful and sometime public failure to trigger that awareness but in the reality of all the management fads to come and go, engagement is one of the only truly NEW and constructive paradigms to be offered to organisations.

As such, there is value in backing your staff to build skills and understanding. Not everyone needs to be the ‘expert’ but most people need some understanding.
In all these cases these leaders have invested in in-house training and staff development. This was made available not just for communications and engagement staff but for the technical /project people and leadership as well.  

​The Town of Victoria Park now have nine people who have completed the IAP2 Certificate of Engagement and 70 people who have done the one day IAP2 Engagement Essentials course, making the language of engagement more widely accessible and understood across the whole organisation. Their councillors have also completed a 2hr ‘Understanding engagement’ workshop


To find out more about IAP2 training for your organisation.