Create a Culture of Engagement with Your Stakeholders | Delaney ...

Just like people, families or communities, organizations have a distinctive personality. This is the label or stereotype that people use to manage their relationships with the many organizations with whom they interface: schools, churches, their governments,? corporations, etc. The more complex the relationship (or the more it impacts us) the more detailed understanding of that organization we build.

I argue here that, the an organization?s willingness to be open and engaging (i.e. share decision making), the more people will judge, early in their relationship, the degree of openness an organization holds, or framed differently ? their culture of consultation. This initial assessment guides their subsequent decisions on if and how they will invest their time and emotional energies to become engaged.

What this means to organizations for attracting people to our awareness sessions, education programs, online engagements, or other initiatives for shared decision making, is that we need to be mindful of the authenticity of our previous engagement efforts. This legacy can either hinder or help us going forward, but don?t be mistaken that our record on authentic engagement is benign when people consider an invitation to get engaged.

This may mean that to build or re-build relationships we may have to over-scope our engagement to draw people in and demonstrate a true culture of consultation. This can get further complicated when trying to obtain internal buy-in, in the absence of an organizational culture of consultation.

It may sound like I am blaming the victim here, but my experience tells me that a stakeholder group?s past experience with an organization can be a disadvantage moving forward and needs to be addressed if building social capital will bring a positive return on investment.

R. Delaney

Richard leads the public consultation and facilitation practices. He is an accomplished consultation specialist and facilitator, having designed and managed over 200 international, national and local public consultation, decision-support and training sessions for federal, provincial and municipal governments, industry, and non-governmental organizations. Read More

Source: http://www.rmdelaney.com/news/create-a-culture-of-engagement-with-your-stakeholders/

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