Public deliberation is about bringing a group of community members together to collectively provide input into a decision being made by high-level decisions-makers (usually government).
Our work as facilitators is how to enable these groups to work together collectively and to ensure they get to an outcome within a specific time-frame. We are always balancing the needs of the group with the work to be done.
We have been in conversation recently with a member of a deliberating panel who felt that the group needed to be more strongly connected to enable them to do the work.
We have been thinking about how to incorporate a greater level of community connection in the online environment and thought these points were worth sharing with our newsletter readers.
Working together
Working together collectively relies on many factors including group members:
building relationships with each other
being prepared to listen to each other
being prepared to examine evidence on a topic, and
being prepared to compromise to reach common ground.
There are also some practical factors such as being able to access the information provided, use online technology and the instructions from the facilitators being logical and clear.
Team building activities
When we are running online deliberations, we include a range of activities for the purpose of encouraging connections between group members. Some of the things we do are:
holding small group coffee chats prior to sessions starting, so people can get to know each other informally
including some form of relationship building activity on the first session, such as sociometry (where people live, how long they have lived in the area etc)
exploring social styles together so people understand how others like to learn and communicate
working in small groups in break out rooms to continue to build relationships through doing the work
building a playlist of music together
Even with our usual team-building activities, the panel member felt there was a need for a much greater connection to be made between panel members. These concerns involved:
connection needs to come before content
it is easy to forget others, when a connection has not been established
quieter people can be missed
not enough time to discuss issues in depth and to understand the lens that others bring to a conversation
lack of connection means people may make assumptions about others, and
if people bring any level of emotion into the room (perhaps just an underlying concern about their role or being in a learning situation), this emotion may prevent them from ‘hearing’ instructions and participating. Providing connections between people in the group may overcome these concerns as they feel more comfortable in the group.
In our discussions with the Panel Member, some suggestions for further building connection - either prior to or during public deliberations - included providing:
more time in each discussion activity to enable people to have more time to relate to each other, as well as discuss the content – especially when some time may be taken with working out the technology that is being used
a time-slot at the beginning or at different times in the program for individual members to speak to the whole group about what why they said yes to being involved and to share something about what is important to them
a scribe in small groups so the group members can concentrate on connecting with others and not the technology required for note-taking
The world has been on a learning curve over the past year with how to best conduct ourselves online - and we are no different with learning how to best facilitate public deliberations.
It is always very much appreciated to receive feedback and suggestions from panel members on ways to improve and build on our processes and tools for future deliberations.
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