Twenty Tools, Tips and Trust Building Stategies

1. Begin With Co-Hosting. When two or more groups are potentially or actually at odds with each other over environmental matters, it is always better to co-convene, co-host, or co-manage a stakeholder process. A respected farmer working side-by-side with a respected environmentalist (or Native American, or government representative) sets a tone from the beginning that all points of view and all ways of knowing will be welcome.

2. Create a Game Plan and Group Covenants. Stakeholder processes usually have beginnings, middles, and ends but, at the start, not everyone knows the plan. Make game plans negotiable and transparent. Groups come with expectations that a collaboration will be made up of diverse interests. They also may have expectations about how long it will take to accomplish the work. Stakeholder groups require flexibility for work to go faster or slower but "time" is a key element of culture and handled differently by different people. Engage the group in some gentle discussions about how much time people can devote to meetings and how they will handle attendance, alternates, and "logistics."

3. Concentrate on Relationships First. People need to know each other as individuals, not just as scientists, community members, or representatives of organizations. Learn each other’s histories. Share a meal together. If people do not know each other, they will not trust each other and will revert to fear-based interactions. As a collateral procedure, it is often useful to have stakeholders create interpersonal "contexts" by having each participant identify what the impacts of a decision or agreement might mean in their own lives versus for their community or group.

4. Be Transparent About Decision Making. Clarify the "rules of the road" before you start trying to build agreements -- who will make final decisions, how representation will be established, how the group will decide things. Craft opening moves that will help the parties manage complex technical discussions. Set the stage also for informal versus formal across-the-table discussions by asking stakeholders to identify when they are speaking officially or unofficially.

5. Pay Attention to Power. Community groups, scientists, indigenous people, government professionals and environmental advocates come to the table with different kinds of standing, control over resources, and access to decision-making. Although power relationships are rarely as fixed as people think, most groups have a "predominant" way of knowing things, a shared prism through which group members take in and give out information. This way of knowing may be institutionalized in laws, rules, and protocols or it may simply be "the way we do things around here." Ask group members: "What is the dominant way of knowing in this group?" "Who has power to control what information gets considered and what information is not salient?" "How can we give opportunity, credence, and value to the ways of knowing that are not predominant?"

6. Create Rituals. Stakeholder groups often invent or discover small habits that give members a sense of identity, though as individuals they represent different organizations and interests. Small routines – starting with a traditional song or chant, bringing homemade food, celebrating birthdays, ending with a story, buying everyone a hat with the name of the group -- can become a small reference point that helps a group develop good working relationships.

7. Balance Linear Processes With Iterative Strategies. Overly structured processes and agendas with detailed times are off-putting to people who come from story telling traditions. Resist the temptation to bear down directly on "problems" and "solutions" and "getting right to work." Instead, make sure the process has enough forward momentum to satisfy some people and enough story telling and circling back to values and history to satisfy others.

8. Talk About "Values." Explicitly talk about the values participants bring to the table before you talk about problems, data, or potential solutions. As for the issues at hand, discuss what they cherish most, what "truths" they hold dearest, what they hope to leave behind as a legacy for their children, how the past informs the future, and what values they believe are "absolute and unconditional." Most people hold multiple values, few of which are actually unequivocal or categorical.

9. Acknowledge Different Kinds of Knowledge. From the beginning, explicitly legitimize that there are different ways of "knowing" and different modes of communicating important facts and ideas. No one -- scientists, Native Americans, planners, farmers, ranchers, people from the neighborhood -- wants to see their kind of knowledge trivialized and most people have specific "ways" they want to be engaged.

10. Generate Multiple Problem Definitions. Do not assume that problem solving proceeds from a single definition of the issues. No definition is wrong or "off the table." Scientists will see the problem one way. Community people will define it their way. Business professionals will bring yet another approach. All problem definitions are helpful starting points because they reveal issues and aspirations.

11. Step Out of the Normal Conversation Mode. Do not rely solely on meetings, conversation, and negotiating sessions. Too much talk can weigh a group down and actually confuse discussions about values, identity, issues, and options. Invite hand drawn (rather than slick) diagrams, maps, and pictures. Try to create joint maps and pictures with everyone contributing to a common picture. Take field trips. Go look at the landscapes or sites under consideration and allow people to educate each other in ways other than words.

12. Create "Jointly Owned" Knowledge. If information really is power, then information that has been jointly brought to the table is especially powerful. To the greatest extent possible, create a "group inquiry" in which all stakeholders jointly frame the questions that need to be answered (who actually lived here before, what are the migratory paths of the elk, what is the interaction of ground and surface water, etc.) and actually bring it into the process. Stakeholder groups go through a "learning curve" which deepens over time and often matures into truly mutual understandings. Choreograph the learning curve so that scientific and technical information is not privileged over the information brought to the table by community groups, native peoples, and citizen advocates.

13. Explore Validity and Accuracy With Care. All information -- scientific, technical, traditional, cultural, local, or remembered -- is subject to questions about validity, accuracy, authenticity, and reliability. Create a climate in which, in the spirit of problem solving, it is acceptable to respectfully ask people to substantiate what they are saying. Every type of knowledge, cultural assertions no less than scientific models, can be reviewed. The issues of what is examined, how it is examined, who examines it, and when it is examined are all negotiable.

14. Talk Politics. . . But Do It Gracefully. The higher the level of interpersonal trust in a stakeholder group, the easier it is to speak candidly about internal and external political pressures. Environmental conflicts are inevitably embedded in political contexts where tough value choices are at play. While these value choices can be informed by cultural, professional, and scientific considerations, underlying values are the ultimate arbiters of political decision-making.

15. Be Patient Teachers to Others. When professionals present their knowledge from "away", it is important that they explicitly present and clarify the assumptions behind what they are saying. It is often useful that initial technical presentations not be done through power-point, overheads, or fancy models. Without dumbing things down, keep presentations as simple and clear as possible. Community groups, native peoples, and others also have a burden to present their knowledge from "here" in ways that make sense to outsiders or people who do not share in local ways of doing things. Without violating matters that are sacred, and without talking down to outsiders, it is critical that context, history, and background are explained in ways that do not leave things inexplicably mysterious.

16. Organize "Sidebars". When matters of great technical or cultural complexity arise, establishing sidebar groups or working committees is usually useful. There are many different design strategies worth considering, among them a special committee of "cultural experts" or scientists. Sometimes, it is useful to create public sessions for the stakeholder group to meet other interested members of the public and to report progress, test out new ideas, or gather feedback. In all such meetings, balancing local knowledge with outside expert knowledge is important.

17. Create a "Public Learning" Culture. Build a group norm to support joint inquiry. This means that knowledge will be built slowly with contributions from each participant. It also means that ground rules and agendas should take account of constantly evolving information. Additionally, it implies that the stakeholder process should allow for small meetings and group breakouts for those who are shy or don’t share the western norms of public meetings.

18. Engage in Storytelling. Stories are the single most accessible way for human beings to communicate in groups. Often local or cultural knowledge is located in stories. For scientists and technical experts, telling stories can provide important context and help people understand the assumptions and values that are embedded in models and findings.

19. Explicitly Articulate Outcomes. No matter how we try, not all collaborative processes end up with integrated solutions. If the outcome leads to ongoing relationships, try to create structures that reinforce continuing relationships and trust building. If the outcome means loss or change for some, acknowledge the transition and grief and create rituals that memorialize changes and losses.

20. Create Strong Endings. Stakeholder groups often run out of steam toward the end of the process. Resist the temptation to leave things unsaid or undocumented. Besides developing well-crafted written agreements, make sure everyone is acknowledged. With or without agreement, close the process with dignity by inviting different cultural and professional voices to help summarize what they have learned. Then, find ways to celebrate.