 Challenges Of Forming An Interdisciplinary Team: Forming Relationships
Once key stakeholders and groups have been identified, the
project team is challenged with forming relationships. That
starts with establishing effective two-way communication.
It is the authors’ opinion that this is the most formidable
task facing the project team, but the following guidelines
can help overcome this barrier.
1. Communicate clearly – A number of ways to effectively
communicate exist. A person’s frame of reference acts
as a filter to information, noise prevents the message from
being heard, and so on. With technical projects, a common
communication barrier that can be easily overcome is language:
the project team speaks a different language than most citizens.
"Techno-lingo" sounds like a jumble of alphabet
soup to the common citizen. For example, the following phrases
are nearly meaningless to most citizens:
" We are working with the EPA on our EIS, which will
coincide with our ERP permitting timeline."
"We have submitted our ERP application to the ACOE,
who has to determine JD lines."
It takes a concerted, intentional effort by every member
of the project team to speak and write in easily understood
terms.
And, in the interests of "being complete", sometimes
technical staff will provide an unnecessary level of technical
detail in discussions with the public. It is vital for the
technical team to consider their audience’s concerns
as they frame their communications.
2. Listen and understand – The other side of the coin
is active listening. Steven Covey says, "Seek first to
understand, then to be understood." This element is critical
to forming relationships. To truly understand a citizen’s
concern, members of a project team must go beyond the words
that are spoken to the underlying fears and intent of the
statements. Once a concern is understood, then an appropriate
response can be made. Consider the following exchange:
Citizen: Your project is going to suck our river dry. There
are shoals on that river that can barely be crossed now, and
you’ll make navigation impossible.
Engineer: Our models show the river stage will only be affected
by three to four inches in the vicinity of the withdrawal
structure, and that would only occur during the high flow
periods.
While the engineer’s hypothetical response is technically
accurate, she missed the citizen’s concern: navigation.
The citizen is concerned that the agency’s project will
impair recreational use of the river. A better response may
have been, "So you are concerned that our project will
affect boating on the river?" This question shows the
citizen her concern was heard and invites her to elaborate.
Once an emotional concern is understood, the project team
members must show that they care about the concern or the
issue. Reacting to an emotional argument with facts and figures
seems callous and bureaucratic. The facts and figures may
be important, but if the stakeholder perceives the project
team doesn’t care, the message isn’t received.
3. Be responsive – Responsiveness is also important
in forming relationships. The project team that responds to
information requests, letters and phone calls in a timely
fashion demonstrates that the public is a priority. This helps
build trust with stakeholders.
4. Keep promises – Mistrust of government is a huge
barrier to overcome. Government is often greeted with suspicion,
and unfortunately, the community’s faith continues to
erode with every new example of government waste or scandal.
Keeping promises is essential to building trust. Nothing will
hurt a company or an agency more than breaking a promise,
especially one made to stakeholders who have an emotional
stake in the siting of a facility. The authors believe distrust
of government may be insurmountable with fringe groups, and
focusing efforts on such groups will likely be counterproductive.
Instead, project teams should focus on building trust with
those in the middle.
5. Involve stakeholders early – Another way to build
trust and form relationships with key stakeholders is to start
the public participation process early. Tampa Bay Water’s
public involvement on the Master Water Plan started with the
feasibility studies of the various projects. By starting early,
the community’s input could be used to shape the projects.
Inherent in the public participation process is the commitment
to being receptive to community input and a willingness to
change the project. The involvement process can be facilitated
if the project team knows on what areas of a project it would
like to receive public input. For example, in siting a new
water treatment plant, Tampa Bay Water presented a number
of potential sites for public consideration. When a resident
suggested a site that wasn’t on the project team’s
list, the project team was receptive. The suggested site was
investigated and ultimately selected as the top-ranked site.
However, the agency could not use the input it received on
another project, where citizens suggested we abandon the project.
6. Stick to the facts – When disseminating information
about a project, whether written or spoken, it is important
that the project team stick to the facts. The public knows
a sales pitch or a "snow job" when they hear it.
Don’t oversell the project and don’t speculate.
The project team should say what they know and nothing more.
If the public participation process starts early, the project
team will likely not know many of the specific details of
interest to the community. Some utility staff use this as
the basis of their argument to wait until a project is in
the final design stage before advising the community. Yes,
you will then have the answers the community wants, but they
won’t want to hear them. In most cases, the project
team will be met by angry citizens who feel betrayed that
they weren’t included in the decision-making process.
Instead, the authors have found that it is perfectly acceptable
to most stakeholders to say, "We won’t know the
answer to that question until our testing is complete."
Most stakeholders accept that they will have to wait for all
the details in exchange for a say in the decision-making process.
7. Encourage open discourse through small-group meetings
– Since 1997, Tampa Bay Water’s project teams
have participated in more than 150 public meetings, public
hearings, open houses, small group briefings, community meetings
and civic/business group presentations. Of those, the authors
believe the small-group briefing is the most effective forum
for open, frank discourse with representatives of stakeholder
groups. In the authors’ experience, small-group briefings
tend to yield a more productive dialogue than public meetings,
especially when the topic is sensitive or controversial.
|
