License to Illuminate

Okay so you’ve been employed or engaged or seconded or included as a community engagement professional, advisor, coordinator, officer or other.

Congratulations!

You’ve earned your license to illuminate.

There’s a decision to be made. You determine the decision and how the input of others will help to inform it. You plan the engagement, do your research, talk to people, organise and facilitate conversations, listen, gain awareness and understanding, present information, ask questions, probe deeper, take notes, sum up, invite feedback and reflect.

You return to your office, desk, workstation, home study, bedroom, cafe or other.

You write up the notes and suddenly see, with crystal clarity, the road ahead: the very long road from the conversations had and notes you’ve taken to the scary blank page where you need to describe, using the notes and conversations as evidence, the recommendations made, outcome reached and decision to be made.

What license do we have as practitioners to pave that road? To make the leap from stakeholder input to recommendation and decision. Whether the decision is a bridge or building, a service, strategy, facility, framework, playground or plan of action, how do we wordsmith recommendations which honour the engagement process, the people who provided their considered input and the client, provider, business, agency or department who is responsible for signing off on the decision and implementing it?

Are we simply administrators to the people and process trying as best we can to capture words and thoughts to reflect conversations so respondents can see their views in the final report?

What license do we have to bridge the gap between what’s been said and what feels intuitively right as a next step forward?

Are we wordsmiths or worldsmiths?

I think we are worldsmiths! We change worlds through the process of engagement and decisions made based on our expertise in driving and delivering healthy, inclusive and proactive community engagement.

I think we, as community engagement professionals and having been engaged for our expertise in this area, do have the right to shape reports and recommendations, whilst still honouring community and decision-makers in the process.

We, those lucky extraordinary individuals engaged to engage, have a license to illuminate the gap, the challenges, what was and wasn’t said and what it will take to move from discussion to decision, from theory to practice, from input to outcome.

We, due to experience and expertise not only have the right but also the hefty responsibility to do so. For without illuminating the pathway to what is deemed by all as a natural satisfying outcome there will always be a level of dissatisfaction with the process and result.

Next time you’re writing up your recommendations or report, think about the chasm of questions and possibilities you’re jumping over to deliver your report by the due deadline and take your opportunity, use your license to illuminate the intent of the engagement and propose an outcome which sheds light on a collectively agreed upon way forward, reflecting the views of community and stakeholders without being ruled by them.