Making the most of community conversation feedback

Learn how to make the most of your community feedback. Even though your community conversations might be informal, people want to know something is going to happen as a result.

Facilitating Effective Teamwork and Learning

CLD needs good facilitation skills and teamwork. It’s essential to grow a high trust culture from the beginning; where learning from failure and success is the norm.

Community-led development needs good facilitation skills and teamwork. It’s essential to grow a high trust culture from the beginning; where learning from failure and success is the norm. We may come to the party with fears and disappointments from past failures, so it’s important to spend time on whakawhanaungatanga/getting to know each other; sharing our stories, hopes, fears, vulnerabilities and strengths; and achieving some small wins together. This all helps to create a foundation of trust and commitment. We can then build on that foundation to harvest learning from our doing.

Here are a few strategies for overcoming common challenges in growing a high trust culture. Click the image to access the resource.

Essential conditions for change

Are the essential conditions for change present in your community?

Here are some key success factors as well as some practical examples of these in action, to get you thinking about what would work in your community.

Learning by Doing – a handbook

In 2013, Inspiring Communities published a comprehensive examination of community-led development. Appropriately named Learning by Doing, it includes both theory and practice, and is essential to anyone working in CLD in New Zealand. 

Learning by Doing (LBD) includes comprehensive thinking, learning, examples and results from community-led activity right across Aotearoa.  It’s become a ‘must have’ handbook for people and organisations wanting to empower and support locally-led change. Noticing change is at the foundation of effective change. CLD is a long term game, and one where rules, models and evidence only take us so far. We are constantly reminded that not everything that counts can be easily measured. So it’s important that we embrace a ‘learning by doing’ approach in order to better understand what works, what doesn’t and why.  Sharing diverse examples, stories, ideas and results from community-led activity around Aotearoa serves to strengthen a community’s ability to succeed. These examples are intended to support and inspire you to use community-led development to make positive change in your place. 

A number of the book’s chapters are also available to download and share: 

See highlights from the launch of Learning by Doing at Te Papa here.

What others have said about Learning by Doing…. 

“This book is a fantastic resource for practitioners and policy makers. It both provides a collection of really useful tools and resources, and it shares “real life” stories of how people have made use of these in practice in New Zealand. I highly recommend it.” Liz Weaver, Head Coach Tamarack Institute of Community Engagement – Canada 

“Learning by Doing is a gift to the nation and also to the international community-led development movement. Just when we need it most, here is a book guiding people back to the power of community.” Jim Diers, Neighbourhoods Expert- Seattle USA.

Deepen your knowledge by purchasing a copy of Learning by Doing

 To purchase a copy please email exchange@inspiringcommunities.org.nz

CLD Coordinator Job Description Template

This template will guide and support you when crafting a job description to recruit a CLD Coorindator / Support role for your community group, organisation or project.

Here we cover off values, likely responsibilities and key tasks, core relationships and an ‘About’ section for our own organisation.

Use this resource to tailor to your own needs, guiding your job description to suit your unique organisational / project needs.

Practical Steps to Growing a Community Vision

Building a community vision takes time and it’s something that just keeps growing. It will be renewed, refreshed and re-inspired over time, as issues and opportunities are addressed and new dreams grow.

1. Design a few powerful questions for getting community conversations started

Powerful questions: How to get community conversations started

How to craft powerful questions

2. Reach out to lots of different people in fun creative ways

All communities are different, so community engagement approaches need to be tailored for each context and culture – the why and the who strongly influences your how. Your why should determine both who you are engaging with and what/how things are set up.  

Take a look at these ideas for community engagement.

3. Make the most of community conversation feedback

Learn how to make the most of your community feedback. Even though your community conversations might be informal, people want to know something is going to happen as a result. This resource will provide you with a systematic approach to determine whether the essential conditions for change are present and how to support and enhance those conditions for the better.

4. Run a community gathering

Once you have some initial feedback from community conversations it’s likely time to plan a community party or gathering to further shape your vision and grow wider connections. Check out our tips of organising a community planning hui .

Or on a smaller scale, getting together with your neighbours is one of the many things you might do to help build a sense of community in your street. Check out our Tips for organising a street BBQ.

See Our Reach Out resource for more ideas.

Community engagement tips

Reach out to a diversity of people, in fun creative ways to have lots of conversations

All communities are different, so community engagement approaches need to be tailored for each context and culture – the why and the who strongly influences your how. Your why or purpose should determine both who you are engaging with and what/how things are set up. What do you want to learn, share or achieve as a result of the interaction? Once you have your clear engagement purpose in mind, it’s important to do some background work to get prepared. 

There is no one size fits all when it comes to engagement. Depending on your role, you might use a variety of methods to engage with diverse people and groups: for example, one on one or (small or large) group meetings, phone conversations, and online communications. Some will be formal meetings that may need preparation beforehand, e.g.  developing agendas, making a presentation or organising an event.

Others will be smaller in scale, requiring a different style and level of formality, e.g. a scheduled café meeting or a brief conversation at a community hui to build relationships, exchange information and get to know what’s important to each party. Some may involve working with other partners in joint community engagement activities and could involve the creation of an engagement plan.

For getting started as a new community group or in a new place or role, here are some useful community engagement tips:

Make time to understand the local scene, who’s here and how things happen 

• Do some googling 
• Chat with neighbours, colleagues, others in the community you may know 
• Attend community hui/workshops/meetings to get a sense of local people, place, and context Who are mana whenua? What about tangata whenua, taura here, mātāwaka and tauiwi relationships?  
• Which key community leaders, organisations and networks will be useful to have on your radar? 

Be positive, proactive and observant

Take every opportunity to meet new people and organisations. A friendly smile goes a long way! Also look for cues in terms of formality, style, tactics and different ways of engaging by watching and learning from other effective community leaders you meet.  

Do what you say you’ll do

If you say you’ll follow up by phone next week or that you’ll forward information, do it, or let people know if something’s no longer possible. This shows respect and helps builds trust and confidence. 

Relationship building between tāngata whenua and tāngata Tiriti

Relationship building between tāngata whenua and tāngata Tiriti (all others who have come here) organisations, groups and communities is a core component of CLD in Aotearoa.  Here are some resources to support you in developing these relationships.

Here’s a resource on developing relationships with Tangata Whenua. Many of the key messages, for example in Atawhai Tibble’s 5 Wais of Māori Engagement (this can be read fully fleshed out in context here), also apply to engaging with communities more broadly.

Ideas for how to reach out

Community hui (meetings) are necessary but not enough to engage people around growing local visions and inspiring local action. Only some parts of the community will show up to meetings, for all sorts of reasons. So, we need to get creative about going to where people are and having lots of conversations. From those conversations, we can shape doable small actions to get started.  

Once you are clear on your why (e.g. you know more about this community’s history, hopes and dreams) and have some ideas about what you want to ask, here are some creative examples about how to reach out, that have worked for others: 

• Knock on doors street by street and have one-on-one conversations 
• Invite people out into a suitable place on their street for a cuppa and a chat 
• Use an artificial Christmas tree in a shopping area for people to add their wishes to and as a conversation starter 
• Use PhotoVoice or a similar tool to engage people whose voices don’t always get heard 
• Engage children in classroom discussion with art materials, props, stationery…  
• Encourage the children to go home and talk to their parents about the same questions 
• Invite people with disabilities, new migrants, older people and other groups commonly left out to help you design new ways to engage with them and their networks 
• Plan a fun community event like a community dinner or family fun day and get people drawing, talking and building images of what they would like as part of the event 
• Use existing connections to grow connections, e.g. finding out who has links with the local hapū or iwi and who are the appropriate people to start connections with 
• Use a large map of the area as a focus point and discussion opener and ask Where do you live? before going into deeper conversation  

Make sure you are inviting participation and sharing information about how people can be involved, not just collecting ideas for ‘someone else’ to action. People might decide to do something together straight away, or to share contact details. Otherwise, let them know how to stay connected.  

If you are working with children, check out these fun, educational activities for primary and intermediate students on valuing, enjoying, improving and caring for one’s street, neighbourhood and community from the Ranui Massey Back to Back Project: A booklet for teachers and A booklet for students.

What can go wrong? 

There are many things that can get in the way of positive community engagement, e.g. lack of time, transport, childcare or interest, people’s busy schedules, lack of experience or information, poor organisation or communication, a history of bad past experiences, leadership styles/attitudes/behaviours and the sheer fatigue of overcommitted people.  

The best way to know how things are going and/or to understand why they are not going well is to intentionally and openly ask. You don’t have to be the expert. Rather, you can ask people from the groups you want to be more engaged about what you need to do differently. When inviting feedback and encouraging constructive dialogue around outcomes, barriers, possibilities, you need to be prepared to honestly and openly listen, reflect, clarify and identify potential changes that could be made. And ideally you will work with those same people to co-design and implement a new way forward. You can turn failure into stronger trust and respectful relationships for the future. 

Strategies to build your community

Community change and collaboration is not going to happen overnight. But with planning and methodical action, it’s absolutely achievable.

Initiating discussion is the first step to uncovering a community’s strengths. From here we can learn about how our community can work together, find resources for creative solutions and helps turn people’s energy into action.

These two resources are great places to start:

How to craft powerful questions

Learn by doing

The types of questions we can ask, and the ways in which they’re asked, can have a big impact on how people engage with us and what information is received in return.

Asking well thought out, clear and direct questions is a great way to be more efficient in meetings, gather the information you know that you need, and getting the most from the people who have gathered to share information. If you’ve not done this sort of thing before it can be a challenging exercise, and we recommend that you take some time to work through this helpful worksheet.

If you would like to learn more about engaging your community, be sure to have a look at the page How to get community conversations started.

Active Listening Checklist

Active listening involves paying attention, withholding judgment, reflecting, clarifying, summarising and sharing. Each listening skill requires several techniques or behaviours. Download the PDF resource below to learn more.