Honesty and Service ®

Finding a Facilitator for the Fuss (or opportunity)

2015 Community Involvement Training ConferenceAtlanta, GAAugust 5, 2015

Introduction

• Presenters– Mary Apostolico– Steve Garon– Lee-Ann Tracy

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• Audience – Who Are You?– EPA – Community Member– CI Practitioner or

Facilitator– Academics– Other

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Agenda

• What is Challenging about Community Involvement

• Facilitation and Community Involvement

• Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss/Opportunity

• Obtaining Facilitation Assistance

• Wrap up

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What is Difficult about Community Involvement?

• What are some of the challenges of community involvement? Shout ‘em out! Let’s make a list:

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Challenges of Community Involvement – a Partial List…

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• Conflicting interests among participants

• Procedural Challenges

• Getting the right parties to participate

• Numerous participants with different agendas

• Unproductive meetings

• Unproductive group decision process

• Interpersonal Challenges

• Strong emotions

• Poor communication or miscommunication

• Lack of shared understanding of decision to be made, question to be addressed, or issue to be discussed

• Disagreements over complex technical or factual issues or data

• Lack of trust or support of affected parties or public

• Personality problems or historic animosity among participants

• Inflexible negotiating postures of participants

Activity: Experience Using Facilitation

• Each person is provided 5 dots

• Place a single dot beside the activities with which you

have been involved where a facilitator successfully

contributed to the activity or project.

• Put no more than one dot per activity.

• Use blank flipchart to add any activities not already listed

and place a dot next to that activity

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Some Reasons to Use a Facilitator for Community Involvement: • Help people work together efficiently, effectively and

cooperatively

• Enhance credibility of organization sponsoring the collaborative effort

• Help overcome low trust

• Help design appropriate public involvement process

• Manage complex logistical or communication processes

• Allow EPA /sponsor agency to focus on substantive issues

• Increase likelihood that a broad range of alternatives is explored and the outcome is acceptable/implementable

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Community Involvement is a PROCESS…

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NOT an event!

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Stakeholder Interactions throughout the Superfund Process

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Meeting/Event Facilitation Activities

• Agenda development • Agenda management • Record keeping • Ensuring clarity on next steps, action items, who has

responsibility for each item • Maintaining a constructive and productive environment

– Establishing and enforcing ground rules and norms– Encouraging participants to focus on interests & not positions– Dealing with strong emotions– Modeling collaborative behaviors and coaching problem-solving

behaviors • Assisting with logistical issues and technology support

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Process Facilitation Activities

• Situation Assessment

• Process Design

• Process Implementation – Stakeholder communications

– Overall process management

– Neutral facilitation of individual events

• Collaboration Capacity Building and Training

• Relationship and Trust Building

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Situation Assessment?

What is it?• An information gathering tool that:

– Identifies all affected internal and external stakeholders

– Identifies stakeholder issues

– Assesses the opportunities for community/public involvement

Why do it?• Helps determine the most

appropriate degree of and method for community involvement

Determining the Level of Community Involvement:EPA Stakeholder Involvement Spectrum

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OUTCOME GOAL PURPOSE PROMISE: We will EXAMPLES

Outreach Inform Provide Information Keep you informed

Website Fact Sheet

Phone Hot line Press Release

Information Exchange Consult Provide & exchange data,

opinions and options

Listen, acknowledge concerns & aspirations, & provide feedback on how

your input influenced our decision

Meetings with individuals Public Meeting

Workshop Availability Session

TAGs

Recommendations Involve Obtain useful & influential advice or comments

Take your advice or comments into account when making a decision

CAGs RABs TAGs

Task Force

Agreements Collaborate Reach workable agreement or settlement

Work in good faith to reach an understanding that we all can support &

implement as agreed

Access Agreements Institutional Controls

Settlement Agreement (consent decree/order)

Stakeholder Action Empower Empower Stakeholders to

take actionSupport your decision & assist in your

implementation

Voluntary Program Good Samaritan Program

Redevelopment Plans

YES

YES

YES

YES

INFORM

CONSULT

INVOLVE

NO

NO

NO COLLABORATE

EMPOWER

Process Design – Decision Tree

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NOThere is specific public input we seek and intend to take into account as we

make our decisions (we are not simply seeking public buy-in)?

We are seeking to engage stakeholders early and throughout

the process rather than just get public comment at one or two

points?

We intend to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to work on the

problem and potentially seek consensus?

We intend to give decision-making authority to the public on all or part of the decision?

Other CI Process Facilitation Examples

• Develop Community Involvement Plan or Addendum

• Get things back on track

• Convene and facilitate CAGs

• Reuse assessments

• Build trust and capacity

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Community Involvement Facilitation: The Takeaway

• Community involvement facilitation can involve much

more than just facilitating individual meetings and

events.

• This might be important to think about when considering

facilitation needs and requirements.

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – Initial Questions to Think about

• Initial Questions– What do you want the facilitator to do? – How do you think a facilitator will help?

• Reveal a little something about your need and situation– What problem or issue are you trying to solve or prevent? – What opportunity do you want to take advantage of?

• The more information you can provide about the situation and need, the better the match will be.

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – “How can a facilitator help?”

• Answers vary on level of thought and sophistication

– Not Sophisticated

• Protect me from THEM!

• Make the problem go away!

• What’s a facilitator?

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – “How can a facilitator help?”

– Moderately Sophisticated

• I have a potentially challenging meeting that could

benefit from some expert process.

• This is a very important meeting.

• I want to make sure the meeting is designed and

managed to make the most of the participants’ time and

contributions.

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – “How can a facilitator help?”

– Highly Sophisticated

• We’re facing a potentially controversial decision at a site that has already had its share of controversy.

• The issue concerns how to incorporate community reuse interests into the RI/FS.

• The community is divided on reuse interests and there are limitations on what will be feasible.

• We want help figuring out a way to have thoughtful discussions to maximize input for consideration while being clear that this is not a negotiation.

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – Most Common Criteria

• Substantive Knowledge– What is the issue or topic of discussion? – How important is it for the facilitator to know the subject

matter and to what depth?

• Process Experience– What kind of process experience is critical?

• Availability– When is the facilitator needed? – For how long (i.e., project duration) will the facilitator be

needed?

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – More Particular Criteria

• Geographic Location– How important is it for the facilitator to be based in the

community where assistance is needed?

• Experience with Certain Types of Stakeholders– Important to match facilitator experience and personality

with stakeholder needs. – Are you working with an historically disenfranchised

community?– Are you working with a Tribal community?

• Foreign Language Fluency– Will there be participants who do not speak fluent English?

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Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – Balancing and Finding the Right Fit

• Balancing among criteria and finding the right fit• Which criteria are essential vs. which are optional (i.e.,

desired but not critical)

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Essential

Optional

Matching a Facilitator to the Fuss – Exercise

• Divide up into small groups

• Select a spokesperson to share your responses during debrief

• Read through the scenario

• Refer back to Questions Handout

• Develop a statement of need or scope for what you want a facilitator to do in this situation

• Create a list of criteria in order of importance that you think the ideal candidate should meet– Essential vs. optional criteria

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Sources of Facilitation Assistance: Federal

• EPA Conflict Prevention and Resolution Services (CPRS): – Intranet: http://intranet.epa.gov/adr – Internet: http://www.epa.gov/adr

• EPA Technical Assistance Services for Communities (TASC): – http://www.epa.gov/superfund/community/tasc/

• U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution: – https://www.udall.gov/OurPrograms/Institute/Institute.aspx

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Sources of Facilitation Assistance: Associations and Clearinghouses

• National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM):– http://www.nafcm.org/

• International Association for Public Participation (IAP2):– http://www.iap2.org/

• Association for Conflict Resolution, Environmental and Public Policy Section (ACR-EPP):– http://www.mediate.com/ACREPP/

• Red Lodge Clearinghouse:– http://www.rlch.org/

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Facilitation Assistance – Who, When, and Why

Organization/ Resource

Who might want to use this resource?

When you might want to use this resource? Why would you want to use this resource?

IECR Federal agenciesLooking for a facilitator with specific expertise

Has searchable national roster of practitioners

CPRSEPA Staff; federal agencies through IAGs

Training, facilitation, and mediation needs

Easy to access. Use CPRC’s Facilitator Finder http://dchqdomino1.epa.gov:9876/ogc/cprctool.nsf

TASC Communities In need of a range of technical assistance including facilitation support

Supports community efforts to get more involved and work productively with EPA to address environmental issues

NAFCM NAFCM Members ($ to join)

When searching for a facilitator for a community-based effort in specific location

Search for members (anyone); Use clearinghouse to find community mediation resources (members only)

RLCH

Self-starters seeking collaboration resources

Want basic community facilitation or mediation resources focused on natural resource issues

Access to collaboration handbook, list of facilitators in select states, other resources

IAP2 Practitioners Training More in-depth facilitation and public participation training and practitioner resources

ACR-EPP  PractitionersTraining and other resources

More in-depth facilitation and mediation training and practitioner resources

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Questions?

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Reminders• Please complete course and

conference evaluations

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• See you at the Eco Café!