HOW CAN MEETINGS BE STRUCTURED TO ACHIEVE CONSENSUS ON IDEAS THAT MIGHT RESONATE BROADLY AND DEEPLY AS THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT?
Once the meeting is over, it will be time to gain additional input and refine the ideas. Do the ideas for the community spirit resonate as the meeting participants predicted? Is the language such that it will alienate some parts of the community, leading them to reject the idea itself? What illustrations will help bring the spirit home to various members of the community? Here are some ideas for accomplishing this:
- Send the draft to stakeholders who did not attend the meeting and interview for reactions. Conduct polling on the ideas that emerged from the meeting.
- Hold small group meetings that will allow for nuance and creativity in coming up with ways to convey the community spirit – stories, quotes, even songs.
- Use an online platform that limits participation to residents of your community, such as NextDoor.com or TheChisel.com, for example. Some communities have similar platforms. By way of contrast, town halls and broadly accessible online methods often attract those who ridicule or have strong views, perhaps derailing a proposed community spirit that otherwise would have enjoyed broad support.
- Revisit later to assess whether a community spirit has the effects identified at the beginning of this report or can be adjusted to achieve desired results.
Communication strategies for a community spirit differ from other communication strategies for one key reason – for the community spirit to achieve the desired results, people must take it to heart. Embracing the spirit must make them feel part of something bigger than themselves, something that they care about. Other communities have tried to achieve resonance through stories, songs, or other means to get people thinking about it.
Options include:
- Draft the original release to demonstrate – through photos of participants or in other ways – that the spirit results from a community effort and thus make people more open to considering it. The first minute or line of communication may affect the community reaction.
“Having a shared sense of identity of being an inclusive and equality-seeking community gave us the ability to recover and heal united as a city — hand in hand, heart to heart.” – Lori Pampilo Harris, former Senior Advisor to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer
- Ask all stakeholders who are invested in the result to come up with stories and to partner in the communication strategy through their own resources.
- Prepare a speaker’s kit that staff for public officials and other leaders who give speeches regularly can use and have an individual trusted by these persons send the kit to them.
- Including multiple quotes that illustrate the community spirit can bring it home. Quoting a number of persons may help avoid a negative reaction based on low regard for a particular
- Offering stories may help them make the spirit memorable and inspirational.
- Celebrate the spirit at festivals.
- Who are opinion leaders with each of the communities within the community (clergy, bar association, radio, social media, athletes, etc.)? Are they willing to talk about the community spirit?
- Who is already communicating to create a positive image of the community (tourism, Chamber of Commerce, etc.)? Will they include the community spirit?
- Who are opinion leaders with each of the communities within the community (clergy, bar association, radio, social media, athletes, etc.)? Are they willing to talk about the community spirit?
- Who is already communicating to create a positive image of the community (tourism, Chamber of Commerce, etc.)? Will they include the community spirit?
Orlando, Florida celebrates “Orlando United Day – A Day of Love and Kindness” each June 12, the day of the tragic shooting that left 49 people dead and others injured in 2016.
- Are professional publicists and journalists willing to help? Would they be willing to write editorials or publish columns or blogs, include human interest stories related to the community spirit, or even open a newscast with such a story?
In Orlando, one news outlet entitled a picture of a homeless man lighting the candles for the victims after they went out: “This Is What It Means to Be #OrlandoUnited.”
- Create a challenge that brings awareness to the spirit – the concept of the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise research dollars for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).5 Similarly (though for different purposes) social media influencers have created dance challenges related to particular songs, and thousands of people have participated, including entertainers, athletes, news reporters, and schools. 6 As with other online strategies, trolls may ridicule in ways that interfere with the positive message, so any challenge would need to take that risk into account.
- Use NextDoor or create an analogous local social media platform with access only by local residents.
- Develop kits for schools to use, perhaps for an art project that children will take home to show their families; a competition for ideas that represent the community spirit; a template for class discussions.
- Poll residents about the community spirit and release the poll results to the media. Create hashtags, screen savers, and authorize use on mugs and t-shirts.
- Use the Divided Community Project’s basic facilitator guide (forthcoming, June 2019) or another (see Resources for a list) to assist any neighborhoods or local group meetings to brainstorm ideas for enhancing the spirit in their sectors.
In addition to communicating with residents broadly, it might be important to reach people who will be influential in the community’s response during a crisis. Will they speak about the community spirit even as they advocate in a situation of strong disagreement? In this way, these influential individuals can encourage advocacy groups to express their views in ways that do not imperil what the community as a whole wants to preserve. They can also remind people of what they share in common with fellow residents as members of a community with high and valued aspirations, and thus humanize interactions to deal over the long term with the concerns underlying the advocacy during a crisis.