Is your community angry, frightened or traumatised?
From floods and fires to a pandemic and economic stress, we are all living through difficult, challenging times.
Many organisations seeking to head back out to their communities and progress projects are finding that people are highly emotional or indicating that they are resistant to opportunities to collaborate or contribute.
If you’re engaging with people around any issue, but particularly if it’s a sensitive topic or it involves community that’s been directly impacted by challenging events, you need to be prepared for hard conversations.
We know that this isn’t easy. Risk communication and outrage management are not skills that come naturally to most of us, even people with engagement or facilitation experience. Preparation and an understanding of what drives these emotions is key and we’re here to help get you started.
In this post, we’re exploring:
how to assess the ‘hazard’ (the likelihood of harm) and the level of ‘outrage’ (how upset it’s likely to make people)
the four modes of risk communication and when to apply which mode
how your communication approach needs to change over time
principles for preparing communities for the next big event (precaution advocacy) and supporting them to cope with their current state of recovery
key steps for working with outrage (where emotions are high but the hazard is low)
ways you can hone your skills and build your confidence through training opportunities.
HAZARD, OUTRAGE AND HOW TO COMMUNICATE ABOUT RISK
It's useful to go back to some principles here about communicating risk. As Dr Peter Sandman shares in his work, there are different modes of communication for different sorts of risks.
The mode you choose depends on:
how much ‘hazard’ (likelihood of harm) the situation might cause people
how much ‘outrage’ there is (how upset it’s likely to make people).
The two don’t necessarily correlate. That means a high hazard does not always result in high outrage, and even in the context of a low hazard, people can be highly outraged.
THE FOUR MODES OF RISK COMMUNICATION
PRECAUTION ADVOCACY
High hazard - Low outrage
Message: ‘WATCH OUT’!
Approach: People are calm but we want to alert them to serious hazards.
CRISIS COMMUNICATION
High hazard - High outrage
Message: ‘WE CAN DO THIS!’
Approach: Supporting upset people to cope with the serious hazard/s.
OUTRAGE MANAGEMENT
Low hazard - High outrage
Message: ‘I HEAR YOU’
Approach: Reassure excessively upset people about small or low-level hazards.
THE SWEET SPOT
Medium hazard - Medium outrage
Message: ‘LET’S SOLVE THIS TOGETHER’
Approach: When hazard and outrage are at a medium level, you’re in the sweet spot! Here you are dialoguing with interested people about significant but not urgent hazards.
KEY TIPS FOR USING THESE MODES
The above modes offer a high-level guide to your approach. When working with them, it’s important to remember the following tips.
Each of these types of communication have a different purpose, audience, approach and most importantly, they require different skillsets. Outrage management, for example, is a specialised skill.
Risk communication changes over time, is different for different people and will move quickly and rapidly. You may need to assess hazard and outrage levels continually and switch modes – one meeting can be very different to the next.
The aim is to reduce both the hazard and the outrage over time, aiming to reach the ‘sweet spot’ where people are ready to collaborate around the important issues. Sometimes this sweet spot can be no more than a fleeting moment (you need to grab that opportunity) and you may not find it at all for some projects or issues.
HOW TO USE THIS WITH YOUR COMMUNITIES RIGHT NOW
So how does this relate to work in local communities right now? If you need to reach out to crisis-affected communities, there are two possible objectives (usually both are happening at once).
These objectives are:
supporting them to ‘cope with’ their current state of recovery
helping them to ‘get ready’ for the next event (precaution advocacy).
We’re giving away 10 principles for precaution advocacy as a free resource.
PRECAUTION ADVOCACY
Helping people get ready for the next event
We’ve prepared 10 principles to help you work in this space.
HOW TO WORK WITH OUTRAGE, CONFLICT AND EMOTION
We’re all about giving away knowledge and helping you to engage better. We’ve got a few outrage and conflict freebies available, including a two-part series we wrote previously.
part 1. PREPARING FOR LIKELY OR EXPECTED OUTRAGE
Learn how to plan for conflict, outrage and emotion when you know it’s likely to arise. It’s normal to fear conflict, and often, that fear is underpinned by a lack of ‘tools’ or skills. So, here’s some tips for preparing and working with conflict, outrage and emotion in a meaningful way.
Dive deeper in this previous blog post: Hostile audiences and high emotion: part one
part 2. WHAT TO DO WHEN IT HAPPENS unexpectedly
It’s what many engagement professionals and facilitators fear most - conflict and outrage happening unexpectedly during a community or stakeholder session. Learn how to work with high emotion in the moment when you didn’t plan for it.
Dive deeper in this previous blog post: Hostile audiences and high emotion: part two
GET READY TO CONFIDENTLY HANDLE HARD CONVERSATIONS
Really want to hone your skills and get confident with conflict, emotion and outrage? Get ready to embrace the challenges and opportunities hard conversations throw at you with the following training opportunities.
1. JOIN US FOR A FREE ‘LUNCH AND LEARN’ TRAINING WEBINAR IN SEPTEMBER
We’re offering a series of free lunchtime learning sessions! Join the MosaicLab team online as we give away tips and takeaways that you can easily apply to your project or in your role.
Our first session on Thursday 15 September will introduce you to the ‘outrage seesaw’. We’ll show you how to know when you’re on it, and tips for making your way back to the middle where waters are calmer and you can move your way towards the sweet spot.
2. TAKE OUR ONLINE, SHORT COURSE IN FACILITATING CHALLENGING CONVERSATIONS
“Great tools to use and I love the formula for de-escalation.”
Our Facilitating Challenging Conversations self-directed short course offered through the MosaicLab Academy online training platform helps you predict, identify, prepare for and navigate conflict and outrage.
You don’t have to be a facilitator to take this course. It’s aimed at anyone in a role that includes regular interaction with stakeholders or communities, particularly where there might be a lack of trust or a history of emotion and conflict.
Get a taster of this course with our free download: Tips for making hard conversations easier.
The course includes:
“Really practical skills that can be applied to our jobs. Thank you. ”
six learning modules
12 training videos
10 downloadable resources
self-directed (online in your own time)
four hours to complete (average)
foundational/beginner learning level – no pre-requisites
return access to course content.
3. HAVE A TAILORED GROUP TRAINING EXPERIENCE
Need to upskill a group, team or department and prepare them for hard conversations? We can run an in-house training experience that meets your desired learning outcomes. We deliver sessions online or in a location that works for you.
stay in the know + get lots of free engagement stuff
We share the tips, ideas, news , free resources and more through our monthly e-newsletter the Discussion.
