Schlagwort-Archiv: Listening

The Gift of Listening

When managing Stakeholder Dialogues, never forget that the core of every cooperation process is made out of people and the way they interact. Seen like this, a Stakeholder Dialogue can only be as fruitful as are the relationships between the people that participate in them. In my eyes the most powerful and yet quite simple tool for raising the quality of relationships in a cooperation process is: Listening.

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Why? Because the way people voice their ideas, concerns or doubts is often dependent on the way people listen. Weiterlesen

Community-based natural resource management in Namibia

On www.StakeholderDialogues.net we regularly feature success stories of initiatives and projects that have applied a dialogic stakeholder approach. The last story to be featured this year is the story of how community based natural resource management was turned into a succes in Namibia.

After the apartheid in Namibia the black population in Namibia was left with no chance of owning land titles or wildlife. As a result there was no incentive for them to care for the land they lived on – as a consequence over the years wildlife and natural resources soon decreased. To tackle this problem a new conservancy policy was introduced in 1996. Under the policy communities can register for the land they live on to be declared a conservancy – the communities in return have to look after the wildlife and are entitled to benefit from the utilization of wildlife.

Namibia Conservancies

© IRDNC

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Karine Nuulimba of the Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) an organization that, together with the WWF, played a major role in initiating this change process in Namibia. The interview with Karine was very inspiring – she passionately shared her insights with me on the success factors of the people-centered community-based natural resource management – an approach that is rooted in the fruitful collaboration between local communities, government bodies and NGOs.

So here is what worked for them: Weiterlesen

Raising the energy for change and dialogue

Recently I introduced you to the Dialogic Change Model that the Collective Leadership Institute developed to help you facilitate a process design that is owned by all stakeholders. Today I want to dive deeper into the first phase.

Dialogic-Change-Model_ENG_Phase1Phase 1 is essentially about creating the resonance for the envisioned change and exploring the Stakeholder Dialogue’s context, taking other existing initiatives and the people involved into account. Talking to selected but relevant stakeholders and opinion-leaders informally in this phase can help to understand the prospects and potential obstacles for dialogue and change. Weiterlesen

Do your homework when engaging stakeholders

Getting in touch with your stakeholders, finding out what moves them, where their interests lie, is a prerequisite for a meaningful dialogue. This is why we interview the alumni of our educational programs regularly. Like this we find out in which ways we have to develop our methodology further and ultimately how to shape the future of the Collective Leadership Institute to stay in touch with what our stakeholders need. This interview my colleague Katharina held with Mouna Lyoubi from Morocco – and left the room inspired…

Mouna, you are working on a very interesting project – tell me more about it.

Mouna The project is called “Cooperation between Cities and Municipalities” (CoMun). It is a regional project with presence in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. It started in 2008 in Morocco and in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, but not yet in Algeria. I am a local Junior Advisor in Morocco. We had a contest of projects coming from 16 cities and we selected 7 projects from 7 different cities. The cities proposed projects on energy efficiency, waste management, transport and rehabilitation of ancient medinas. The projects were provided with technical support and in 2012 we implemented networks between the cities. These networks create bridges for cooperation between the Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian cities and the countries themselves. Weiterlesen

10 Tips for Stakeholder Engagement with Activists

Future500 LogoToday I am very happy to announce a partnership with Future 500 – a non-profit organization that envisions a world that realizes sustainable economic growth by addressing social and environmental externalities with market-based solutions. Future 500 unites the corporate and NGO sector to break through gridlock, encourage thoughtful solutions, and achieve broad systemic change.

There are lots of interesting collaborations planned for the future – in the meantime I am delighted to feature an article on engaging with activists which Future 500 recently shared on their blog:

From toxics to human rights, advocates are increasingly focusing on consumer facing brands to drive change on environmental and social issues. Corporate campaigns have been going strong for decades, but with the rise of social media, higher demand for supply chain transparency and increasingly savvy coordination between activist networks, companies are scrambling to address stakeholder concerns before they bubble into conflict. Weiterlesen

Leave your To-Do Lists at the Check-In please!

You probably know those typical meeting situations: People arrive one by one, some don´t take their eyes of their laptops to write last-minute mails and at some point the meeting is opened and starts by jumping right to the first agenda point.

© kalafoto - Fotolia.com

© kalafoto – Fotolia.com

At the CLI we try and do it differently. Meetings – no matter how small – start with a check-in and end with a check-out. We are not big fans of airports, but we like to think of our meetings as little journeys. And to leave our  “mental luggage” outside for the while. The check-in is a great tool to frame your meetings in a different atmosphere, get people into a conversation and focus on the topics to be discussed. Weiterlesen