Jennifer Tammen will speak at the Illinois Tax Increment Association 2008 Fall Conference.

by Debra Stein

Winning political and community support for your new resort or resort expansion starts with a community outreach plan. Your outreach plan identifies who you are trying to influence, what to say, how you will get your message across and when to reach out to different audiences.

Defining the Target Audiences

When it comes to drafting a community outreach plan, it helps to consider three different categories of participants. Tier 1 decision-makers such as mayors, council members, zoning commissioners, and city managers are the ultimate targets of your lobbying activities. You need Tier 1 decision-makers to both adopt pro-resort attitudes and to take pro-resort action, but you usually need help from Tier 2 influencers and Tier 3 constituents to lock down the support of these top-tier decision-makers.

Tier 2 influencers are respected community leaders who shape the opinions of Tier 1 superiors, community peers, and subordinate constituents. Once you have the chair of the Homeowners Association or the president of the Chamber of Commerce on board, you can benefit from the individually-powerful support of these Tier 2 leaders and ask them to tap into their broader base of members, constituents and colleagues.

Tier 3 constituents are more focused on their personal interests than on broader group interests. Individual voters, property owners, and members of organizations led by Tier 2 influencers form the fundamental “roots” in any grassroots campaign. Tier 3 constituents are the people who leave phone messages for their elected officials, sign letters to the editor, attend and testify at public hearings, and reassure Tier 1 decision-makers that they won’t be punished on Election Day for approving a controversial resort project.

Defining Your Key Message

Your key messages are the pro-resort facts, arguments and beliefs that you want people to accept.

Most outreach messages focuses on how your proposal complies with the standards for what constitutes a “good project.” You therefore need to understand which standards citizens and politicians will be using to decide whether your resort will be a good neighbor. The first place to look is at the legal criteria spelled out in the planning code. In addition to black-and-white legislative standards, however, communities often have policies or political goals that really control whether your project gets approved. A city’s unofficial policy to avoid competition with Main Street merchants, for example, may be even more important than mere technical statutory standards for approval of your resort’s expansion. In that case, your outreach would need to emphasize how current merchants will actually benefit from the resort plan.

Key messages must include a description of the project’s benefits. These include fundamental “quantity of life” benefits such as jobs, tax revenues, and public services funded by tax revenues. But resort projects also create “quality of life” benefits, such as offering a better civic image or new community or recreational amenities. In general, people who support development projects do so because of the new benefits that responsible growth can offer.

By comparison, most opponents want to avoid change, so key messages must also explain how the resort proposal will preserve important aspects of the status quo. Messages such as, “The new lodge will be reflect the existing small-town character of the community” and “The golf course will be using recycled water to ensure that local wells aren’t impacted” describe how your project will be compatible with neighbors’ existing lifestyles.

One of the most important messages to be communicated to citizens is the fact that many people support the project. The misperception that “everyone” hates a proposal is one of the most damaging anti-project arguments you can face, and it must be rebutted immediately, effectively and continuously.

Picking Your Persuasive Strategy

There are three different types of persuasion, and your outreach plan must consider how each type of persuasive strategy will be used to win community support for your project.

Businesspeople tend to emphasize rational persuasion, offering technical data and logical arguments about why the project will be a good neighbor. In a perfect world, every citizen would have the time, interest and intellectual ability to weigh the facts, evaluate the substantive arguments, and reach a logical (and favorable) conclusion. However, many people are not motivated to look at the facts, or they are simply overwhelmed by the amount of data related to a complex resort plan. Even where citizens engage in rational evaluation of the facts, that doesn’t mean they will agree with you. That’s because people’s opinions aren’t formed exclusively by the facts; they’re also influenced by values and emotions. Savvy resort sponsors also engage in emotional persuasion that responds to the fears and feelings of citizens. Photographs of families and children can convey a promised community lifestyle much more effectively than technical reports, for instance. On the flip side: opponents’ emotional appeals to peer pressure such as, “Everybody hates this project” or threats of voter reprisal can be extremely damaging.

When resort projects are particularly complex, most neighbors will rely on simplistic rules of thumb to decide whether or not they agree with you. Your communications plan therefore needs to consider the four elements of peripheral persuasion:

• Source Characteristics: The persuasiveness of a statement may depend less on what is said than who is saying it. A listener applying a source-based rule of thumb might simply decide that, “Likable speakers are always believable” or, “All lawyers lie.” Your outreach plan should therefore take into account not just what you’re going to say, but who is going to say it.
• Message Characteristics: When the validity of an argument is determined by message characteristics, it is the context of the message, not the content, that dictates is persuasiveness. For example, 86 percent of Americans believe that reference to statistics increases a speaker’s credibility. Message that contain numbers, appropriate jargon, or seems contrary to self-interest are often deemed to be valid without more careful analysis of the contents.
• Audience Characteristics: Citizens who do not have the interest or ability to independently review the merits of your arguments often assume that “everyone else” has done so and that therefore they can rely on other people’s opinions. The popularity of a proposal is conclusive proof that it’s a good idea, and vice versa. Again, this reinforces why it is important to correct the misperception that “everyone” is opposed to your real estate proposal.
• Channel Characteristics: Many people will evaluate the soundness of an argument by looking at the communications tool used to convey the message. An expensive brochure might seem to guarantee a high quality project, or you’ll hear, “Whatever shows up in the newspaper must be true.” Pick your communication vehicles carefully!

Getting Your Message Across

There are several ways you can communicate with neighbors, and no single communication vehicle will meet all your outreach needs.

Developers often rely on unilateral communication tools such as direct mail, advertising, press releases or web pages to get their messages across. These communication tools allow the project sponsor to send information in a one-way stream to neighbors without providing a mechanism for citizens to directly communicate back.

Multiparty outreach events such as huge community workshops or massive neighborhood association meetings are a common form of outreach. These events are typically non-invitational: every member of the public is welcome to attend (including opponents), and all who attend are equally empowered to participate. Unless carefully managed, these monster events can turn into outreach nightmares. With so many people, so many issues, and so little time, it is rarely possible to answer everyone’s questions or to let everyone speak their minds. And when people come to a meeting expecting to express themselves and find that they cannot, they get frustrated, and frustrated people often get very angry. Large groups can also enable hostile mob behavior or promote “groupthink,” with opponents enjoying group reinforcement for anti-social attacks on you or your resort. At its worst, a huge community meeting may be merely a forum for opponents to meet each other and hear and adopt each other’s agenda, a place where activists can impress their constituent with the extremity of their anti-project positions.

There are several alternatives to multiparty meetings. With bilateral communications such as one-on-one meetings or telephone calls, you create an intimate setting that allows you to receive information from the audience at the same time you are conveying your messages. Invitational group meetings are small events such as coffee-and-donut get-togethers in neighbors’ living rooms, or small lunches with a group of local merchants. Hard-core opponents aren’t part of the invitation list, and invited participants get an opportunity to learn about the resort concept in a personalized, interactive forum. Where you need to reach out to hundreds of citizens, consider more controlled events such as open houses stretching out over several hours or even several days, or breaking a large audience into facilitated roundtables.

Time to Think About Timing

So who you gonna call first? Do you file your application first and then talk with immediate neighbors? Do you sit down with potential opponents first and then meet with the district council member? Do you need to line up the newspaper endorsement early, or is the support of the Sierra Club more important?

Not surprisingly, there are no cold, hard rules that apply in every situation. Here are some factors to take into account when timing your outreach efforts:

• In general, you need to line up some strong supporters early on, before the project becomes too controversial. Having visible endorsers on your side right from the start will help prevent the misperception that “everyone” hates the resort idea, and the support of impressive community leaders can make it easier to recruit additional endorsers later.
• Public officials are often reluctant to commit their support for a project until they see evidence that there is constituent enthusiasm for the proposal. Rather than commencing your outreach efforts with a cold call on a key council member, consider scheduling the meeting after you have some support lined up. In fact, you might even consider bringing a couple of those important Tier 2 influencers with you to the meeting to help you pitch the project.
• People who live or work close to the proposed resort will often try to define their own enclave as the only “community” affected by the project. In fact, the entire town, county or region will benefit from a new or expanded resort. You need to set the stage with an expansive definition of “the community” before proximate neighbors narrow the political arena to just a small area, which is why it helps to mobilize regional organizations early in your outreach efforts.

Putting It All Together

When it comes to resort development, the purpose of community outreach is not to be popular: it is to win approval for your project. Rather than waiting for NIMBY nightmares to rear their ugly heads and then dealing with them in a reactive, defensive manner, you can anticipate and respond to political challenges with a proactive community outreach plan.

by Debra Stein

Planning commissioners spend a lot of time choosing the right words to avoid sending the wrong messages, but it is equally important to monitor the nonverbal communication signals that accompany your words. In fact, research shows that more than 93 percent of communications effectiveness is determined by eye contact, body language, facial expression and voice quality. When you’re trying to convey important messages like, “I am telling the truth,” or, “I respect you,” or when you’re establishing the power positions of the parties, the nonverbal signals you send can be even more important than the particular words you are speaking. Understanding nonverbal communication can help you monitor your own physical cues and understand what other people are telling you, even when they are not speaking out loud. Some of the following suggestions are most relevant in planning commission meetings; others apply to less formal circumstances outside the hearing room, when you are nonetheless still acting in the role of planning commissioner.

Honestly, Now …

People involved in high tension civic discussions often feel very distrustful, and planning commissioners need to carefully monitor both incoming and outgoing nonverbal signals of honesty. How can you tell if a witness is exaggerating or lying? How can you make sure you are not inadvertently sending signals of dishonesty? Here are some tips on how to enhance your own credibility and double-check to see if you are really getting the straight story from other people.

We are very suspicious of people who won’t look us in the eye. Speakers rated as “sincere” make eye contact three times more often than “insincere” speakers. For 90 percent of Americans, intensive, personal eye contact means using your right eye to look into the right eye of the listener. Whether you’re right-handed or left-handed, chances are that you use your right eye to gather data and use your left eye only for depth perception. To test this theory, use your left eye to look at someone else’s left eye … feels awkward, doesn’t it? Making sincere, respectful eye contact, then, involves using your right eye to look into your counterpart’s right eye. Do not stare vaguely at a speaker’s nose or forehead, and avoid shifting eye contact between the left and right eyes, which can send messages of aggression or sexual attraction.

Maintaining sincere eye contact doesn’t mean you have to stare like an unblinking lizard. Honest speakers blink between 10 and 20 times per minute. When Richard Nixon attended his first Watergate press conference, he blinked up to 40 times a minute. It is especially important to avoid excessive blinking when facing a news camera or when sitting on a brightly-lit podium, where strong lights may naturally trigger a lot of blinking.

There really is something called the “Pinocchio Syndrome.” Stress and tension can cause delicate nerves in the face to tingle, so people who are lying or otherwise aroused really do scratch their noses, touch their cheeks, and rub their eyes more frequently than calmer speakers. Keep your hands away from your face!

The same autonomic response that makes the nerves in your face tingle can also thicken the consistency of saliva. Dishonest or uptight speakers often lick their lips, swallow, or clear their throats more often than relaxed and happy speakers. Have some water on hand when making a stressful presentation so that you do not send inadvertent messages of dishonesty.

People with something to conceal often conceal their hands. In stressful situations, keep your hands where people can see them. People who talk with their hands are also perceived as being more powerful and more confident than communicators with hidden hands.

Showing Respect

It is easy to say, “Treat citizens with respect,” but what do you actually do to demonstrate your esteem and regard? Let’s start with paying attention. In casual conversation, we tend to prove that we are listening merely by making a sensible response to the speaker’s statement. A teenager who appears to be ignoring a parent’s instructions to turn off the television will suddenly demonstrate adequate listening by turning the TV off. In more formal settings or where there is distrust between the parties, it is important to demonstrate attention towards a speaker long before the citizen actually begins speaking.

The first way to show a speaker that you are paying attention to what is being said is to abandon other activities that are competing for your attention. Set aside reports and turn off your cellular telephone. Put your pen down as soon as a citizen approaches the microphone in order to indicate that you are now turning your attention to the speaker. Needless to say, turning away from the witness to exchange private whispers or jokes with a fellow commissioner is an obvious and inappropriate misdirection of attention.

Leaning forward is an effective way to convey attention to and interest in a speaker. By inclining forward in your chair, you create a more intimate environment between yourself and the speaker that seems to exclude other people or distractions. Leaning back, on the other hand, signals that you feel distanced from the speaker or unwilling to get personally interested in the issues.

Eye contact is a crucial way we signal our respect for another person, and it matters both who you look at and how you look. In an audience setting, some commissioners adopt a machine gun approach to eye contact, shifting their heads from side to side and quickly skimming their eyes over the entire audience. No personal relationship is formed with individual audience members, who feel both disrespected and more likely to view the Planning Commission as impersonal targets to attack.

No matter how big the audience is, genuine, respectful eye contact involves looking at one individual at a time, using your right eye to look into the other person’s right eye. Select one audience member and make personal eye contact with that citizen. Next, look at another part of the audience and make eye contact with another individual. Even if you cannot make individualized eye contact with each person in the room, attendees will perceive that you are respecting each citizen as a unique individual and trying to interact on a personal level.

We have a natural tendency to make more eye contact with people we know and like, and with an individual who has asked a question and is now listening to the answer. In an audience setting, however, looking exclusively at one person in the room can actually send messages of disrespect to everyone else in the audience. Yes, the one person you are looking at will feel important, but everyone else in the audience will feel excluded and offended. If you have something to say of interest to one audience member assume that it is of interest to everyone, so shift eye contact regularly throughout the room to convey your respect for everyone.

Planning commissioners who process information best when it is in writing may alternate between looking at the witness and looking at staff reports and other printed materials, trying to link what they are hearing to the written evidence before them. Other commissioners are such focused listeners that they need to eliminate visual distractions that could compete with auditory evidence. These commissioners may close their eyes to listen to a witness or seem to stare straight “through” the speaker without really seeing anything, or gaze vaguely at their desk or off into space. While these can be effective strategies to help commissioners balance verbal, written, and visual input, if overused, they can send the inadvertent message that the commissioner isn’t “really” listening.

It is extremely important to keep your hands away from your mouth. Roughly three-fourths of people who are covering their mouths when listening are hiding thin, compressed lips of disapproval. Covering your lips sends the signal that you do not like the person you are listening to, that you disagree with what is being said, or that you do not want to be involved in the discussion. These negative nonverbal signals are often accompanied by positive but insincere cues such as nodding one’s head or smiling, but the rejection message always prevails. In fact, a savvy audience can often predict the Planning Commission’s vote simply by watching what happens when various witnesses are testifying. If a supporter stands up to speak at the microphone and the majority of commissioners slowly raise their hands to conceal thin, compressed lips of disapproval, then supporters know they aren’t getting their message across. If too many audience members start covering their lips while you are speaking, then you know that you need to take another approach to get through to listeners.

While keeping your hands away from your mouth is a must, it is perfectly O.K. to touch other parts of your face while listening. Resting your chin on you hand while listening, touching your cheek with your finger or pencil, or adjusting your glasses all send the message that you are listening carefully to what is being said and working hard to understand its meaning.

Powerful Planning

Power is a real part of the world of planning and politics. Neighbors who feel pushed around feel resentful and angry, while commissioners who appear weak, ineffective, or lacking in confidence may be unable to achieve important civic goals.

Your perceived power has something to do with your title, your authority and your expertise, but it has a lot to do with the nonverbal signals you send. One of the earliest ways power is demonstrated is through our handshake. Power is not established by the bone-crushing strength of your grip, but by the position of your hand in relationship to the other person. Offering your hand with your palm facing downward signals your desire to intimidate the other person, your belief that the other person is “beneath” you, or your wish to dominate the other person. When you offer your hand with the palm face down you’re telling your counterpart, “I’m the top dog, get out of my way before I push you out of the way.” Not surprisingly, men are more likely than women to offer their hands palm down, especially when shaking hands with a woman. Be careful that you don’t automatically offer your hand downwards, which can send inadvertent signals of disrespect or condescension.

Shaking hands with your palm facing upwards shows a conciliatory attitude or suggests that you see yourself as weaker than your counterpart. When someone has forced you into a submissive, palm-up handshake, you cannot establish dominance simply by squeezing your hand in a vise-like grip; the only way to regain power is to use your other hand to touch the other person’s arm while you are shaking hands. Shaking hands with your palm vertical to the floor sends a neutral message and is usually the most appropriate way to offer your hand. And an important tip for men: shake hands with a woman exactly the same way you shake hands with a man. Merely clutching a woman’s fingertips conveys one of the lowest messages of contempt.

Beyond the handshake, hands communicate power in several ways. Powerful people speak with their hands and point with their index fingers while speaking. Like Prince Charles, they clasp their hands behind their backs while standing or walking. On the other hand, people who engage in hand-washing motions, clutch their fingers, rub the back of their necks, put their hands in their pockets, or touch their body or face may be sending signals of nervousness or insecurity, so be aware of what you are doing with your hands to ensure you are sending appropriate signals of confidence and authority.

The person with the tallest shoulders at the conference table is usually perceived as being the most powerful. When it is important to establish control in a professional situation, pick a tall chair, sit fully back in your seat, and keep your shoulders up and your head high. If you are trying to encourage cooperative negotiations or consensus among equals, then consider sitting in a seat that is less intimidating compared to your counterparts’.

Powerful people occupy a lot of space. They spread their belongings across the table and even intrude into other people’s personal space by touching the individuals or their belongings. Not surprisingly, men tend to touch women twice as often as women touch men.

No matter how much space you like to occupy, it is important to keep in mind that everyone has a sphere of private space around them into which intruders are not welcome. When you inadvertently invade someone’s private bubble, that individual feels threatened. Parties engaged in friendly conversation usually stand between two and five feet from each other. Business discussions and professional presentations are usually carried out at a distance of up to 12 feet. Territorial dimensions, however, can vary considerably depending on the race, sex or cultural background of the people involved. Asians, North Americans and people of northern European descent, for instance, prefer more space between speakers than most Latinos, African-Americans, Arabs, or Jews do. Men tend to define a territorial buffer that is larger than the personal space women reserve for themselves. Men tend to feel threatened when their turf is invaded from the front, while women dislike intrusions from the side and prefer to have strangers sit across from them at a table. So when you see someone moving closer or farther away from you, do not automatically adjust the distance to your own comfort level. Instead, consider whether the individual has moved in order to minimize his or her own sense of spatial discomfort.

Sending the Right Signals

While it is always important to pick one’s words carefully in the high-profile world of planning, it is equally important to monitor and control one’s nonverbal communication skills. Through the careful control of body placement, eye contact, and hand movements, planning commissioners can better communicate with the public.

Debra Stein is the president of the San Francisco-based public affairs firm, GCA Strategies. She is the author of several books on NIMBYism and her firm specializes in controversial land use projects across the nation. For more information, e-mail Stein, call her at 415-391-4100 or visit the GCA Strategies Web site at www.gcastrategies.com.

by Debra Stein

Successful lobbying involves more than just making the sales pitch that would convince you to vote in favor of your own project. When the vote of every politician counts, you need individualized lobbying plans that outline exactly what to say and how to say it in order to meet the emotional and informational needs of each public official.

Lobbying plans start with an assessment of the politician’s personality, decision-making style, and political behavior. You can gain insight into a public official by observing the individual’s behavior, by consulting with people familiar with that official, or even by using psychometric personality assessment tools. With a basic understanding of each official’s motivational and communications needs, you can then tailor advocacy messages to convince each politician to cast a “yes” vote for your project.

Introducing Supervisor Grant

Let’s take a look at Supervisor Grant. After sitting through a few meetings of the County Board of Supervisors and talking privately with people who are familiar with Supervisor Grant, you have gained some general impressions about him. Mr. Grant is a tax attorney who has worked for several law firms during his career. He wears baggy suits, drives an old car, and carries an overstuffed briefcase with him wherever he goes. His resume indicates that he has served as president or chair of several civic committees and organizations. Supervisor Grant is known for his blunt and aggressive style. He is not afraid to speak up and often criticizes county employees when he thinks their work is incomplete or otherwise deficient.

Supervisor Grant frequently makes the motion to terminate board debate and vote immediately on agenda items. When it comes time for the Board to make a decision, Mr. Grant is often the only dissenting vote, particularly when he believes that a project sponsor has failed to demonstrate that a proposal meets the technical approval standards. Supervisor Grant appears to have few close friends at City Hall and is not comfortable engaging in social chit-chat.

The Lobbying Plan

Decisiveness: Supervisor Grant has an obviously forceful, direct personality. He has a blunt, assertive style. He is impatient with mistakes and does not defer to the county’s professional staff. Supervisor Grant is a get-it-done guy: once he has heard enough to make up his mind, he is ready to act. That can be good if he has decided he likes your project, but you may need to encourage him to slow down and look more carefully at the facts if his initial response to your project is less than favorable.

As an outcome-oriented politician, Mr. Grant will want to know how your project will help the community achieve its immediate and long-range goals. As an ambitious leader with a string of chairmanships and presidencies behind him and possibly greater civic leadership in front of him, Supervisor Grant will also want to know how voting for your project will affect his personal goals for future civic service.

When dealing with strong decision-makers like Supervisor Grant, you need to be concise, specific, and logical. It is essential to get to the point and not waste time. Rather than telling Supervisor Grant what to do, you are best served by asking his opinion. If staff is delaying your project or insisting on additional, more detailed review, Mr. Grant could be a good ally to have on your side because he would rather take action than study something endlessly. Even if the county staff is opposed to your project, Supervisor Grant sees himself as the final arbiter.

Interpersonal Style: Supervisor Grant is not a sociable, warm kinda guy. He is not an easy-going conversationalist, and he is not a particularly persuasive speaker, even when he wants to be - if he were, then he would not end up as the sole dissenting vote on so many issues. Supervisor Grant’s unimpressive suits and beat-up old car indicate that he is not out to impress anyone. He does not particularly care if he’s popular, and he does not particularly care if your project is popular. What he cares about is whether your project is good enough to merit approval.

This tax attorney is a fact-oriented person, not a “people” person, so emotional appeals and human interest stories will not prove as effective on your behalf as the documents, reports, and evidence stuffed into Supervisor Grant’s briefcase. In fact, that heavy briefcase suggests that Mr. Grant is a visual thinker who best absorbs information by reading it rather than by hearing it. So, in addition to making an oral presentation about the merits of your project, you should provide him with a written summary of the evidence and arguments about your project’s merits.

Unlike his Board colleagues who prefer some personal interaction before talk turns to more serious subjects, Mr. Grant would rather that you get right down to business without getting too cozy or asking too many intrusive questions. Be respectful of his sense of privacy and his private sense of space. Supervisor Grant probably does not care to be touched and may even feel anxious if you sit too close to him or touch him too frequently.

Procedures and Rules: Supervisor Grant believes in rules. After all, look at what he does for a living. He interprets and applies a highly arcane set of tax laws and regulations. Before voting “yes” on your project, Mr. Grant will want confirmation that you have played by the rules and properly checked all the boxes. Anything that smacks of loopholes, evasions, or special treatment will make Supervisor Grant uncomfortable. Therefore, it is up to you to point out how the rules themselves anticipate and allow exceptions, variances, rezonings, or amendments. If you can show that you have followed the appropriate process and that your project complies with the adopted approval standards, then Supervisor Grant will be reluctant to deny your project merely because it is politically unpopular.

Mr. Grant will carefully review the evidence to determine whether your project meets legal and policy standards for approval. He is especially likely to give weight to the opinions of licensed engineers, certified planners, and other technical experts with procedurally validated qualifications. When making your pitch to Supervisor Grant, highlight both the expertise and conclusions of your technical experts.

P.S. Be on time for your meeting. Once Supervisor Grant has set an agenda or schedule for himself, he is will feel disconcerted or even angry if it is disrupted.

Risk Tolerance: Mr. Grant’s employer-hopping resume suggests that he is comfortable with change. This is consistent with his action-oriented decision-making style: when Supervisor Grant sets a goal, he is willing to accept change and some risk to achieve that goal. While some of his colleagues may vote against projects that seem to threaten the status quo, Mr. Grant is not afraid of land use proposals that offer untried concepts or even a redefinition of the community’s future.

For Supervisor Grant, a decision does not have to be perfect. While some of his colleagues may believe that it is better to make no decision at all than to a make a flawed decision, Supervisor Grant believes that it is better to make a big-picture decision today, even if that decision is imperfect, knowing that there are procedural safety nets and opportunities to correct problems tomorrow. Tools that can help reduce risks associated with voting “yes” on an imperfect application include requirements that the sponsor continue working with the professional staff after the public hearing to refine grey areas, the imposition of permit conditions, and reliance on monitoring and reporting procedures.

Your Message Plan

One you have outlined Supervisor Grant’s emotional and communication preferences, you can tailor your messages to meet those preferences. For example, messages about how your project will create new jobs in the community can be pitched to respond to Supervisor Grant’s own personality and decision-making style.

• Presentations that focus on how your project will help the county achieve its goals for youth employment or for higher-paying jobs will resonate with Supervisor Grant’s goal-oriented decision-making style.
• Mr. Grant has an introverted, fact-oriented style, so it would be a mistake to rely solely on anecdotal emotional appeals to get your message across. Rather than simply lining unemployed citizens at the microphone to testify about the need for jobs in the community, a better strategy would be to provide written, factual evidence about unemployment and job creation in the county. You should also enlist the assistance of technical experts to refocus attention away from emotional anti-project attacks and back to pro-project facts that support your messages.
• Rules rule for Supervisor Grant. You need to demonstrate that you have followed every step of the application and review procedure. To show how your project complies with the legal standard for “necessity and desirability,” for example, you can describe the needed and highly desirable jobs your project will bring to the community. If you need a rezoning to put an employment center in the middle of a residential neighborhood, point to the code section that gives the county the flexibility to adapt zoning in unique circumstances.
• Supervisor Grant is comfortable with change, so he will respond positively to messages about how a project will attract new types of industry to the community or different types of jobs than are currently available to local residents.

No single lobbying strategy will work for every politician because every politician has a unique personality and decision-making style. By crafting individualized lobbying plans for each public official, you can better meet the psychological and interactive needs of each decision maker to get the big “yes” vote you need for your project.

by Debra Stein

Communication between managers and residents often occurs in the form of question-and-answer sessions during community meetings. Too often, however, a productive Q-and-A session breaks down into a grilling by hostile owners. Here’s how to handle antagonistic questions effectively.

Look Away From the Speaker

Americans are taught that it is polite to look at the person who asked the question when giving an answer. In a group setting, however, the key to defusing a hostile question is to move attention away from the individual who asked it. When someone lobs an aggressive comment or question at you, immediately shift eye contact away from the speaker and address your comments to the rest of the audience. Treating every participant equally reduces the emotional rewards to be gained by attention-seeking troublemakers and avoids reinforcing the impression that the toughest critic is a leader who deserves special deference. Don’t look back again at the questioner during your answer and, unless you really want a follow-up question, don’t return to that individual at the end of your response to ask, “Does that answer your question?”
Redirect the Question

As you look away from the hostile questioner, restate the question. This transfers the spotlight away from the questioner, who will be more inclined to sit down quietly rather than continue standing while audience attention is focused on you. All members of the audience may not have heard the question, so your restatement helps enlighten those who may not have been listening carefully. Finally, restating the question give you a few extra moments in which to come up with a good answer.

Never repeat an inflammatory question word for word. Instead, rephrase it in a more reasonable or less emotional way. When a critic snaps, “Why are you insisting on building this ridiculous community center where no one wants it?,” shift eye contact away from the questioner and rephrase the question: “The question is, how did we select this site for the new community center?”

Another technique is to use the question as a springboard for other issues. For example: “This question raises a number of issues, which we should look at piece by piece….”; “Before we go on to that topic, let’s go back to something Mrs. Garcia said a few minutes ago.” Other common transitions used to redirect attention include:

• “The real issue is…”
• “It probably makes more sense to talk about…”
• “Another related question is…”
• “What we should be asking ourselves is…”
• “Another thing is…”
• “A more important issue to consider is…”

Reestablish Eye Contact

Although you don’t want to maintain eye contact with the hostile questioner, it is crucial to make good eye contact with the rest of the audience. Good eye contact conveys interest in what listeners are thinking as well as your concern about whether your own comments are being understood. Moreover, speakers who make good eye contact are much more likely to come across as trustworthy, likeable, and persuasive than those who avoid good eye contact.

So what constitutes good eye contact? For starters, most people use only their right eye to look at another person; the left eye is used only for depth perception. Good eye contact involves using your right eye to look intently into the right eye of the other person. To test this theory, use your left eye to look into the left eye of another person. Feels awkward, doesn’t it?

Select one person at a time to look at. Establish eye contact and hold that gaze until you shift eye contact to another audience member. If you cannot look at every person in the room, then at least make eye contact with every section of the audience: the front, the back, and both sides of the room. Although people naturally prefer to look at friendly folks who are nodding and smiling, you can reduce hostility by making eye contact with persons with unfriendly expressions on their faces. Eye contact with unfriendly people makes it more difficult for them to view you as an impersonal enemy and can help reassure them that you really care what they think.

How long should each glance last? Average eye-to-eye contact lasts a bit more than one second. When one person is looking at another without reciprocal eye contact, the glance lasts about three seconds. Glances that last too long can send inadvertent messages of aggression or sexual attraction; gazes of longer than 10 seconds provoke extreme stress.

The average speaker makes eye contact 40 percent of the time while talking, although a speaker trying to come across as really honest or powerful may engage in more frequent eye contact. The average listener looks at the other person somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of the time while listening. A powerful person will make less eye contact when listening to a subordinate, while a less powerful person might engage in almost continuous eye contact while listening.

Jennifer Tammen

When the Community Shelter Board proposed a massive reorganization of homeless services in Columbus, Ohio — including relocating 800 homeless housing units to residential neighborhoods — the agency turned to GCA Strategies to develop a public acceptance program. The visionary “Rebuilding Lives” plan faced strong initial opposition from local residents, the news media, and even from non-profit agencies unwilling to relocate homeless services to new areas or to reconfigure their own public funding allocations.

GCA Strategies conducted opinion research to identify key messages and target audiences, provided hostile audience and outreach training to the client team, drafted facilitator outlines, provided facilitator training for community roundtable workshops, and developed and helped implement a community participation and consensus-building plan to win approval of the Rebuilding Lives proposal.

The results: The Rebuilding Lives proposal was enthusiastically approved by the Columbus City Council and the Franklin County Commission. No community organizations testified against the most recent proposal to construct supportive housing units for homeless people within a residential neighborhood, and a total of 605 homeless housing units out of the 800 planned units are already operational. Building on GCA’s survey research and media and community outreach planning, the public outreach program for Rebuilding Lives was awarded a coveted Silver Anvil by the Public Relations Society of America in 2001.

GCA projects are successful projects. Check out www.csb.org

The 5,600-acre Happy Canyon Ranch property is a highly-visible landmark in the greenbelt between Denver and Colorado Springs. After five failed efforts in just 8 years to entitle a new master-planned community at the site, virtually everyone in Douglas County had an opinion on the project — a negative opinion. By the time Happy Canyon Ranch Partners asked GCA to step in, just 13% of Douglas County voters approved of the proposed master planned community and no homeowner association in the county would allow the developer to attend any meeting.

GCA conducted opinion research and developed a full-scale consensus-building plan to create pro-project attitudes and mobilize pro-project action. When neighbors initially refused to negotiate with the developer, GCA formed a citizens advisory committee to provide political justification for project concessions identified as both persuasive and politically necessary. Coordinating with the client’s local representatives, GCA developed and implemented an outreach plan that included direct mail, recruitment phone banks, letter-writing campaigns, and more than 200 invitational and small group meetings.

The results: Twice as many supporters as opponents turned out at the final hearing for the Canyons, and the project ultimately gained the endorsement of the CAC and local newspapers. Both the Planning Commission and County Commission approved this New Urbanist community with 2,501 single-family and multi-family homes, 3 golf courses, an equestrian center, and a mixed-used town center.

GCA’s projects are successful projects. Check out Happy Canyons