In this article, we look at frameworks to help public sector organizations understand how they can begin tackling the efforts of effective relationship building. If you are someone who is involved in policies and decision-making, or in a public sector role that is public-facing—this article is for you.
No matter who we are, or where we come from, the power and importance of relationships is one main takeaway that humanity can agree on. This has been exceedingly salient in the past year—and then some. All around the world, many of us leaned into our relationships in order to manage the isolation and stress of the global pandemic.
The relevance of relationships is more than just what we experience on an interpersonal level. Recently in British Columbia, we saw the passing of former Supreme Court Judge Thomas Berger, who led the way in moving the country forward on issues of Indigenous title-to-land and meaningful public consultation. He accomplished this by visiting Indigenous communities and “listen[ing] to the people who were on the land and knew the issues of ownership”.
The actions of Judge Thomas Berger are just one example of the importance of relationships between public institutions and the communities that they serve. Relationships are key touchstones that enable effective governance and service provision through building trust, empathy, understanding, and learning which results in aligned policies, decision-making, and processes. Ultimately what we see are more effective, involved, and resilient communities.
If the effects of relationship-building sound idealistic, it’s because they are. This is actually a good thing as it means that there will always be space to grow within any organization—evolution should be ongoing and constant. Still, the concept of strengthening relationships with the community can often feel like an ambiguous and overwhelming goal. So, what can we do to make this feel and be more manageable?
In this article, we look at frameworks to help public sector organizations understand how they can begin tackling the efforts of effective relationship building. This article was written as a follow-up from Civil Space (by Zencity) research aimed at understanding public engagement and inclusivity, where we saw the importance of relationships as a key foundation for effective engagement. If you are someone who is involved in policies and decision-making, or in a public sector role that is public-facing—this article is for you.
The first framework that we introduce is a blended framework which includes a figure that might be familiar to many of our readers – the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) spectrum of participation which you will see highlighted in grey, on the top half of the below diagram.
For an accessible spreadsheet version of the diagram, visit this link.
The IAP2 spectrum is meant to “assist [public institutions] with the selection of the level of participation that defines the public’s role in any public participation process.” When the spectrum is considered alone, it can be too simplistic. In order to effectively facilitate a particular level of participation, having a relationship with the community is key. The more involved the public is meant to be, the deeper the relationship needs to run. The bottom half of the framework layers a relationship-building competency model to showcase what relationships at each level of participation need to look like, and how using them can facilitate that level of engagement.
To better contextualize this, important considerations from the participation levels of Inform to Empower, include:
Without effective relationships, it can be difficult to reach and engage the right audiences at any level of the participation spectrum. This, in turn, can lead to breakdowns in trust and engagement.
After examining these levels of participation and relationship building, a salient question remains: how does one actually begin to develop these relationships within an organization?
To deconstruct this, we borrow from the design world and introduce Atomic Design. The Atomic Design framework is a systems-thinking approach that is an effective application to public organizations and the communities that they serve, as they are ultimately a network of systems that interact with and impact one another.
When it comes to this application, the simplest way to break down a public organization is as:
This Atomic Model can also be applied at the community level, though it will be more nuanced depending on the context in question. For example, a community can mean an entire city as an organism. Depending on the context, the molecules might be the neighborhoods within a city or a population segment such as BIPOC folks, and the atoms are the individuals who make up these groups. Another example of a community at the organism level might be the students in a post-secondary institution, molecules as the different streams of study, and atoms as the individuals in these streams.
At each level, relationship building will have different purposes, and building these relationships will look different as well. It is important to remember that all levels of relationship building are impactful as they have trickle up and trickle down effects. Relationships can be particularly useful at the atomic level, as individuals have more personal control to put energy into connections and create lasting impacts.
An example of the power of relationships at the atomic level is described in the report After the Riots, which looks at the events of the 2011 London Riots. In this report, it was found that in order to “dramatically improve their relationships with communities,” the police needed to “improve the quality of minor encounters,” such as the case of one-to-one atomic instances.
So what might this actually look like at each level? In the points below we provide some pragmatic ways to look at each and identify:
Building relationships is a journey, not a sprint. Whether you’re an individual, the manager of a department, or at the head of an organization—we hope that these frameworks will give you a better idea of understanding the scales of relationships, how they apply to participation levels, and how to achieve them regardless of where you sit in an organization. Building these relationships is doable, whether this means involving the right people for a single engagement, or developing trust within the community at a more macro level.
Below, we would like to leave you with three areas of consideration to explore within your own organization:
In addition, there are also two concrete next steps you can take to strengthen your relationship-building efforts:
After all, change is in the making and if you are doing it right, it’s never done.