When you show up - people speak up

Having spent the last few months undertaking lots of engagement across industries as well as locations, one thing really stood out and that is you can’t replace the personal touch.

Yes its true AI can do some great work like summarise key points or help you understand more about a region but what it can’t do is walk into a regional business and talk to them face to face at their level. Meeting people where they are and that actual human connection.

Sometimes due to tight time frames and even tighter budgets it can be easy to look for efficient ways to undertake engagement for projects. A survey is an example of this. It’s cost effective, it can reach more people potentially than we ever could but it's a big but - realistically how many people are you really going to get to fill it out. And again are you just getting the same people? What about those ones that we say are hard to reach? Are they really hard to reach - or is it that they are hardly reached?

Small regional businesses are a great example of this hard to engage with sector. Local governments and small business groups alike try to get them to workshops, seminars and networking with a mixed bag of results. Recently, while working with a regional area in NSW, we decided to take the old fashioned approach and pound the pavement. Armed with some sunscreen, a hat, a calling card and a smile we went from business to business in the village communities and talked directly to the owners and workers about what we were doing in the region. We encouraged them to fill in the survey but we also listened and had a genuine conversation with these small businesses. While not everyone was receptive that too gave us insight to how people were really feeling. It put the ‘U’ back into engagement. It was the personal touch.

Meeting people where they are, whether it's at cafes, mothers' groups, the skate park and yoga in the park, it's a great way to talk to people that don’t always engage in the formal community consultation sessions that are held. While these definitely have their place, getting in and amongst a community gives you a kind of insight that no AI or survey from afar will ever give you. 

To be able to plan effectively for a community for whatever reason you need to understand the community and that can only be done with U and not AI. 

To really unpack there needs to be a blend of quantitative and qualitative measurements. But it’s good to understand that quantitative data can be skewed just like qualitative data. Responses to surveys can be ‘drummed up’ to help make sure that there is a certain outcome particularly when it comes to hot issues or topics within a community. I think what often happens is that more weight is put into quantitative data as it's perceived to not be as easily manipulated. However it’s the bringing together of many types of engagement methods to really be able to make sure you have reached the cross section.

That’s why a good balance is needed and really getting out into a community and talking with those ‘hardly reached’ pockets helps to give a more holistic outcome to any engagement. Besides the fact that for me I remember the people, their stories and the connections that I’ve made along my engagement journey through many regions across Australia. There are people and their stories that have stayed with me. And while I can put this aside when analysing data to take out the human bias, there are people that resonate with me and I still think about today, years after I have briefly met them and they have shared a piece of themselves with me.  

This is where EQ comes in. EQ helps to pick up those nuances and helps to understand what is really happening, to be able to build rapport in a matter of minutes and to build upon it within the tiny slither of time we have with people. We get to connect and really listen deeply. Putting ourselves in the moment and allowing a conversation rather than a ‘mining for information’ or collection of data. This can make the difference between a project for a community that lands and gets support or one that lands flat on its face.

So when you are next thinking about engagement, I encourage you to prioritise some ‘old fashioned’ ways of engaging. Don’t think about engagement as a tick box exercise,  but rather think of it as a chance to really understand how people feel and think about something. 

When you put the ‘U’ into it and give a little bit of yourself, the rewards of connection will provide you with the deep insights you seek.