Darebin City Council has a range of potentially complex and emotive community consultation projects to deliver. Prior to engaging with the public, the community engagement team aspired to upskill their staff to make sure they felt confident when interacting with their local communities.
This includes engagement in a range of settings such as online workshops, phone calls, and pop-up stalls at markets. Project teams who don’t often interact with the community in their day-to-day work can be reluctant or nervous about engaging on a topic that is potentially going to be complex or emotive.
Capire was hired to provide advice and training to staff about best practice engagement. The training was designed to deliver real-life scenarios in a supported environment so staff could understand and prepare for their response.
Capire partnered with Serious Woo to design a practical one-day workshop. Serious Woo helps bring teams to peak performance through unique experiential learning programs and situational roleplay. The workshop helped practitioners identify their communication style, understand, and manage their individual blind spots and learn practical skills to ensure community members feel heard and supported.
Participants were then invited to put these skills into practice through several ‘real life’ scenarios with Serious Woo actors transforming their theoretical understanding to the confident “knowing I can do this”.
Approximately 40 Council staff from across a range of disciplines came together over two sessions (one online and one in person) to undertake the training and prepare themselves for future consultations.
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Participant
