Welcome to the Consent-Building family!
You’re now a part of a community of dedicated public-sector professionals, determined to learn how to develop the Informed Consent of their public (particularly, their fiercest opponents), to more effectively fulfill their important mission.
Your Network of Consent-Building Colleagues
You’re in the right place if you’re ready to challenge the status quo, and grow into an actual Implementation Genius that solves the TOUGH public-sector problems.
This Consent-Building Community is the only place you can safely share your thoughts, reactions, challenges, fears, and creativity with other public professionals.
It’ll take effort and courage on your part; but you won’t get a more receptive audience than this. This is the place to test out what you’re learning, and provide feedback to your fellow students.
This community is about learning how to change your relationship with a public who misunderstands your mission, process, resources and responsibilities. It’s a resource that’s intended to help you apply what we’re teaching in each Module. Here, you can collaborate with and learn from others outside of your team, organization, and field of expertise.
3 Ways to Make the Most of Your Consent-Building Community
1. Open Your Mind
The meat of what we have to share, after the in-person portion of the SDIC 2.0 course, is in the audio and video materials within each Module.
Chances are, you won’t get everything out each lesson if you don’t give it your full attention, or listen to it only once. Turn off your phone, email, and any other distractions so you maximize your learning potential.
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life,
but in a new way. -Doris Lessing
We can’t teach you much if you don’t give it your best, or think you already know all the material.
2. Hold Your Feet to the Fire
You have a full plate. We know. Time really is the scarcest resource. But going through the Modules and doing the assignments will save you from wasting weeks, months, years — or possibly a lifetime — on efforts than wind up getting shelved or stuck in gridlock.
If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude.
If you want big and primary changes, change your paradigm. – Stephen Covey
You owe it to yourself to get what you came here for — a transformation. We can lead you to it, show you the way, and make it as interesting and painless as possible. But in the end, it’s up to you.
Doing the assignments is all you need to bridge that gap!
3. Engage with Classmates
One of the most exciting and powerful places to connect with others is in the comment threads for each Module. Your questions and thoughts will bring insights to others.
I never learned from a man who agreed with me. -Robert Heinlein
This is the place to share your a-Ha’s, reply to your fellow classmates, and share your work throughout the program.
You won’t get as much out of this if you just sit back and expect it all to sink in by watching the videos. It won’t!
You’ll get what you came for if you are a dedicated and diligent student (watch and listen each video in its entirety, do ALL of the exercises and homework, and participate in the discussions).
Consent-Building Community Guidelines
This Community is your space to learn, connect, create, share, and inspire. We need to work together to make it a constructive resource for all students by ensuring everyone follows these guidelines:
Be Constructive
Encourage and support fellow Consent-Building students. Don’t waste your time (or theirs) with comments that aren’t specific (i.e. “I don’t like your project name.” “If I were a member of your public, it wouldn’t work for me.” — without explaining WHY.).
Treat everyone with the respect and courtesy you too are due. If you disagree or have an opposing viewpoint to share, do it with respect, clarity and an appreciation of this as a learning environment. That doesn’t mean we all will agree. Spirited debate about ideas, concepts, and how to apply the material is stimulating and useful to all of us. Personal attacks are not. If you can’t be kind, be quiet. Violation of this rule is grounds for immediate and permanent removal from the community without a refund.
Cultivate Your Highest Self
We’re here to help you communicate with people for whom you’re work is bad news. You can’t expect those members of the public to listen to you if you talk negatively about then when they’re out of earshot.
Consent-Building is about appealing to people’s higher values — including your own.
You have real grievances, as do members of the public. Say what you need to say, but please don’t denigrate anyone. It won’t solve the problem.
Similarly, if you have a problem or complaint about the course — know we want to hear it. And just like all other humans, we’ll make mistake and can do things better the next time around. We’re also most receptive to your criticism when it’s constructive.
Be Helpful
Give more than you ask for from others. Share what you’re working on, but keep a larger emphasis on sharing support, insights, and constructive feedback.
Do your due diligence
If you decide to hire anyone or create any contractual relationship (verbally or written) with someone you’ve met through the Consent-Building network, you and your organization do so outside the purview of this course.
Please do your due diligence and always get clear, written contracts and service agreements in place. While we love to believe everyone in the world is honest and ethical, that’s just not the case.
IPMP, and/or Hans, Annemarie, and Jennifer Bleiker are not responsible for any damages, breach of contract, or any other unfavorable circumstance as a result of such a relationship.
But What If…
No One Responds to My Posts!
The threads in this group can, and will, move fast. Don’t take it personally. Re-post and think about how you can contribute to the conversations of others to form genuine connections. This will help you grow a support system within this robust community.
Re-posting is also an opportunity for you to practice before your take your course-work public. Give your post another look and see how else you could state the information. No one size fits all; not in the Consent-Building Community, nor in the real world. Whatever you do, don’t give up! Keep sharing, connecting, and reaching out to your colleagues here.
My Post is Nowhere to Be Found?!?
When the Module Discussions get going, there will be times it moves fast. Technology can have glitches. While it’s rare for Facebook, and the group wall, it’s possible your post goes into a cyber-black hole never to be shared with the group. To locate it, try doing a search for your comments, but also feel free to post your comments again.
However — if your post isn’t appropriate (it violates our guidelines), or has started to cause serious problems in the group, it might have been removed by a course admin. (See “What Happens if You Don’t Follow The Guidelines” below.)
Other Terms of Use
Please realize that teaching is our bread and butter. We work very hard to keep our fees and tuition costs to a minimum. We also live by the maxim of giving more than we receive.
However, please note all of the material on this site is copyright protected. That includes any audio and video.
Training videos and recordings are meant to serve you by allowing you to listen to the material on your own timeline, not in the confines of a classroom. However, these recordings are not available for download, or to be captured for offline use.
If you have extenuating circumstances and think you should have offline access — simply ask us! We will do what we can to better serve you, but you must receive written permission to save our training materials (with the exception of .PDFs and lesson exercises). Otherwise, we’d hate for you to permanently lose access to the material for violation of these terms.
What Are We Missing?
Let us know, we ARE here to help as best we can.
You’re not the only one learning here. This is our first round of SDIC 2.0, so expect some hiccups as we too learn some lessons of how to share this material with you online.
Thank you in advance for your patience while we learn alongside you!