Community engagement skills profile
The skills pyramid below illustrates the range of skills required to successfully implement community engagement activities. Effective community engagement is built on a foundation of solid personal skills and increasingly specific sets of management skills.
The following group of skills is based on the consultation process that supported the development of this course, community engagement and leadership research, and the community engagement competencies. As an experienced manager, you will have a good idea of what actions and concepts work well to support community engagement. Use this skills profile in conjunction with the Skills development checklist [MS Word
(49KB) or PDF
(48KB)].
Personal skills
These are the skills areas that can only be developed through reflection, feedback, taking action, and on-the-job experience.
| Skill or competency | Brief description |
|---|---|
| Persistence and optimism | Persistence and optimism are essential skills if you are to work with the very difficult situations that citizens and communities face. For more information, refer to Positive Psychology Center. |
| Being able to ask key questions | Questions are a powerful technique for hearing different voices in the community and for capturing what is really going on. |
| Listening skills | This is the ability to hear both what is being said and what is being implied by what is said. A key part of listening is the ability to respond appropriately to what you are hearing and to engage successfully with the other person. |
| Working collaboratively to achieve agreed objectives | Collaboration skills are required to work with communities, and increasingly to build social capital and effective networks in organisations. For more information, refer to: |
| Being able to influence others without authority | Influencing others in areas and with people where you have no direct authority requires skills that are different from those required to lead as a manager within an organisational framework. These skills include being able to present ideas, listening, being able to manage expectations and many of the skills outlined in this list. |
| Being able to manage own and others’ emotions and values | Engagement activities often trigger strong emotions and values, so having the ability to manage and work positively with your own and others’ emotions is essential. |
| Ability to manage conflict | Engagement activities trigger strong emotions; they may also reflect conflicting ideas already represented in the community, or raise conflict. Having methods and skills in working with conflict will improve your community engagement capability. |
| Ability to build trust | The ability to work with other people to build trust in a way that builds a working relationship but also reflects your role as a public service employee is essential to making community engagement work. |
| Ability to make decisions | Making decisions requires gathering data, sorting data, understanding the strategic context, knowing the people involved, taking risks, and being able to decide. |
| Ability to motivate others to engage | The ability to motivate stakeholders to participate in engagement activities is a fundamental skill incorporating the ability to interest, inspire, encourage, motivate and reinforce participation. |
Public sector management skills
These are the skills unique to public sector managers: they ensure that engagement is conducted within the public sector’s ethical and strategic framework.
| Skill or competency | Brief description |
|---|---|
| Understanding of the policy and strategy context | The context in which you operate will influence engagement planning, methods, stakeholder arrangements and other key elements of the engagement effort. |
| Understanding of the political system and context | As a public service manager, you are required to understand the political system and context at federal, state and local levels as they impact on your work and the engagement activities you are delivering. |
| Understanding the requirements you face as a public service employee and manager | As a public service manager and employee, you have certain responsibilities which will be outlined in your Departmental Handbook or policies. |
| Independence and ability to maintain confidentiality | While this skill is part of your role as a public servant, it has been highlighted in the consultation for this course as essential to community engagement. |
| Ability to build the community engagement capabilities of your team | Community engagement skills must be developed for team members who have community engagement responsibilities. Use the Skills development checklist [MS Word The Community Engagement Training Calendar provides details on a wide range of training programs available throughout Queensland. |
Project management and analytical skills
These skills are essential in ensuring that there is structure, a proactive management approach and clear lines of responsibility in the engagement activity.
| Skill or competency | Brief description |
|---|---|
| Ability to identify and assess multiple stakeholder views | Tools and skills in knowing and assessing multiple stakeholder views will ensure breadth of engagement. |
| Strong ability to plan, manage and evaluate projects | This includes developing skills such as the structuring of project activities, ensuring that the right people are involved, producing written plans that can be agreed on within the department, assessing the need for communication strategies and also ensuring that adequate time and resources are available. |
| Ability to establish project boundaries | Project boundaries include assessments of relationships with stakeholders, management of expectations, and the overall project objectives. |
| Ability to manage change | Change management skills include the recognition that all community engagement activities have a change impact, whether within the Department or in the community or both. The implications of this need to be addressed in engagement activities. |
| Ability to transition and exit projects | Transition and exit strategies are essential to good project management and include recognising that the project has to end, the funding structure will change and departmental resources need to be allocated elsewhere. |
| Ability to manage risks | Management of risk is a critical part of community engagement capability and has been discussed extensively in the Risk management section. |
| Ability to deliver agreed results | This includes the ability to gain agreement on project expectations, objectives and resourcing. |
Engagement skills
These skills are required to implement and run community engagement activities.
| Skill or competency | Brief description |
|---|---|
| Ability to plan for community engagement | This is one of the draft national community engagement competencies. For more information, refer to Public Service Education & Training Australia (PSETA). |
| Ability to develop and implement community engagement strategies | This is one of the draft national community engagement competencies. For more information, refer to Public Service Education & Training Australia (PSETA). |
| Ability to select the right engagement method or strategy | The impact of these skills is discussed in the Methods section. |
| Ability to build and maintain community relationships | This is one of the draft national community engagement competencies. For more information, refer to Public Service Education & Training Australia (PSETA). Long-term engagement depends on successful relationships between key individuals and groups. |
| Group facilitation skills | Understanding how groups operate, an ability to track and intervene in group dynamics and to plan group activities effectively is an important leadership and engagement skill. |
| Ability to speak to large and small groups with influence | Speaking and presenting in a credible way was one of the skills highlighted by those consulted in the development of this course. |
| Ability to reflect upon process and outcomes | Reflecting on and applying the learnings from an engagement process to improve future engagement practice is an important skill. |
Community action skills
Skills required to manage community engagement activities.
| Skill or competency | Brief description |
|---|---|
| Community research and profiling | These skills have been outlined in the section Planning community engagement. |
| Stakeholder and community mapping | These skills are linked to systems thinking and profiling, and provide mechanisms for ensuring that you identify all stakeholders and key groups. For more information, refer to: |
| Community cultural awareness | Community cultural awareness can cover both the cultural groups represented in the community and the overall cultural tenor of the community. For example, is the community relatively conservative, is it city-based, is it homogeneous? |
| Cross-cultural awareness | Cross-cultural awareness ensures that any engagement activities meet the needs of cultural groups and respect the values and beliefs of these groups and communities. |
| Ability to build the engagement capability of the community and community leadership | An ability to build community leadership skills in others is essential to fostering sustainability and focusing positively on future engagement activities. |
Previous