From the Board October 2018 with Mandi Davidson: Opposition and outrage is here to stay

From the Board – Mandi Davidson

“Opposition and outrage is here to stay.”

This was one of my key takeaways from the IAP2 North America conference in Victoria, Canada, which I had the privilege to attend last month.

I work in infrastructure, so Stephani Roy McCallum’s keynote really struck a chord with me. She spoke about the rise of social media and its impact on changing social norms, where people go diretly to “no” and protest when something doesn’t align with their values or needs.

Stephani proposed that conflict resolution is dead. She said we need to stop creating processes where failure is defined as a presence of conflict or outrage and instead define success as the presence of emotion, concern, outrage and conflict, and our ability to hold that space for brave, honest conversations. You can read Stephani’s blog about brave, honest conversations here: www.bravelylead.com/blog/

There’s been a big, brave and honest conversation happening in the IAP2 community over the past year or so about the sort of organisation we want to be. I’ve been involved in the international change committee behind that, and we’ve held the space for lots of passion and emotion as we’ve journeyed through a process of re-design to imagine what a sustainable and dynamic international association for engagement professionals might look like in the future.

Following the conference in Victoria, we have seven endorsed priority areas and 36 endorsed recommendations to work through in more detail. These have been supported by every IAP2 region globally and we’re now looking for volunteers in four key areas to work through the detail to help reshape our organisation beyond 2020. If you’re interested in helping with advocacy and emerging practice, brand and member value, training and professional development or governance please contact me at mandi@iap2.org.au or Kylie Cochrane, IAP2 International chair at kylie@iap2.org.au.

I want to leave you with another quote from the conference that I’ll carry with me for a long time. It came from Lisa Helps, the Mayor of Victoria, B.C., who spoke about the change we are seeing in the democratic world, where trust in politicians is at an all-time low and the community’s voice is ever stronger.

She told a room of more than 300 engagement practitioners, “The work you are doing is the most important work of our time.”

I’m going to remember that on those days when I’m dealing with difficult stakeholders, and when I’m travelling away from my daughter for extended periods for IAP2 and work.

Because what we do can be hard, but it is also rewarding and important.