Powering PD

Picking up on the last discussion of power and the articulation of power in relation to ‘allies’, it is also worth considering the power relationship with the potential target community when planning PD activities.

In Options for Influence, we discussed the options which exist between telling and listening. At the ‘telling’ or message orientated end of the spectrum the audience is viewed by the PD organisation as a classic recipient of a crafted point. The programme is designed to advocate / assert that point (which is hopefully based on strong audience analysis). The research in this case is not a negotiation; it is working out how best to articulate a point in a way that it will have the highest chance of acceptance by the audience.

(Image source; Ali Fisher and Aurelie Brockerhoff, Options for Influence, p. 25)

Deliberate and genuine Listening exercises, as I have written before, sit at the other end of the spectrum. They focus on building habits of engagement by inverting the power relationship to be on the terms defined by the ‘audience’ or target community. This is not to say the listening exercise as having no point; it merely communicates that point through a shifted power relationship, where such a shift is useful to long-term engagement.

This won’t work if the listening is merely an opening for an intensified assertive campaign, as the power relationship immediately reverts to that of teller and the told. However, by building habits of engagement it can create an opportunity for greater openness, on both sides, for negotiation or exchange. It can equally allow for the identification of areas for a PD organisation to engage in facilitation or through which to engage with the target communities in collective action to achieve common goals.

Nothing here should be taken to indicate messaging is irrelevant, it isn’t. However, we need to consider not only what we wish to communicate by the power relationship through which that will be communicated. At times an assertive and dominant stance will create an image of authority and aid transmission of the message. At others an engagement which inverts that power relationship will provide the community with the ability to engage (rather than be the target of engagement).

Power and influence are not only those things which are claimed to valorise projects to political masters; they are also evident to the audience. We need to consider that power relationship alongside the goals for any PD initiative; after all it is one of the key elements which will influence the success of that initiative.