READ THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THIS SERIES

The steps to building successful community engagement for sensitive projects and the risk of not engaging. Read the article.

Choosing the right communications tools for community engagement is not just about the dissemination of information. It’s an opportunity to engage the community early to combat misinformation, create opportunities for meaningful dialogue, and reach the community on their terms within their comfort level.

One of those communications tools can be a centerpiece for demonstrating a willingness to foster productive engagement, and its efficacy comes from the in-person interaction factor:

The community information session, also known as the open house.

The Problem with the Standard “Public Meeting”

Say “community meeting” and the standard “public meeting” is what most of us envision. Think council meetings, or town halls, or formal presentations. The structure is similar for all examples:

  • There is a delivery of information from an authoritative source to a crowd.
  • There is an opportunity for the crowd to respond to that information.

This approach simulates a dialogue but is not actually a conversation, and can be problematic. That’s because of the format: 1. Presentations are about talking at rather than talking with; 2. Responses come from only the most energetic sources; and 3.The standard “public meeting” is, by nature, susceptible to the mob mentality. For this last point, rely on the research:

Contagion Theory  is one of the earliest sociological observations. It has evolved over generations with different terminology, but the same premise: emotion spreads in close crowds when the right stimuli is introduced. We see it displayed at public events from sports to political rallies. The risk in the town hall is greatest when you’ve not yet inoculated your audience with accurate information, creating ideal conditions for fear and anger, and barriers to understanding.

Herding refers to the idea that people react to emotional situations in a group differently than as individuals. .

The solution is a public forum that avoids the mob mentality and establishes an environment for individual engagement. Enter the open house.

Note: Sometimes, there is a regulatory requirement to conduct a standard public meeting or hearing, or a Mayor may insist that you come before council (insert appropriate form of municipal government here). Obviously, it is important to comply. But it doesn’t mean you can’t conduct an open house as well, to compliment this standard interaction.

What is the Open House Approach?

Rather than a standard “public meeting” where a presentation takes place before a crowd and there is room for public comment, the open house is a public event focused on one-on-one engagement.

  • There is no fixed start time. Interested parties can drop by within an established timeframe, usually two to three hours.
  • Subject matter experts are available to answer questions and address personal concerns.
  • The emphasis is on eliminating a presentation style format and replacing it with something that can be personalized based on an individual’s interests.

Why are sensitive projects reluctant to use it?

I have utilized the open house approach successfully in my career several times for major infrastructure projects and large-scale environmental remediation. Therefore, I am confident in making this assertion:

Even with the most contentious projects, open house interaction is
more manageable than the standard “public meeting” any day of the week.

And yet, it is not being used nearly enough for projects that will clearly garner public interest. Here’s why it is often overlooked:

Perception of risk: All public facing tactics have risk, so responsible management makes an appropriate assessment of risk to determine if it is prudent to move forward with that tactic. Occasionally, I will have a client who expresses concern over one-on-one engagement and opts for the presentation style because it puts distance between the company and the public.

The social discomfort factor: There is an underlying challenge with any engagement associated with a sensitive project: the reluctance to be part of a difficult conversation. One-on-one engagement can amplify the level of anxiety. Having that sort of interaction can be uncomfortable, and most people avoid a difficult conversation rather than diving right in. The data speaks for itself:

  • A 2026 Quantum Connections survey found that 85% “avoided bringing up a topic in the past 30 days because it might turn into an argument.”
  • Nicklas Balboa states in Psychology Today that “difficult conversations come at a cost.” He explains that uncomfortable social situations “are perceived as cognitively costly” (drain on the brain), so we are more apt to avoid those situations.

Call it conflict adverse, or merely just uncomfortable, many personal decisions are often driven by a desire to avoid conflict. That is the human nature element that comes into play when deciding how to communicate to the public. But avoiding the uncomfortable doesn’t strengthen your project’s position. It does the opposite and increases project risk. Minimizing community engagement could mean the important dialogue with the community is missed, problems go unchecked, and emotion festers.

There’s also a converse side. It’s much easier for people to be adversarial to a project or an organization than to a person. When a member of the community sees a representative from the project as a fellow human being willing to engage in conversation and not as an impersonal spokesperson, the dynamic changes.

 

How Do You Get Past the Reluctance

Reaching individuals in one-on-one connections, especially those most concerned, before a negative perception of the project is cemented into their thinking, can be a strong detractor to organized opposition. This statement is more than just subjective observation; there is plenty of research to support it. For instance, Swofford and Slattery found a relation between individual perceptions of wind turbine technologies and one’s willingness to accept the construction of turbines in the vicinity. Read about more examples in this international research, Public opposition and the neighborhood effect: How social interaction explains protest against a large infrastructure project.

The open house tool, if implemented in the right way, provides for productive dialogue with the community, while avoiding much of the negative consequences associated with a standard “public meeting.” That doesn’t mean there are not difficult conversations to be had. Spoiler alert – I have no magic solution for transforming every interaction with a concerned citizen into a pleasant conversation. Rather, it is about creating the right space and preparing the team to better manage those conversations to ensure they are productive and respectful. That way, citizens feel heard while receiving facts from an informed source.

Brain research can be your worst enemy, or be in your favor, depending on how you choose to approach the concept of community engagement. Our understanding of the brain is evolving quickly, and some of that modern understanding has led to new conclusions about how we digest complicated information. Much of this new knowledge originated from a very old case study. It involves a railroad foreman, Phineas Gage, who suffered a metal rod through the brain in the 1800s and survived. The man went on to live a normal life, albeit hindered by an inability to process certain information. The specific damage to his brain was later re-imagined through 3D modeling, demonstrating how important emotion is to absorbing information and what is lost when those elements of brain function are hindered. The cognitive and emotional aspects of the brain need to work together, or we don’t process complicated subject matter well. You can do a deeper dive on that research.

What that means for an individual’s interest in a sensitive project in their community is that their brain is ready to tackle the information, because they are emotionally invested. Who, where, and how they get that information is the question, and rampant misinformation can end up being your biggest problem. The one-on-one aspect of the open house (coupled with other communications tactics, of course) can be a game changer for interacting with someone who is fully plugged into your project. You have the opportunity to ensure the facts are communicated better than any letter or fact sheet could ever do.

How Does the Open House Work?

Embrace the philosophy: Implementing an open house requires an acceptance that one-on-one engagement is the most effective way to: 1.Disseminate facts and correct misconceptions in a public forum; 2. Build interpersonal relationships with individuals who could otherwise be part of the opposition; and 3. Eliminate the potential for the mob mentality.

Follow the design: There is a physical design to the event. Imagine stations of information with visuals and a subject matter expert for each station, and those stations are configured in the shape of a horseshoe. The stations start at the left part of the horseshoe. The first station covers the history, or background, and each station following represents a different element of the project, including safety and working with the community. To support the subject matter experts, a representative at the welcome table answers general questions and directs specific questions to the right subject matter expert, and there are one or two floaters to support subject matter experts when there are too many people at a particular station, or when there is a difficult conversation.

Publicize the event: My conversations with new clients often start with a question from them: what is the requirement for notification. The answer defines the bare minimum communication. While I would never advise that promoting an open house should be blanket and all encompassing, it should invite everyone who could be impacted by the project. Better to identify who they are and to interact in a controlled environment as opposed to something brewing that you are not aware of. You don’t know what you don’t know, as the saying goes.

Training the subject matter experts: The project manager, engineers, and scientists assigned to a sensitive project are the most knowledgeable parties when it comes to research, design, and implementation. They are often passionate about the work and willing to talk about the details for as long as someone is willing to listen. The subject matter experts become my best friends because I need to work closely with them to fully understand the project so I can effectively communicate to the public. The challenge is they don’t have traditionally public facing positions, and they often talk only to each other about the project, so the output is usually technical and not accessible to the lay person. Before an open house takes place, we go through engagement training with each participating subject matter expert. Among the topics covered in the training:

  • Start the conversation simple and scale up based on the person’s knowledge. It is important that information be accessible, and understandable, to everyone. I often ask  subject matter experts; how would you explain the project to your Aunt Suzy or Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving dinner? Normal-speak is free of technical explanations that include a lot of scientific or industry terms (And very important, lose the acronyms). As the conversation continues, it could become apparent to the subject matter expert that an individual’s understanding is more technical than the average participant and therefore how the information exchange takes place can be adjusted.
  • Rely on the visuals. At each station, we recommend including imagery (photos, graphs, charts, diagrams) to support the topic. It can be as simple as big, static boards, and can be as advanced as video on a loop. We encourage the subject matter experts to rely on the visuals to better explain the information, because it makes a difference in understanding. This is a widely accepted truth reinforced by science: people process and retain information better when the explanation is accompanied by visuals.
  • Be aware of your body language. This is the toughest one to manage for subject matter experts and seasoned professional communicators alike because so many of our physical expressions are not intentional or they leave room for interpretation. Scheduling a practice session or two will help to identify the most critical physical expressions to correct, such as the closed position (folding arms or standing at an angle that communicates an unwillingness to interact).
  • Always be empathetic. There isn’t a lot of training needed for this one. We are wired to pick up on the emotions of others. But we don’t always pay attention to the clues, especially if we feel we have to get a point across. Train your subject matter experts to be active listeners, engaging in conversation. Get them to collectively accept that you can disagree with someone’s position and still understand why they feel the way they do. Expressing empathy doesn’t weaken your stance. It humanizes the interaction and opens the door for dialogue.
  • Target the moveable middle. On any topic, most people are somewhere in the middle – they may lean pro or con, but they’re not entrenched. When your subject matter experts encounter someone whose mind is firmly made up, they should allow them to feel heard, but agree to disagree. Likewise, advise them against spending too much time in the comfort zone with those who already agree.
  • Leverage the floaters. Knowing how to engage with community members also involves an understanding of when support is needed.

Preparing for the difficult parts: Safety for your team and the public is priority #1. Truly contentious projects will attract emotion, and sometimes that emotion gets out of hand. On rare occasions, I recommend to the client that we hire security or an off-duty police officer, to stand outside of the open house room, and be available if needed. Only once in my 30-year career have I had to bring the off duty officer into the room because of a participant whose anger was a concern. Within 5 minutes of the officer’s presence, the situation de-escalated on its own and the conversation went back to civil.

Note: For projects that impact large neighborhoods or several communities, we will also host webinars as a companion tool to the community information sessions. It can’t replace in-person engagement for all the reasons outlined in this article. But having a broader range often requires the use of multiple tools. That said, we use strict protocols for webinars to ensure the client is fully in control.

 

Final Thoughts

Information flows faster today than ever before, and the speed to which it flows grows exponentially. Consider how quickly AI went from novelty to necessity. A portion of that information (a large portion for certain subject matter) is not accurate. Couple the speed and credibility issues with how quickly groups can form (often initiated via social media) and mobilize. It is not months, or weeks, or even days anymore. A project team needs to be ahead of the chatter, deploying tools that will reach the community with accurate information, in meaningful engagement.

About the Author

Tom Reilly has nearly 30 years of experience finding meaningful ways to connect an organization to its stakeholders, developing campaigns that make complicated information accessible to real people, and building value-driven partnerships between organizations and communities.

For 9 years, he has served as Vice President for H&G Public Affairs. During his tenure, Tom has developed strategic communications approaches for clients in the utility and manufacturing industries, acted as liaison for several sensitive environmental and infrastructure projects, and has supported both crisis management planning and actual crisis event response on behalf of clients.