Like many things that go sideways, my first disastrous public meeting caught me completely by surprise.

I was fresh-faced in my career as an urban planner and was told I had just six weeks to squeeze in a public meeting before the local city council held a final hearing to make a decision about whether to approve or deny a new mixed-use development project.

After a few weeks of planning, I arrived early at the middle school cafeteria the night of the meeting, wearing my best suit and feeling prepared. I arranged the chairs and tables, set up the screen and projector, and put out cookies and coffee, then excitedly stationed myself at the entrance to welcome everyone, wondering who would show up and what they would have to say.

But as a line formed at the sign-in table and the public drifted into the auditorium, my anxious attempts to welcome people were met with cold stares, long sighs and frustrated grumbling. Within minutes, I could tell something was off. I couldn’t connect with people. I could feel my skin grow hot and my stomach tighten. I started to sweat. This was not what I expected.

This crowd was angry.

My anxious attempts to welcome people were met with cold stares, long sighs and frustrated grumbling. Within minutes, I could tell something was off.. This crowd was angry.

As participants settled into their seats, I saw a middle-aged couple in jeans, a nurse still wearing scrubs and clogs, a few retirees adjusting their hearing aids, and a man wearing a “Ray’s Electric” T-shirt. Most of them were frowning, slumped into the rows of folding chairs with their arms crossed. I could feel that it was not going to go well.

And, no, this story does not have a happy ending. The meeting indeed did not go well. 

Before I could even flip to my first PowerPoint slide, which provided an overview of the evening’s agenda, a man in the back raised his hand and asked why this was the first time he was hearing about the project.

As I started to stumble over an answer about the public hearing process, another member of the audience called out that she, too, had not heard anything about this project until the day before and had only found out when her nextdoor neighbor mentioned it in passing. A few others in the audience nodded and agreed aloud. Five more hands went up. One man pointed out that months had gone by and no one had asked him what he thought about the project. And almost everyone in the room agreed.

And then the barrage began in earnest.

I stood at the front of the room as members of the audience launched complaints like tennis balls, one after another. I could barely return one before the next came hurtling toward me.

This is a terrible project. How could you think the community would want this? You don’t care what we think anyway. This is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Some things never change. Our opinion doesn’t matter to you.

Other comments took the form of personal insults directed at me – For being the stranger at the front of the room. For wearing a suit. For nervously trying to calm the room. For not having real answers. 

In the face of these intense emotions, it’s easy to blame participants for being unreasonable, their political leanings, their demographics or a host of other dynamics. But those factors did not matter. What caused the public’s outrage was ineffective public engagement. 

Late engagement undermines trust 

While many factors made my engagement efforts ineffective, my biggest mistake was engaging too late. By simply checking the boxes, I had waited until too late in the decision process to engage the community. This pushed my team, the decision-makers and the public into an impossible corner: By the time we got to the meeting that day, many small decisions had already been made that would have been difficult or expensive to revisit. 

Unfortunately, this is the status quo in public engagement. We tend to hold public hearings near the end of a decision process – a point when decision-makers are least able to accept substantial input. And the common way to try to “manage” the inevitable tension is via persuasion aka “messaging.” This scenario, often called DAD (decide-announce-defend), tends to compound any underlying confusion and disagreement, which ultimately fosters organized opposition. 

A public meeting gone sideways is not just an uncomfortable moment for the person facilitating a meeting. There are many costs of doing public engagement badly – from lost time and money to broken trust. My disastrous meeting was not just a failure and embarrassment for me professionally; it was also damaging to the community. Public outcry eventually scuttled the project, but only after months of protests and legal appeals. I had wasted my client’s time and money and possibly undermined the community’s trust in their local government to make decisions that align with their values.

Early engagement and transparency are essential to trust

The success of a public engagement program depends on what practitioners do long before a final public hearing. By engaging the public at the beginning stages of a decision, we identify the community’s issues and concerns long before spending resources and reaching milestones that are hard to reverse. More importantly, engaging early helps build trust with community members by signaling a genuine willingness to share power.

Obstacles to decision-making such as hostile public meetings, “difficult” people and bad press can often be prevented or mediated by early and transparent community engagement. Imagine heading into a public hearing with the knowledge that you had already taken the time to identify and address key issues. 

That’s not to say it’s easy. Even those of us who want to engage early face a variety of objections from our bosses and elected leaders: Effective public engagement is expensive and takes time…The public is not qualified to weigh in…Engagement simply stirs the pot… Let sleeping dogs lie. And more. However, these objections can be addressed and don’t negate the ultimate value – and necessity – of genuine community engagement.

Effective early engagement starts with getting internal buy-in and is followed with an intentional set of steps designed to protect you from surprise. These steps include: (1) clearly defining the who, what, when of your public decision, (2) setting objectives for engagement, (3) conducting a scan of the engagement landscape to understand who makes up the public and their range of perspectives, and (4) writing an engagement playbook for both decision-makers and the public.  

My book, Public Engagement Made Easy: A Guide for Planners and Policymakers explains how to overcome common objections to public engagement and outlines the specific steps necessary to design an effective and transparent engagement process. It reflects what I've learned since my first, disastrous, public meeting – and I hope it can you help you too.