Facilitation guardrails for a neighborhood deliberation

Guardrails to build into the tool and the room, not bolt on after:

• Ground rules on the page. One voice at a time; disagree with ideas, not people; what is said here is summarized, not attributed, unless someone asks to be named.
• Plain language throughout. The statement deck, the report, and the flyer all read at a middle-school level, in every language the block speaks.
• Small-group formats over open microphones. Tables of four to six with a shared prompt beat a line at the mic.
• A named host and steward. A person and an organization on every public page: who convenes, who answers, who carries the result forward.
• Room for the quiet and the offline. Paper ballots, large print, a phone number, a table at the library; the tool is one door, not the only one.
• Never let the tool auto-decide. It informs and records human decisions; the people name the groups, write the summary, and choose what goes to the decision-maker.
• Honest about signal. Participation is not representativeness. Say who was heard and who was not wherever results appear.
• Close the loop. Read the report aloud where it matters, carry it to the hearing, bring it back to the people who took part.

Details

• practice kind: recipe