11 minutes
Who is at the table, and on what terms Five depths a relationship can have, why one word covers all of them in state government, and what a stakeholder list actually proves.
What you’ll be able to do Tell the difference between informing, consulting, involving, collaborating and sharing a decision, and name which one a specific relationship in your own work actually is. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: A new supervisor asks whether that description is accurate. What is the most useful answer? Document a next step for Who is at the table, and on what terms: Take one stakeholder list you work from and mark each relationship with its honest depth: informed, consulted, involved, collaborating or sharing the decision. Then mark the word we use for it in writing, and see where the two disagree. Five depths, and one word that covers all of them State agencies use the word partnership for almost every outside relationship they have. It covers a quarterly newsletter, a standing advisory group, a contracted provider association, a listening session, a comment period and a genuinely shared decision. When one word stretches that far it stops carrying information, and it becomes possible for a program to believe it has partners when what it has is a distribution list.
A more useful question is how deep a relationship actually goes. Informing means we tell people what we decided or what is about to happen. Consulting means we ask for reactions to something we have already shaped. Involving means we work with people through the decision, and they can see their contribution in what comes out. Collaborating means we shape it together and part of the agenda is theirs. Sharing the decision means the authority itself is shared, and we do not quietly overrule the result.
All five are legitimate. No program can share authority over everything, and nobody expects it to. What causes damage is calling one of them by the name of another: describing a comment period as co-design, or an advisory group as a partnership when its advice has never changed an outcome. People on the other side notice. The relationship that follows is more guarded than the one before it, and the next invitation gets a slower answer.
What you can check without asking anyone How each relationship started: did we seek this organization out, or did it find us?
How long ago the list was built, and who has been added since.
Whether the same three or four voices account for most of what we hear.
What we sent last, how far ahead it arrived, and in what format.
Whether anyone was paid for their time, and if so, who and through what route.
The last time someone outside the division changed a decision, and whether we ever told them they had.
Four relationships, four depths A quarterly update A public comment period A standing advisory group A co-designed notice
Twenty-two organizations receive it. Nobody is asked for anything and almost nobody replies. This is informing, and informing well is worth doing. It becomes a problem only when the program counts twenty-two as the size of its partnership.
A draft is published with a thirty-day window. The responses come from organizations with staff who read state notices for a living. This is consulting, and it systematically over-represents whoever already has that capacity.
Members meet every other month. Whether this is consulting, involving or collaborating depends entirely on when they see the material, which part of the agenda is theirs, and whether anything has ever changed because of them.
Self-advocates, family members and a plain-language reviewer work on the wording with the program, and their changes stand unless there is a recorded reason. This is collaborating. It costs the most staff time of the four, and it produces the notice that works.
Informing, consulting, or something deeper? A quarterly bulletin goes to every organization on the contact list.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision The program publishes a draft policy and invites written comment for thirty days.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision Self-advocates write the first draft of the family-facing notice, and the program edits it with them.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision Staff hold a listening session and take notes for the project file.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision A notice of a service change is mailed to everyone affected.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision A paid advisory group sets two of the six agenda items itself, and its recommendations stand unless the division records a reason.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision Providers are surveyed about which of three options they prefer, after the three were chosen internally.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision Family members and county staff jointly choose which redesign option goes forward.
Choose a category Informing Consulting Collaborating or sharing the decision Check matches Reset Where this sits in the program's map of change This program uses a familiar map of intercultural development — Denial, Polarization, Minimization, Acceptance, Adaptation and Integration — to describe how organizations and the people in them change over time. It is a map for the work, not a label, a score or a record about any individual. Nothing you do in this module is assessed, ranked or kept.
Stakeholder relationships are a good place to watch Minimization at work. Minimization is the sincere belief that differences between people are mostly surface, that one open and evenhanded process serves everyone, and that fairness means offering the same thing to all. It produces a single comment period, a single meeting format, a single kind of invitation, and a real confidence that the door is open to anyone who wants to walk through it.
The door is open. It opens onto a process that rewards organizations with spare staff time, familiarity with state vocabulary, reliable transportation and the confidence that speaking up is worth the trouble. Acceptance is recognizing that those differences are real and that they decide who answers. Adaptation is changing the invitation, the timing, the format and the compensation so that the answers come from more than the same four organizations. None of that is abstract; it lives in the details of how an invitation is built.
Name the depth before you name the relationship What you can change You control what you call a relationship in a report, a charter, a grant narrative or a meeting summary.
What to watch for Do not describe a comment period as co-design, or an advisory group as a partnership when its advice has never changed an outcome. The people described that way can tell, and the correction costs far more than the accuracy would have.
Your next step In the next document you write about outside relationships, replace every use of the word partnership with the depth you can actually defend.
We have been on that list for six years. We get the newsletter. Once we sent a four-page response to a draft and never heard anything back, so now when they ask, it goes to the bottom of the pile with everything else that is not going to matter.
Composite community organization perspective, illustrative Private reflection, kept by you: think of one outside relationship you rely on. How do your role, your authority and the language you use in it shape what the other person feels able to say to you — and what would have to change for the honest version to reach you?
Carry this forward Relationships sit at different depths. Informing tells people what was decided. Consulting asks for reactions to something already shaped. Involving works with people through the decision. Collaborating shares the shaping. Sharing the decision shares the authority. All five are legitimate; calling one of them by the name of another is not.
The word partnership is doing an enormous amount of work in state government. It is worth checking, relationship by relationship, whether what we hold is a partnership or a mailing list.
Who is at the table is usually the result of accumulated convenience: the organizations that already had staff to send, already knew the abbreviations, and were already in our contacts. That is not the same as who is affected.
Presence is not partnership. A seat on an advisory group proves nothing about whether the person could prepare, contribute in a way that worked for them, influence anything, or hear afterward what happened.
A scenario about a program that lists twenty-two partners and hears from four, sorting practice that separates the depth of a relationship from its label, and a knowledge check on what a stakeholder list can and cannot show.
Take one stakeholder list you work from and mark each relationship with its honest depth: informed, consulted, involved, collaborating or sharing the decision. Then mark the word we use for it in writing, and see where the two disagree.
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Course overview Next lesson Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
