8. Establishing Common Ground and Agreement on Issues — Find-
ing the decisions, solutions and actions on which the coalition can
act.
9. Implementation — Wherein solutions and plans are activated and
evaluated.
The roles one might play during the emergence phase include edu-
cator, technical specialist, leader, organizer, secretary, participant,
spokesperson and convener. Skills to be played include networking,
meetings management, facilitation and assessment.
In the Stabilization Phase, when an educator leads a discussion, con-
flict often surfaces around disagreement on values, goals and proc-
esses or how to operate as a group. Therefore, the conflict manage-
ment role is needed. Conflict management calls into play the skills of
problem solving, mediating, negotiating and facilitation. The leader
role may again be required to help set the proper direction.
The activation phase requires skills in problem solving, decision
making, action planning and evaluating. Doing those things again
brings into play the roles of conflict manager, leader and organizer.
Implementation of decisions in particular requires leaders, organizers
and spokespeople. Skills are needed in maneuvering through the pol-
itics of the public policy arena and in mediating the development of
“win-win” solutions. Gathering and providing information brings the
educator and technical specialist roles into play. Other roles include
secretary and spokesperson.
The coalition-building cases with which I am familiar involved mem-
bers constantly collecting data. Information is not always gathered in
the classical research sense but often directly from observation in the
field and through members’ network of associates and access to institu-
tional data banks.
In case histories of coalitions, it is common to find coalition-building
stages occurring in different sequences. The skills and roles identified
in this paper can pop up almost anywhere in the coalition-building
process. Even in coalition-building cases in which little advance plan-
ning is done, knowing how roles and skills might relate to and affect
that process should increase the likelihood of developing successful
coalitions.
AN OLD WARNING
Andy Duncan
The Extension Service: Process is our most important product.
Even if you have not spent much time around a land grant univer-
sity you have probably heard that joke or one like it, though it may
have been aimed at some other organization or an individual. There
is constant grumbling about groups and people who would rather
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