Finding Commonalities and Solutions With Decision-Makers
Customizing Messages
A vital note: Unless you are working on an urgent and timely policy, your first few meetings will be to listen, understand and connect around shared values, not to convince. Likewise, look for ways to keep the conversation going, even after you’ve shared your position, to continue moving toward mutual respect and understanding. If you hear no, it’s an invitation to stay curious and go deeper.
Please refer to the Creating Shared Space for Productive Conversations section to integrate listening and human connection throughout your conversations.
The archetypes provide a way to relate with more understanding to people during conversation so they are a useful tool for testing and customizing messages. Voices for Healthy Kids has been able to apply the archetypes model to the topics shown below. Click on each message when reviewing a topic to read through how they can help open conversation across the archetypes, with pivots for each.