Meeting Session:

Leadership Skills: Resolving Conflicts

Overview & Presenter:

Being a good leader means dealing effectively with conflict.  In this leadership training workshop, participants used the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) to assess and identify their preferred styles of dealing with conflict.  Participants learned about different styles of conflict resolution and examined several conflict scenarios common to legislators and staff.

Facilitator: Dr. Myrna Bair, Director, Women's Leadership Development Program, University of Delaware

Summary:

Dr. Myrna Bair opened the session by having the participants take the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) to assess their tendencies regarding five conflict-handling modes.  The test measured the two dimensions of a person’s assertiveness and cooperativeness.  The modes are:

Competing: This is an assertive and uncooperative response in which the individual uses whatever power seems appropriate to win his or her position.

Accommodating: This is an unassertive and cooperative response in which a person neglects his or her interests to satisfy the other person.

Avoiding:  This is an unassertive and uncooperative response in which the person simply does not address the issue.

Collaborating:  This is a cooperative and assertive response in which the person works with the other person to find a solution that satisfies both of them.  It often involves digging in to the problem to identify underlying concerns and finding alternatives that neither person thought of at the start.

Compromising:  This is an intermediate response in terms of assertiveness and cooperativeness.  The object is to find an expedient and mutually acceptable solution.

Dr.  Bair had the participants use the different styles to discuss approaches to some common legislative conflicts.  Although some of these styles may seem preferable to others, Dr. Bair stressed that each style has its time and place in legislative conflict resolution.  She gave advice to the participants on key questions to ask depending on your test results.  If you are high on “avoiding,” participants need to examine whether key decisions are being made by default or if people are having trouble getting your input on issues.  If you are high on the collaborative score, you need to ask whether you sometimes spend time and energy on discussing issues in depth that do not really deserve it.  She and the participants discussed pros and cons with each style, with Dr. Bair emphasizing the need to develop each of the styles with a keen awareness of knowing which style will be most appropriate under the circumstances.

Meeting Session:

The Changing Face of America

Overview & Presenter:

Rapid demographic changes within the American population are creating serious policy challenges for state legislatures.  This session will examine the swiftly changing demographic landscape in the United States.

Moderator:   Laura Bauman, Chief of Staff, Senate Democrats, Indiana

Presenter:      John Haaga, Director of Domestic Programs, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, D.C.

Summary:

Laura Bauman noted the important role of demographics in making key legislative issue areas like health, transportation, elections and education and she introduced the speaker.  John Haaga started the session by emphasizing the three key U.S. demographic trends:

• The population growth is still moving south and west, but it does not cover all of the South and West.
• Immigration accounts for the most growth.
• The population is aging.

In terms of growth, Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas area) is still at the top.  California is still growing, but not as fast as it once did.  The population loss is in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains.  The bulk of the immigrant surge is in a few states, including California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey.  We are becoming a more diverse nation, as the Hispanic and Asian American populations are rising while the Caucasian and Black (non-Hispanic) American populations are staying fairly level.  In the next 50 years, immigration policy will have a huge impact on population.

The population is getting older as the “Baby Boom” generation is in their 50s. Life expectancy for women is five years longer than that for men.  Our older generation will continue to grow, especially after 2011.  Also, these older citizens are unevenly distributed.  In some sense this characteristic reflects the fact that people move more when they are younger, so the “older” counties are places the young people are leaving.  The average household size is shrinking, as more people are living alone.

In conclusion, immigration accounts for most of the growth in population and although they are spreading out somewhat, immigrants are still concentrated in certain areas.   With the population aging, age-specific programs and revenue sources will be greatly affected.  The growth has been in parts of the country that are Republican strongholds, but the minority group growth may bode well for Democrats. 

Meeting Session:

Citizen Engagement: Creating a Meaningful Dialogue

Overview & Presenters:

In New York, more than 4,300 citizens came together to plan the future of the World Trade Center site after 9/11 at the largest town meeting ever convened. In Illinois, nearly 1,000 residents gathered to develop a six-county regional comprehensive plan. New approaches to involve the public offer legislators unique opportunities to engage their constituents. The non-profit organization AmericaSpeaks facilitated this session to explore how these new approaches can meet the needs of legislators.

Moderator: Frank Parisi, Principal Research Analyst, Office of Legislative Services, New Jersey

Presenters: Carolyn Lukensmeyer, President, AmericaSpeaks, Washington, DC

Joe Goldman, Senior Associate, AmericaSpeaks, Washington, DC

Summary:

Frank Parisi described some of the key challenges for legislators connecting with their constituents and introduced the speakers.  Carolyn Lukensmeyer and Joe Goldman led the participants through an interactive session designed to simulate some of the features of an AmericaSpeaks town meeting. 

They started by emphasizing the need to connect to a “general interest” public (those not acting with a special interest perspective) and engage citizens about the most important public decisions that affect their lives.  In their work, AmericaSpeaks planners design a program to attract demographically valid samples.  They use a variety of methods to encourage participation by a wide range of citizens, and their registration system lets them know if they have to target particular groups of people.  They use many small group discussions, with a facilitator leading those discussions and with written materials for the participants.  The tables have computers and keypads, so the results of the small group discussions can be forwarded to a trained “theme” group that can disseminate the overall emerging trends of the discussions back to all the participants.  It is an approach that blends the richness of small group dialogue with the perspective of a large group.

The presenters also mentioned that the approach can help identify situations where a vocal but small minority tries to unfairly dominate a discussion. In the World Trade Center rebuilding discussion, there was a group that pushed a bottom line of “build higher.”  The group got good press coverage and its members were articulate and media savvy.  This electronic town meeting approach allowed for a wider range of input, however, and showed that the “build higher” viewpoint was not widely shared. 

AmericaSpeaks research has shown three key conclusions:

• People are strongly moved by governance issues, holding dear to the “of the people, by the people, for the people” tradition.
• People want the general interest recognized over the special interest.
• Although expert knowledge is valuable in public decision-making, there is a strong role for public wisdom.

Carolyn and Joe noted that their meetings can be costly when the full range of planning and technology are used.  However, the key aspects of being participant-focused, providing a “transparent” process, reaching diverse groups, generating small group dialogue, providing background information, articulating shared priorities and providing immediate reports on outcomes are things legislatures can improve without huge costs.  The AmericaSpeaks electronic town meeting is described in greater detail at www.americaspeaks.org.

Meeting Session:

Ethics: What's a Personal Interest?

Overview & Presenters:

Any legislator who works at a "regular" job has to look at whether there are conflicts between that work and legislative business.  This roundtable discussion session examined what is fair in balancing the legislators' right to work and the public's right to know.  What are fair restrictions or disclosure requirements in this area, especially in part-time legislatures where it may be difficult to attract legislator candidates from a wide array of occupations and backgrounds?

Moderator: Laura Rose, Deputy Director, Joint Legislative Council,

Wisconsin

Panelists: Peggy Kerns, Director, NCSL Center for Ethics in Government, Colorado  

Representative Ken Svedjan, North Dakota

Summary:

Laura Rose described the purpose of the session and introduced the speakers.  Peggy Kerns noted that in the vast majority of our legislatures, which are part-time citizen legislatures, legislators need to balance their professional work lives with their legislative lives.  All of the states recognize that that legislators owe a duty to the public and the legislature as an institution to serve according to a high standard of conduct.  This includes the idea to not use the public position and authority for personal gain.  Legislators have conflicts all the time: legislative issues will often affect their own personal lives.  States have a variety of ways of defining “conflict of interest” and they may provide that definition in the constitution, statutes, rules or in some combination.  While different, the definitions generally involve a legislator receiving a financial benefit that does not accrue to other members of his or her profession or group.  However, states do not want to promote a high number of cases where legislators abstain from voting because that disenfranchises their constituents and deprives their legislative colleagues from their knowledge and expertise on the issue. 

States deal with the conflict of interest in a number of ways.  They often require financial disclosure and restrict gifts, dual office holding, certain post-legislative employment, honorariums, contracts with government and nepotism.  All of the actual rules and leadership directives are designed to make sure legislators put the public interest before their private interests.  Ms. Kerns also described standards based on appearance, common sense and the Center for Public Integrity that are designed to help legislators  know what to do when legislative issues arise that affect them personally.

Representative Ken Svedjan noted that North Dakota is a state where the values of trust and integrity are highly important to the citizens and the legislators.  They stress individual responsibility and do not try to restrict legislators from voting.  The assumption is that legislators bring their professional expertise to their legislative work, and in a pure citizen legislature with comparatively few staff members, the legislators must make full use of that expertise.  Their approach highlights open government, as every bill gets a hearing and goes to the floor.  Honesty and courtesy are expected.  Representative Svedjan reviewed North Dakota’s constitutional, statutory and rule provisions, highlighting in particular their legislative ethics policy.  It is stated in the affirmative and contains statements like “the legislative assembly always seeks a high reputation for progressive accomplishment where its members are public officers of integrity and dedication, maintaining high standards of ethical conduct….  The public interest will suffer if unduly stringent requirements deprive government of well-qualified citizens.”  The emphasis is on voting if at all possible on an issue, disclosing any possible conflicts, providing ethics training and clarifying that each legislator must take responsibility for his or her own actions.

Meeting Session:

Committee Business Meeting

Overview & Moderator:

Committee members discussed plans for committee sessions at the Annual Meeting.

Presiding Officer: Representative Danice Picraux, House Majority Leader, New Mexico

Summary:

The committee made plans for sessions to meet five available time slots at annual meeting.  The approved sessions are:

• A Focus on Legislative Staff: Retaining the Best and the Brightest (this would cover two time slots)  Good legislative staffs are an invaluable resource to state legislatures.  Characterized by tight budgets, short timelines, partisan politics and term limits, today’s legislative environment places high expectations on its workers.  Many employees, once they know how the system works and how to work the system, quickly find employment in positions outside of the state legislature.  Other employees, with career-long service records, are on the brink of retirement.  How can a legislative organization cope with the need for good staff in the midst of competition, limited budgets and an aging workforce?  Continuing the conversation of staff retention, how can management styles make or break office morale?  From the employee perspective, how can office management be influenced to make the office environment more engaging and productive?  From the manager’s perspective, how can management style help to nurture employee growth and development? [Co-sponsored by all ten of NCSL’s professional staff sections for Tuesday afternoon double time slots]

• The Art of Public Speaking - Learn the keys to giving your prepared and impromptu speeches real impact through proper construction, critical audience identification, and effective use of humor and storytelling. [This would be part of NCSL’s Legislator Training Track at annual meeting.  This will be in the second committee time slot for Wednesday.] 

• Leading on the Edge -- This session would highlight the lessons learned from legislative bodies where party control is razor-thin and from tied chambers.  The sense of the committee is that in some of the chambers where the majority is slim, the members may be growing further apart.  The session would also look at the issues of civility and collegiality under these circumstances.

• Managing the Part-time Legislature -- This session would continue the committee’s theme on the particular issues confronting the citizen or part-time legislature.  It would feature how these legislatures are handling new member orientation and other legislative training, constituent service and legislative budget work.  The emphasis will be on steps to take to make part-time legislators more effective without significantly increasing the amount of money spent or legislator time needed to improve.