County employees and board members take in workshop

Hill County employees and board members packed the Timmons Room in the Hill County Courthouse Thursday to take in a two-part workshop aimed at teaching how to improve relationships among people working together and the best procedures for public boards.

“This is about good governance and democracy promotion,” Community Development Specialist and board instructor Paul Lachapelle said.

Lachapelle is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Montana State University and said he has been a board instructor for 10 years.

The event was coordinated by Hill County extension agent Shylea Wingard, who said she was thrilled with the turnout.

“In my observation, it looked like we could use some board training and some training on how we could get along better,” Wingard said this morning.

Attending were representatives of the Hill County Park Board, Cemetery Board, Great Northern Fair Board, Montana State University-Northern bio-diesel program, U.S. Border Patrol, Bear Paw Development, the Auditor’s Office, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Havre Area Chamber of Commerce, Hill County government and members of the Glacier County Extension Office, who, Wingard said, were attending to see if the workshops were something they would like to do in Glacier.

Lachapelle dubbed the first segment of the workshop, accompanied by a slew of Powerpoint images, “Crucial Conversations.”

“The data suggests that when our relationships are improved in the workplace, our productivity goes up. So there’s an economic benefit to having a crucial conversation, improving our relationship, and ultimately, being more productive,” Lachapelle said during a short break in which attendees were filling out sheest with questions about personal negotiation styles.

Examples of crucial conversations included talking to a co-worker who behaves inappropriately, giving the boss behavior feedback, talking to a co-worker about personal hygiene problems or critiquing a colleague’s work.

Lachapelle cited research that says 53 percent of people are unhappy at work, and 36 percent say they would give up money to be happier at work. Workers hold back having those crucial conversations, and each conversation not held costs an organization $7,500 and eight work days. One in three people say their work culture does not support holding crucial conversations, research suggests.

The first step to having a good crucial conversation is to start with good motive, Lachapelle said. As opposed to a desire just to be right, the right motive would be to get to the truth or produce results.

Lachapelle then highlighted a five-step process, acronymized STATE, on how to have that crucial conversation:

“State your facts, tell your story, ask for assistance, ask for other’s paths, talk tentatively and encourage testing,” he said.

The second half of the workshop — Wingard helped instruct this portion — focused on board leadership training, specifically as it pertains to the public’s right to know versus individual right.

The instructors cited examples , also using a PowerPoint presentation, in which various Montana boards were sued by people for violating the state’s open meetings law.

Montana is one of only five states to expressly establish the right to know in its constitution, those attending were told. The right to know protects citizens and reminds public employees their jobs exist to serve the needs of the public and no other. Montana courts explain right of privacy protections apply only to natural human beings and not to non-human entities.

The instructors presented Pew Research charts illustrating that, overall, public trust in government has dissipated since the 1920s with spikes in the 80s and 2000s.

Then time was spent on discussion of proper board statutes and by-laws, rules such as citizens must be given opportunity to comment or that minutes must be taken and any corrections must be written in red ink.

When talk of conduct was discussed, various charts were used to illustrate misconduct of various types is just as common in places of government as it is in the private sector, which was followed thorough with elaboration on ethics codes and conduct rules.

The session concluded with a summary of five good governing principles — legitimacy and voice, direction, performance, accountability and fairness.