Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

26 • Ravi Prabhu, Cynthia McDougall and Robert Fisher
Phase 3:
Material or Instrumental Action
Facilitation &
leadership
Phase 2:
Strategic Action
Empowerment through
meaning or purpose Ph. 1 space =
‘Shared visions,
meaning &
purpose’
Exploring beliefs and
attitudes (mental models)
Communicative action
predominates
Communication
Figure 2-2. Phase 1: communicative action
The stakeholders engage with each other to define a common vision for
their resource management and identify the major issues that they wish to
deal with, thereby generating a meaning and identity for themselves as a
group. This will become the framework within which they can define the
nature of their relationships to each other and to others during the next
phase. The process of communication, where the goal is the coordination
of behaviour, is very sensitive to, and critically dependent on, the quality
of facilitation or leadership that is available. As the initial phase, it can be
a lengthy process, and as noted earlier, it also continues concurrent with
other phases. In other words, the group will iterate processes of redefining
itself while engaged in other phases as well.
Leadership and facilitation. We use ‘leadership’ in the model presented
here to refer to all individuals, institutions and arrangements from within
the group related to mentoring, guidance and enablement of decision
making amongst local stakeholders. When external groups, such as
extension service providers are engaged in similar roles we refer to this as
‘external leadership’. Despite the model’s emphasis on the proactive role
of the local stakeholders, we view both as playing valuable roles. Following
Capra (2002), a leader is a person who is able to hold a vision, to articulate
it clearly and to communicate it with passion and charisma, and a person
whose actions embody certain values that serve as a standard for others
to strive for. We also stress another critical dimension of leadership in this