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Community-Driven “Pollyanna Principled” consulting aims all aspects of a consultant’s practice at their clients’ highest aspirations - creating visionary improvement to the quality of life in their clients’ communities.

Rooted in the six Pollyanna Principles, Community-Driven consulting simultaneously builds strong, vibrant, healthy communities while building strong, vibrant, healthy programs and organizations for your clients - all while building strength into your consulting practice itself!

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Reaching for your highest potential as a consultant and change agent requires more than a different way of doing what you are currently doing. It requires rethinking the assumptions and expectations at the heart of your consulting work, to aim at higher expectations for Community-Driven results from all the work you do.

Simply put, then, Pollyanna Principled Consulting is about far more than just a new technique or tool. It is the next step up for driving your consulting practice to the next level of effectiveness - effectiveness for your practice itself, for your clients, and for the communities those clients serve.

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Because Community-Driven “Pollyanna Principled” Consulting is not about a specific tool or technique, what is taught is actually more practical than if we were to teach techniques.

That is because students will be guided to discover for themselves how to apply The Pollyanna Principles to the work they are currently doing. From there, students will develop Pollyanna Principled tools, techniques and approaches that best fit their own personality, expertise, and clients. And that is far more practical than borrowing tools from someone elses experience!

This is just one of the ways this curriculum will model the change we want our students to create with their clients. If we are teaching students to build upon their clients’ wisdom and inspiration (building strength upon strength), it only makes sense to build the students' strength upon their own wisdom, experience, and inspiration!

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Your work will likely change in many ways over time, but you will not be starting over from scratch. You will instead build upon your existing experience, adjusting in ways that fit your personality, your expertise, and your clients. You will be energized to continually seek new ways of doing your work, as you begin to be the change you want to see in the world.

For that reason, the word most commonly used by those who have begun using these approaches is “transformative.”

At every step in your learning you will be encouraged, inspired and supported by an online Learning Community* of practitioners who are in the process of transforming their own work. In Phases 2 and 3, you will also have the opportunity to practice in person, testing new approaches with a group of supportive peers in a face-to-face environment.

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Clients find Community-Driven approaches to be joyful and inspiring. Finally they have a way to reach for the visionary community change that brought them to this work in the first place!

Rather than feeling whipsawed by forces outside their control, Community-Driven approaches give them back that control. They begin finding new approaches for addressing long-standing organizational problems. They discover innovative ways to build engaged support for their work.

And they are finally able to hold themselves accountable for creating the future of their community and their organization.

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When the Pollyanna Principles are guiding a consultant’s practice, every step the consultant takes is intended to model the behaviors he/she wants the client to learn and adopt.

From the very first phone call, the consultant will focus the client first on ultimate Community-Driven outcomes, and only then drill down to the issue at hand. From that first phone call, the consultant will help the client identify and build upon their existing strengths. And so on for the other Pollyanna Principles. In this way, every step of the consultants work is consciously constructed to focus on what is possible.

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Leaders of community organizations already want to make a significant difference in their communities. That is why they got into this work in the first place!

The consultant’s job, then, is to dig below the surface, brushing off the gathered layers of “Can’t” and “Not a priority” to bring that inspired purpose back to center stage.

From there, the consultant’s role is to ensure all the work the client / consultant team do together is aligned with the client’s own inspired purpose.

When the context of the work is the client’s own highest calling, no matter how labor intensive or emotionally charged the work may be at times, the client will not need to be convinced - his/her own inspiration will pull that work forward.

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Groups routinely join together, putting communal needs ahead of their own. Because this sector's systems are so overwhelmingly competitive, such cooperation requires a different approach than is typically used. Forcing collaboration as a condition of funding, or other “Reward / Punishment” approaches simply cannot make groups want to work together.

What does work, however, are cooperative systems based on the group’s own inspired purpose. As those groups are encouraged to reach for results they can only accomplish by working alongside other groups, they joyfully create and then adopt practical systems to do so.

Many of those cooperative systems are discussed in The Pollyanna Principles, as well as several of the books and other materials that are part of Phase 1. In addition, the Phase 2 Immersion Level course dedicates a considerable portion of the time to approaches for moving clients in this direction, to create their own systems for more cooperative, community-focused work.

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Approximately 2/3 of The Pollyanna Principles is comprised of case studies and practical examples of changes in client behavior, the actions those clients took, and the results.

In addition, the video “Introduction to The Pollyanna Principles” ends with a dramatic example - a group that eliminated the death penalty in their state within 18 months of creating a plan to do so. You will find additional case studies and real life examples in the Conversation on Pollyanna Principled Consulting, as well as in many of the books and other materials that are part of the Phase 1 readings.

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In uncertain times, organizations are often encouraged to address their funding problems head-on with “tried and true” approaches such as donor cultivation, etc. Unfortunately, even when the economy was strong, few organizations felt an ongoing sense of strength, even if they were doing their best to use those basic techniques.

These difficult times create a new opportunity to ask clients, “If the old ways created neither significant organizational sustainability nor significant community improvement, would you like to consider a way of operating that addresses both those conditions?

By inspiring organizations to focus first on building community strength, the consultant can help facilitate the group to work more closely with others who care about the same issues. Organizations quickly find that working with other organizations helps build a collective strength that is far stronger than any single organization could ever be.

As an added bonus, the very act of working together builds community strength. And there is nothing more tangible and realistic than that.

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The first strength you will be building into your practice is the increased difference your clients will be poised to create in their communities and in their organizations. That enhanced effectiveness will add significantly to your value as a consultant.

From there, your enhanced reputation will provide a springboard for your fees, your visibility, and your competitive edge. With each new experience and each new success, you will add to that value, and the cycle will continue to build strength upon itself.

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The Community-Driven Consulting Curriculum is a 3-Phase continuum of learning.

• Phase 1 is self-paced, including readings, audio and video presentations, and participation in an online learning community (currently in development).
• Phase 2 is a 5-day Immersion Course, providing the opportunity to practice new ways of being in all areas of specialty - governance, planning, resource development, etc. - as well as Community-Driven approaches to marketing and developing the business side of your consulting practice.
• Phase 3 will be the Faculty Level. At this level, consultants will prove they have put their prior learnings into practice, and they will be directly mentored and coached to prepare them to receive referrals / teach on behalf of the Institute. It is essential that consultants have practical experience using these approaches prior to teaching others to do this work, if for no other reason than an inability to answer questions in a meaningful way without a base of experience to build upon.

Discussion is still underway as to what the Faculty Level “certification” might entail, and what benefits might accompany it.

For details about these three phases, CLICK HERE.

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The demand upon the Community-Driven Institute is already more than the Institutes founders can handle, which is one among many reasons the Institutes first continuum of learning is dedicated to consultants.

The story in The Pollyanna Principles about the Health in a New Key Learning Community is just one example of this phenomenon, as the discussions in that Learning Community created a demand for consulting to the individual participants. With no pool of consultants qualified to do that work, the organizers of the original Learning Community formed a second Learning Community, this one specifically for consultants who wanted to learn to assist with that work.

That example is becoming more and more frequent, both as a result of the publication of The Pollyanna Principles and as a result of the missionary focus of the Community-Driven Institute: to change the way this sector does its work, to effect more significant change in communities and around the world.**