How can we (re)build trust and cultivate cooperation between stakeholders participating i the CO?
Why is it relevant?
(Re)building trust and cooperation among the participants of your CO is central to success and effectiveness. Trust serves as the foundation for meaningful collaboration, open communication, and active engagement. When fellow participants trust each other and your CO and the purpose of participation, they are more willing to contribute their knowledge, expertise, and resources, creating a fertile ground for collective problem-solving and decision making. Trust also enhances cooperation by fostering a sense of shared purpose and mutual respect, enabling participants to work together towards common goals. Crucially, it also increases the perceived levels of transparency and accountability, because when participants see information being openly shared, commitments being followed up, and rules applied consistently, they are more likely to view their CO’s decisions and actions as fair and legitimate. This strengthened legitimacy, in turn, increases the likelihood that the CO’s outcomes are taken seriously in policy and governance processes. By building trust and cooperation, you can create a supportive and inclusive environment that encourages active participation, generates innovative solutions, and strengthens the overall impact and sustainability of your CO.
How can this be done?
When participants come together without a shared history, trust cannot be assumed; it must be intentionally established. The absence of trust often shows up as distance, uncertainty, or indifference, and a lack of confidence that collaboration will be meaningful. In these situations, the first step is to demonstrate reliability through consistent and transparent actions. Small but visible commitments, such as following up on agreed tasks or sharing information openly, signal that the process is dependable. Creating opportunities for participants to get to know each other’s roles, motivations, and contributions further reduces uncertainty and builds familiarity. Low-stakes interactions, such as informal dialogues, co-learning sessions, or collaborative problem-scoping, help establish reciprocity without putting participants at risk. By gradually layering dependability, openness, and recognition, participants begin to see that their engagement matters. This foundation transforms absence of trust into initial confidence, upon which deeper collaboration can grow.
A. Collaborative culture-building
Open communication using tools which maps organisational culture
B. Empathy and vulnerability recognition
Roles clarification session - generate empathy and understand vulnerabilities. Relationship mapping and repair workshops using WINFY method/tool
C. Acknowledging mistrust
Mapping trust erosion by ‘mapping the timeline of broken trust’,
A. Collaborative culture-building
This approach involves bringing together various actors and public agencies to participate in decision-making processes that aim to achieve consensus and manage expectations (Ansell & Gash, 2008). This type of approach is often used to overcome issues with uncertain and disputed solutions. They can help build consensus or compromise when different groups have different perspectives, or when there are significant differences among the people involved in their beliefs about how to handle a particular issue or task (Gerlak & Heikkila, 2011).
A variety of factors can influence the success and effectiveness of collaborative culture-building. Face-to-face discussion, trust building, and creating commitments and shared understanding contribute to the sustainability of such approaches (Ansell & Gash, 2008). Suitable leadership models or methods should also be in place, to manage conflict and monitor objectives (Bianchi, Nasi & Rivenbank, 2021).
All of these tools are best conducted in-person, and in a place that is comfortable for the participants (which leads to increased accessibility and feelings of trust). Here, open communication plays a crucial role in building transparency and fostering trust and cooperation among participants of your CO. By establishing transparent channels and nurturing meaningful exchanges, you can cultivate an atmosphere of collaboration and engagement. Along with communication channels you should also keep in mind: a) communication styles ; b) language use , and c) audience. Because different language and style may be needed for different audiences. Complex language may not be accessible to some people, while simplistic language may be perceived as condescending by others. Therefore, several approaches can be taken in order to leverage open communication practices to build trust and cooperation.
Open communication practice ensures the active involvement of stakeholders, including citizen participants, from the beginning. If done successfully, it may not only address ethical concerns of citizen science projects but also, create a greater willingness among participants to contribute data that they may consider private (Eleta et al., 2019; Skarlatidou et al., 2019). Effective communication strategies can be created by identifying the needs, goals, and expectations of participants early on and maintaining ongoing two-way communication. In that regard, Mapping Organizational Culture serves as a tool that helps shift focus from judgement to exploration where the participants explore and jointly identify your CO’s culture through deep reflection. By openly understanding the group culture, needed change becomes clear and more easily justified. This tool can help your CO understand how they have been interacting and communicating and, in doing so, it becomes clear where there is a need to adopt different practices of open communication.
Deep Dive: Strategyzer Culture Map
The Strategyzer Culture Map is a visual tool that helps groups explore how their behaviours, outcomes, enablers, and blockers shape organisational culture. By mapping these elements together, participants can identify what supports or hinders collaboration and agree on changes needed to build a desired culture. Together, these four lenses help groups quickly spot patterns in how their culture works and where change is needed.
Steps:
Prepare the Culture Map template - Draw Strategyzer Culture Map layout featuring four key quadrants:
Behaviours (actual actions and interactions)
Outcomes (results of those behaviours)
Enablers (factors supporting behaviours)
Blockers (factors preventing positive behaviour or change)
Individual reflection - Ask participants to individually fill in each quadrant with sticky notes, focusing first on observed behaviours, then on their outcomes, followed by enablers and blockers. Encourage specific, story-based examples, not generalizations.
Small-group clustering and discussion - Form small groups to cluster notes on the shared template, spotting patterns or contradictions. They should discuss how certain behaviours lead to specific outcomes, and what enablers or blockers influence them.
Full-group synthesis - As one group, review the clusters and explore contrasts between current and desired states. Discuss:
Which behaviours foster collaboration?
Which outcomes signify health or dysfunction?
What cultural enablers can be strengthened?
Which blockers need addressing?
Define desired culture - Use insights to collaboratively map out aspirational cultural traits, such as transparent dialogue, shared leadership, or inclusive decision-making. Map how new behaviours could lead to different outcomes, supported by new enablers.
Integrate into practice (living document) - Place the resulting map in prominent meeting spaces or digital platforms where the CO convenes. Regularly revisit and update the map to assess progress, reinforce commitments, and adapt practices as needed.
B. Empathy and vulnerability recognition
Recognising and naming feelings such as betrayal, powerlessness, and abandonment is a necessary step to build trust, because it validates lived experience and opens a path to emotional healing and renewed collaboration (Awan, 2014). Empathy in practice means creating facilitated spaces where people can safely voice harms and vulnerabilities, and where leaders and convenors respond with care, transparency, and follow-through; this signals respect and helps participants re-engage (Awan, 2014). In low-trust contexts across government, expert, and social relations, empathetic facilitation within deliberative processes is especially important: it reduces defensiveness, builds social capital among stakeholders, and strengthens the perceived legitimacy of decisions (Tsang, Burnett, Hills, & Welford, 2009).
One tool that can put this into practice (i.e. cultivate empathy and understanding) is the What I Need From You (WINFY) activity. This group activity is designed to help people working together in different roles clearly communicate what they need from others for the organization/system/group to succeed. In doing so, the struggles and goals of others are illuminated and the interdependency of the group is highlighted. Through greater clarity about the different individual efforts happening in the CO, relationships can be strengthened and a greater willingness among fellow participants to help meet the collective needs of the CO can be established.
Steps:
Set the invitation - Frame the exercise around a shared goal (e.g., “What do we need from each other to make this observatory work?”). Clarify that responses must be “Yes,” “No,” “I will try,” or “Whatever” (meaning more clarity is needed).
Cluster reflection - Small groups generate a list of their key needs from other groups, then select two priority needs and nominate a spokesperson.
Sharing needs - Spokespeople gather in a central circle and state their cluster’s two needs aloud. Other groups listen and take notes - no responses at this stage.
Crafting responses - Spokespeople return to their groups to decide on responses to each request using the four allowed answers.
Structured replies - Spokespeople reconvene in the central circle and deliver their group’s responses to each request, without debate or elaboration.
Debrief - As a whole group, reflect on the process using “What? So What? Now What?”: - What happened? So, what insights emerged about needs and vulnerabilities? Now what actions can we take to strengthen mutual support?
WINFY externalises unspoken needs and vulnerabilities in a structured way that minimises defensiveness. By enabling participants to hear and respond clearly to each other’s requests, it fosters empathy, mutual recognition, and collective responsibility. This strengthens trust and enhances willingness to collaborate in the CO.
C. Acknowledging mistrust
Trust building and repair begins with explicitly recognising the presence of mistrust, deficit of trust and the harm it has caused. Rather than bypassing or suppressing tensions, acknowledging them validates the experiences of stakeholders and opens the possibility for dialogue. Trust repair is a two-way process where all parties engage to rebuild confidence in one another, which cannot happen unless past issues are recognised (Kim, Dirks, and Cooper, 2009). This perspective enables different sides to better understand each other’s positions, which is essential for repairing strained relationships (Williams, 2010). Furthermore, participatory governance and emotional healing depend on naming the feelings of betrayal and abandonment that accompany broken trust, so that constructive processes of recovery can begin (Awan 2014). In participatory settings such as COs, openly acknowledging mistrust lays the foundation for genuine engagement, emotional healing, and cooperative rebuilding of relationships.
One way to begin repairing trust is by openly acknowledging where it has been shaken or broken. This can be done by mapping the timeline of broken trust, a participatory tool in which participants anonymously or collectively place moments on a shared timeline where they experienced trust being built, shaken, or broken in the CO process. The activity draws on timeline mapping methods that demonstrates how visualising life events in sequence helps participants narrate sensitive experiences, identify resilience, and gain agency in reflecting on their past (Kolar et al., 2017). By using this method for trust repair, the timeline becomes a safe way to externalise experiences of distrust without attributing blame to individuals. It enables participants to collectively identify patterns, missed opportunities for repair, and underlying dynamics that may otherwise remain hidden. This adaptation also considers that trust repair in conflict-affected contexts requires processes that explicitly recognise past violations and invite dialogue about unmet expectations (Kappmeier et al., 2021). By using the timeline not only to record incidents but also to facilitate reflection sessions, the activity provides a structured means of acknowledging past wounds while re-establishing a shared narrative. In this way, the collective ‘mapping the timeline of broken trust’ tool, serves both as a diagnostic tool to identify when trust was weakened and as a reparative tool to support rebuilding it.: It helps participants see trust as a dynamic relational history and creates a foundation for moving forward together.
Steps:
Introduce the purpose gently - Explain that the activity is not about blaming individuals but about understanding the shared journey of trust within the CO. Emphasise that trust is dynamic — it is built, sometimes shaken, and sometimes broken — and that acknowledging these shifts is the first step in repair.
Individual reflection (gentle entry) - Provide participants with sticky notes or cards. Invite them to recall significant moments in the CO process (positive or difficult). Ask them to write these moments down in neutral terms (what happened, not why). Afterwards, introduce colour coding: Green = trust built; Yellow = trust shaken; Red = trust broken. Make it optional for participants to assign a colour if they feel comfortable.
Collective mapping - Collect the notes and place them along a large visual timeline (on a wall, flipchart, or digital board). Cluster similar moments together to make patterns visible. Ensure anonymity if participants prefer, by having facilitators post the notes.
Guided reflection session - Facilitators lead a dialogue around the emerging timeline: What patterns do we see? Where did trust strengthen, and where did it fracture? Were there missed opportunities for repair? What do these moments reveal about underlying dynamics, such as communication gaps, power imbalances, or lack of follow-through?
Harvesting insights - Encourage the group to identify: Resilience factors (what helped rebuild or maintain trust despite challenges). Repair opportunities (moments where action could have helped but were missed). Shared commitments for moving forward (how participants want to prevent repetition).
Closing with care - Since recalling broken trust can surface vulnerability, facilitators should close with an affirming round: each participant shares one thing they commit to contribute toward strengthening trust in the CO going forward.
Additional resources
The Action Participatory Science Toolkit Against Pollution (Action Project, 2022) provides a range of tools to support Citizen Science and Citizen Observatories, including guidelines for open and impactful communication and dissemination
The Impact Journey Approach (MICS, 2022) provides a methodology for co-evaluation, which is inclusive of a range of stakeholders and aims to promote understanding of CO aims and impacts
Wehn and Almomani (2019), as part of the Ground Truth 2.0 project, developed a framework on incentives and barriers influencing how stakeholders share, harmonise, and use data in policy-making.
Wehn et al. (2015) present a conceptual framework for governance analysis within COs, useful to understand the role and authority of citizens and to track governance changes resulting from COs..
The WeSenseIt Incentives and Barriers framework outlines factors that either facilitate or hinder citizen engagement in weather observatories, helping to design strategies for ICT-enabled participation.
The organigraph tool developed by (Durrant et al., 2022) can be used to understand stakeholder power dynamics, and to identify stakeholder groups that are underrepresented and less connected to the decision-making process.
The Ground Truth 2.0 co-design approach (Wehn & Pfeiffer, 2019) offers a framework that ensures participant involvement in the design of COs, ensuring that CO processes are designed by all and allows for joint learning
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