And this support isn’t only important for making your work easier: it’s also critical for ensuring sustainable engagement in your community. So how can you get that all-important buy-in? Below we share our best advice.
1. Add leadership to your core engagement team
Inviting someone from management level to your core team will help keep them interested in your engagement initiatives. Rather than having to appeal to them from the outside, roping them in on key decisions will help them feel part of the team, and advocate for your engagements at the decision-making table.
Depending on the structure of your organization, this may or may not be possible. If you only have infrequent chances to present your engagement work to management, make sure they’re part of setting your participation objectives, to strengthen their buy-in.
2. Agree on a reporting cadence, then dazzle them
Closing the loop on your engagement efforts by reporting your results to leadership is important for gaining further support. One way to ensure this happens is to agree up-front about a reporting cadence, so everyone is on the same page about when and how results will be communicated.
Engagement reporting has become increasingly sophisticated, so once you have the ear of a manager or political leader, this is your chance to shine. Tools like Go Vocal’s AI-powered Auto-Insights uncover meaningful patterns in community feedback, without the need for technical know-how. With Auto-Insights, you can automatically detect statistically significant correlations between demographics and topics, reveal nuanced response patterns, and transform hours of analysis in mere minutes – all features that make a case for the meaningfulness and efficiency of your engagement work.
Getting your engagement reporting on the agenda in meetings between department heads and the mayor can be a great way to ensure the feedback you collect goes all the way to the top. After all, mayors are elected by residents – they’ll want to know what they have to say.
What to report on?
Leadership, especially at management level, responds to evidence of return on investment. Transform your engagement work from a perceived "soft" activity into a data-driven practice by establishing clear metrics that matter to decision-makers. Beyond participation numbers, showcase how community engagement directly contributes to organizational priorities.
3. Inspire your leadership with concrete examples
Leadership is able to make better decisions and allocate resources more efficiently when they have a strong sense of public opinion. Just ask any of the engagement practitioners featured in our case studies.
Why not take a peek in our archive and inspire your leadership team with some powerful examples of successful community engagement at work?
From the Danish capital Copenhagen engaging 12,000+ residents in submitting and voting on proposals, to the city of St Louis involving 16,000+ residents in the allocation of a $250 million fund. Or Cambridge City Council, using Go Vocal’s AI assistant to process community input at least 50% faster, enabling large-scale public consultation.
In a recent interview, Mayor Sorace of Lancaster, PA (US), told us: “I think it’s very politically risky to not invest in engagement. Things come at you out of the blue, but it’s even more so when you don’t have a pulse of what’s happening in your neighborhoods, or their issues of concern.”
4. Embed engagement through a formal plan
Once you’ve sparked leadership interest, make it stick. Work with management and elected officials to co-create an engagement plan that outlines your vision, processes, and expectations. A formal plan signals commitment from the top and helps embed engagement into the organization’s DNA, turning buy-in into long-term support.
What should it include? Clear objectives, defined roles and responsibilities, communication standards, and reporting structures. This document can also serve as a guide for new staff and leadership, ensuring continuity even through changes in personnel.
And here’s the bonus: A formal plan not only secures leadership support, it builds resident trust too. When your community sees how engagement is structured and how their input will be used, participation and belief in the process goes up.
Gain an edge with everything Go Vocal offers
Go Vocal clients are supported by a dedicated Government Success Manager, who comes armed with engagement strategies, best practices, and fresh inspiration for engagement projects and how to best use a platform.
Government Success Managers walk alongside our partner governments during their engagement journeys, but they can also act as consultants, running inspiration sessions with management, drawing on our client base of 500+ local governments. Bringing in an expert like this can be useful for boosting political and managerial support as well.
Want to read more on securing leadership support and turning it into long-term success?
Download our Culture of Engagement guide to tap into expert insights, case studies, and tools to win that critical leadership buy-in and ensure longevity for your engagement work.
