Want to go deeper? Former Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace and Go Vocal CEO Wietse Van Ransbeeck explore what leadership buy-in looks like in practice, and how practitioners can build it, in our masterclass, Leading through listening. Watch the masterclass →
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 a senior manager to join your core team will help keep them interested in your engagement initiatives. Rather than having to appeal to them from the outside, involving them in key decisions will help them feel part of the team and advocate for your engagement work at the decision-making table.
Depending on the structure of your organisation, 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. Report regularly and show how engagement informs decisions
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 can help managers and elected officials understand what residents are saying and how their input can inform decisions. 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 complete in minutes what would otherwise take hours. These features help demonstrate the value 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 organisational 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?
The Danish capital Copenhagen engaged 12,000+ residents in submitting and voting on proposals. The city of St. Louis involved 16,000+ residents in allocating a $250 million fund. Cambridge City Council uses Go Vocal’s AI assistant to process community input at least 50% faster, enabling large-scale public consultation.
Former Lancaster Mayor and Go Vocal Senior Strategic Advisor Danene Sorace puts the importance of leadership support plainly:
"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 neighbourhoods, or their issues of concern."
She shares more lessons from Lancaster in our masterclass, Leading through listening.
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 make engagement part of how the organisation works, 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 confidence in the process increase.
If you’re looking to take this further, our guide to scaling participation internally explores six enablers for turning engagement into a council-wide capability.
Get support from Go Vocal’s engagement experts
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.
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