Successful UN RC(O)s Master These 3 Skills

The UN does the most challenging work on the planet: It brings together diverse stakeholders to achieve a set of goals that serve the most vulnerable people and the planet. UN Resident Coordinators (RC) and their Offices (RCO) are on the frontlines working to advance the 2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement. At the country level, they bring together diverse stakeholders to achieve goals locally and nationally.

While it's important RCO teams are equipped with cutting edge knowledge, toolkits and sustainable development solutions, it is equally important that they have the professional skills needed to make progress on the ground. Here are three of those skills explained.

Consensus Building

Daily, UN employees interact with a wide range of stakeholders to advance programs for the achievement of the SDGs and Agenda 2030. These range from public and private actors, donors, civil society, academia and media - all with divergent priorities and interests. To effectively advance sustainable development priorities, UN employees - from officers to leadership - need to build consensus.

Consensus building on TV looks easy. Bring a group of people together who disagree. Share an aspirational goal or vision. Debate for a few minutes. And then agree. But in real life it is a process that requires multiple exchanges, often over multiple days, weeks or months, using effective facilitation, mediation, convening, and negotiation techniques. It?also requires a good-faith effort to meet the interests of all stakeholders and seek a unanimous agreement, or at least, an overwhelming agreement that goes as far as possible toward meeting the interests of all.

Equipping RC(O)s with consensus building skills will help them co-create proposals, programs and policies that are based on everyone's interests. It will also allow the UN to better focus discussions and priorities specifically on interests, as opposed to positions or demands. Examples of the skills for consensus building that can be taught and practiced with RCO teams include communication (and listening), persuasion, advocacy, negotiation, and mediation.

Context Analysis

Agenda 2030 identifies “5 Ps” that shape the SDGs: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships. The 5 Ps highlight how the SDGs are an intertwined framework instead of a group of siloed goals. Many argue that there is a ‘6th P’: country situation. This is equally important to achieving the SDGs since every country context is unique and each country’s progress against Agenda 2030 is different.

Furthermore, UN employees need to understand and identify 'who' the key development actors involved in each country. This includes their interests and capacities to affect the outcome of an initiative and the arguments and incentives most likely to influence them to align with national development goals.

RCO teams need to be able to identify 'what' facts (e.g. data to support no one left behind, SDG challenges and progress, political economy analysis, etc.), proposals, options and questions to explore with individuals and groups when advancing the UN agenda.

Finally, context analysis is used to understand 'how' the 5 Ps and SDGs are interconnected. A systems approach to understanding the country situation and development priorities can ensure policy coherence when initiatives are at odds with each other. It is important to strive for activities where progress in one P supports and balances progress in another P.

Being able to ask the right questions and pull essential information from in-depth political economy analysis and data sets is an important skill for RCO teams to develop. It allows for a deeper understanding of the context and teases out the most important details for decision-making.

Political Acumen

Last but not least, the success of the UN hinges on political acumen of individual employees. The the knowledge of structures and relationships in each country context can be used to decide on what is most important for the UN to achieve in the particular situation. Not all UN mandates (or SDGs or Ps) can be addressed simultaneously so a combination of extensive context analysis and personal judgment is necessary for prioritization.

Additionally, UN employees, especially leadership, have to decide what the role of the UN will be, e.g. convener, facilitator, mediator, advocate, source of technical expertise, partner, funder, etc. Once the role is defined, communicating the role of the UN is important so stakeholders will see the UN’s intervention as legitimate and helpful. Prioritization exercises and tools/decision trees on who to talk to and in what order can help build political acumen to navigate the complex stakeholder context of the country.

In Conclusion

Professionalizing these skills will give UN staff the practical skills and tools necessary for successful leadership and advancement of Agenda 2030. Learning programs that strengthen RC(O) competencies in these three areas could be delivered in a balanced combination of knowledge sharing and practical application, e.g. scenario practice, co-creation of toolkits, etc. That way, they are designed to meet the day-to-day demands of their work in each individual country context.

What do you think? What other skills would help RC(O)s do their work better?