Once the policy area has been clearly demarcated by the stakeholders, the discussions will deepen and the debate will be oriented towards finding constructive solutions through sustained dialogue. The Consensus building phase aims at establishing and maintaining a conducive environment for dialogue by structuring the debate around constructive choices, avoiding drawbacks and keeping the discussions oriented towards the objectives jointly agreed in the Collective Assessment phase. Only though this sustained effort can the main outcome of this phase be produced: the Roadmap for Reform, a set of collectively agreed principles and guidelines for policy reform.
This phase is extremely sensitive, as trust among participants can be diminished at any moment due to unforeseen exogenous factors or changes in attitudes of the stakeholders themselves. Hence, the facilitator should be ready to apply swift and effective techniques in response, trying to mitigate any risk of gridlocks or conflict among the participants. This is, of course, easier to say than to do, as any experienced facilitator will know, but in most cases, it will require a combination of soft skills and technical reliability, as policy dialogue is both about people and about facts. To support the facilitators in this challenging task, the INSPIRED toolkit introduces a series of basic techniques to progressively forge the necessary consensus to agree on a roadmap, but it avoids delving into the nitty-gritty of trust-building because covering such competences would require a full guide. (we should refer here to existing resources: NIMD, UNDP, conflict transformation, etc.)