The other night I was watching Bluey with my kids. Wait. It’s a lie.

Last week I was on a business trip to Des Moines. In the morning, I turned on the TV. Instead of watching the news, I tuned into one of our family’s favorite shows: Bluey. Yes, I, a 41 year old man, sat in my hotel room before the day started and watched 25 straight minutes of Blueys.

Now, to move from this perfectly normal behavior to a particularly erudite conclusion that an astute and very serious professional like me could draw: Everything we need to learn about effective community relations can be found in Bluey’s episode “Stumpfest,” a meditation on working neighbors. together, negotiate conflicts and prioritize long-term relationships over short-term frustrations.

Bluey offers a model for how effective community relations should be approached in real life.

In “Stumpfest,” the goal is clear. Bluey’s father, Bandit, needs to remove stumps from his lawn and has enlisted the help of his neighbor and brother – a symbolic task of any project that requires collaboration within a community.

Like any community issue, what begins as a fun and physically demanding endeavor quickly turns into a point of tension, as Bluey and her friends, along with their mothers, become upset that the fathers are destroying the tree stumps on which they played. . We have the perfect recipe for community conflict: competing interests, the need to negotiate, and the importance of maintaining respect and collaboration even when disagreements arise.

Any of us who have been through tense situations within an organization, community, elected officials, or other interests know that the foundation of any strong community relationship is the idea of ​​shared goals .

In “Stumpfest,” the dads work toward a very real and necessary goal: freeing up space in their yard, while the kids focus on preserving their beloved play area. Both goals are valid and reflect the diverse needs that exist in any community.

In the real world, successful community relations require a thorough understanding of the needs of all stakeholders. Whether working on a neighborhood development project, environmental cleanup, or local policy change, community leaders must consider the varied interests of all parties involved. Like Bandit and his neighbors, leaders must ensure that no voice is left unheard and that collective goals are shaped by a shared understanding of everyone’s concerns.

But even with knowledge and appreciation of different points of view, conflicts arise. Conflict is inevitable in any community, and it is how we manage these conflicts that differentiates an effective campaign from a failure.

In “Stumpfest,” the children’s protests are met with mild frustration from the fathers, but instead of bulldozing, they engage in conversation about the problem. Bluey’s father, Bandit, exemplifies leadership by recognizing the importance of balancing adults’ goals with children’s emotional needs, leaving room for compromise and creative thinking.

Effective community relations depend on the ability to approach conflict with respect and openness. Rather than ignoring disagreements or imposing top-down solutions, true community engagement involves fostering an atmosphere in which diverse opinions can be shared, respected, and incorporated into decision-making. The key lesson here is that leadership is not about “winning” a conflict; it’s about finding solutions that respect everyone’s contributions and make room for mutual benefit.

By the end of “Stumpfest,” the courtship may be clear, but the real takeaway is how the adults and children find a way to work together. In the heat of the moment, fathers could easily have prioritized their own agenda over that of their children, but instead they recognized that maintaining good relationships was more important than simply getting the job done. This reflects a crucial aspect of community relations: Successful leaders understand that short-term victories mean little if they come at the expense of long-term relationships.

Community relations is not just about getting results; it’s about building trust and fostering connections that last well beyond the immediate project. Like Bandit and his neighbors, those who work in communities must always think about the future impact of their actions, prioritizing relationships over results.

Greg Behr is senior director of public relations and strategic communications at Brasco agency based in Raleigh///.