Biography
Mark Roberts is a former President of the ISA and the New Zealand Arboricultural Association. He has been honoured nationally and internationally for his services to arboriculture and the profession. His relaxed and approachable presenting style has seen him talk on varied topics across the world stage. Mark has written industry articles for over 20 years, he currently writes for various industry organisations, associations and for green industry publications.
Mark is a consulting arborist based in Dunedin New Zealand.
Abstract
What is a Tree? A tree is greater than the sum of its parts, and in this presentation, I don’t plan to talk about any of them.
When someone is hurt or killed by a falling tree there is shock, followed by anger and outrage. The situation becomes emotional, logic goes out the window and the demands start to flow in. Trees are dangerous, trees are bad.
Big trees, small trees, healthy trees, all trees – trees are bad when the community is frightened. As arborist’s we need to calm the waters, we need to manage the outrage and de- catastrophise the situation. But how? In this presentation I shall introduce the concept of outrage management and decatastrophising.
Fear is an emotion and when dealing with frightened clients and members of public using logic, science, and common sense, might not work – in fact often, such things might make matters worse.
Outrage management is about guidance and letting the frightened have their say. As a consulting arborist and tree risk assessor, I shall share what I have learnt over the past 30years. I shall explain what has worked and just as importantly, I shall explain what hasn’t worked. Managing outrage is a skill that I was never taught, but I wish that I had.