Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community
Six
Conversations That Matter
SM
The Offer
Our
offer is to provide the means to shift the language of the civic debate
away from the default conversation which builds resistance, and move it
into questions that build commitment and accountability. Questions that
have the power to make a difference are ones that engage people,
especially opponents, with each other, confront them with their freedom,
and invite them to co-create a future possibility.
Every leader cares about initiating a place
where accountability and commitment is ingrained into the culture. We
offer a way of thinking and the tools to achieve this. Our offer is to
provide the means or architecture for gathering people in a way that
will build communities in which they will choose accountability and
commitment. This is what overcomes our fragmentation and the tendency to
demand change from people who are essentially strangers to us.
To achieve this, we need to shift our
thinking about leadership.
The dominant belief system is that the task
of leadership is to set a vision, enroll others in it, and hold people
accountable through measurements and reward. The shift is to believe
that the task of leadership is to produce engagement. To engage groups
of people in a way that creates accountability, which is to care for the
well being of the whole, and commitment, which is to make and fulfill a
promise without expectation of return.
What
this requires is a change in thinking. We invite you into a conversation
that creates the possibility of both a change in thinking and the tools
to bring this to others. This experience in itself is an example of its
theory, and so the tools of building accountability and commitment are
every moment available.
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