Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community
Six
Conversations That Matter
SM
What We Mean by Leadership
Leaders
create the conditions for civic engagement. They do this through
the power they have to focus attention and define the conversations for
people when they gather. We might say that leadership is the capacity to
name the debate and design gatherings.
We use the
term “gathering,” because the word has more significance than what we
think of as just a “meeting.” The fact is that most people do not even
like meetings, and therein lies a problem.
Every gathering or meeting is an opportunity to deepen
accountability and commitment through engagement. It doesn’t matter what
the stated purpose of the gathering is.
Each gathering serves two functions: to address its
stated purpose, its business issues, and to be an occasion for each
person to decide to become engaged as an owner. The leader’s task is to
design the place and experience of these occasions to move the culture
toward shared ownership.
This is in contrast to the conventional ideology of the
default culture about leadership:
Leader and Top are essential
The work is to bring others on board
Measurement produces better results
People need more training
Rewards are related to outcomes
What worked elsewhere can work here
The future is a problem to be solved
Our
conventional thinking holds the leader responsible for assuring that
these beliefs are planned and implemented.
All of
these have face validity, but they have unintended consequences. They
are the beliefs that support patriarchy and the dominion of a benevolent
monarch. This creates a level of isolation, entitlement, and passivity
that our communities cannot afford to carry. The alternative is to move
towards partnership and away from parenting.
The civic
engagement we are talking about here holds leadership to two tasks:
-
To create a context
which offers an alternative future, one based on inclusiveness and
hospitality,
-
To initiate
conversations that shift our experience, which occur through the way
we bring people together and the nature of the questions we use to
engage them.
In this way of thinking, leaders manage the space between
the definition of an issue and its impact. The world does not need a
better definition of issues, or better planning or project management.
It needs the issues and the plans to have more of an impact, which is
the promise of engagement. The fundamental task is to create the means
through which there can be a shift in caring for the well being of the
whole, which is how we are defining accountability.
Accountability is to be in charge of my own experience
and acting on the well being of the whole.
It is the choice to be accountable for those things over
which I have power, even though I may have no control.
It occurs through a shift in ownership of this
place, even though another is in charge. It is commitment without
barter. It is acknowledging the primacy of relatedness. It always
entails a larger communal possibility. It values diversity of
thinking and dissent, and changes the world through invitation
rather than mandate.
These
are the specific elements of civic engagement. They are linguistic
shifts that change the context through which community can be restored
and traditional problem solving and development can make the
difference.
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