The five core skills of leadership, I’ve come to learn from studying how change happens in communities, are relationship building, learning, strategy, facilitation, and persuasion. In that sequence.
The five core skills of leadership, I’ve come to learn from studying how change happens in communities, are relationship building, learning, strategy, facilitation, and persuasion. In that sequence.
There’s a predictable and frustrating time lag between good ideas being proposed and communities accepting them. Here’s what you can do during that fallow period . . . and one thing that might speed things up.
Smart citizen engagement follows two principles. It is based on mutual respect between citizens and government officials, and it believes that the greatest progress is made through partnerships, with everyone doing his part.
How does local government work in other countries? A friend from England explains how towns and larger governments divide responsibilities there . . . and why they have so many elected officials.
Quality of life is the glue that keeps people in communities, even when their life circumstances or the city itself changes. That’s why, in the end, every successful community is a sticky one.
As we’ve grown in recent decades in our knowledge of how cities work, we’ve lost our understanding of how city politics works. As a result, we have a greater storehouse of what ought to be done, but less and less knowledge of how to do it.
Super-civic leaders – those whose deaths make front-page news – have something to teach the rest of us about bringing valuable resources to civic work, putting in the time, and being authentic.
The final phase in a community change process is persuading the decision makers. The most effective way is by painting the need and vision vividly, and by presenting decision makers with just the details they want.