Facilitative Leadership: Building Capacity for Divisive Times

Today’s environment is marked by ideological and cultural differences. Information silos and the labeling of others exacerbate exclusion and hostility. How can we gather in community with others to address difficult problems? One answer is increasing facilitative leadership to improve abilities to engage with others constructively across differences.Facilitation is an applied practice—building capacity to navigate difficult topics by creating a supportive environment, encouraging mindful reflection, respecting all voices, nurturing open dialogue, discerning the needs of multiple parties, promoting engagement, empowering individuals, and inspiring collaboration. Facilitative leaders guide individuals to discover they are capable of transforming different perspectives and challenges into possibilities.To support the development of facilitative leadership, Britt and Napoli introduce a four-phase framework of skills: (1) practicing self-awareness, (2) setting intention, (3) fostering a growth mindset, (4) enacting responsive behaviors. These habits build capacity to listen, to communicate respectfully through dialogue, and to facilitate connections. Twelve contributed chapters are case studies for developing a facilitative leadership approach to community participation in public problem-solving. Committing to facilitative leadership helps to ensure that people with different perspectives can talk and think together, explore their individual and collective perspectives, identify hopes and concerns, and chart a way forward grounded in collective wisdom.Titles of related interest available from Waveland Press: Forsyth, Leadership: Theories and Applications (ISBN 9781478653899) and Johnson-Hackman, Leadership: A Communication Perspective, Seventh Edition (ISBN 9781478635024). Read more