From Polarization to Progress: Leadership in the Civic Arena

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Short Description

The inherently collaborative nature of leadership in the civic arena offers insights for leadership in other turbulent contexts. Panelists will explore leadership in a context where authority counts for little and followership is largely volitional. As scholars and practitioners, they will assess the study of leadership in this arena from three different disciplines: leadership studies, communication studies, and civic engagement practice. The session will reserve time for a dialogue with participants on questions that explore how to advance the study of civic leadership by defining future directions in research and practice.

Detailed Abstract

Civic leadership is one of the least understood and least investigated arenas in the field of leadership studies. The field offers little insight into what it takes to exercise leadership in a context where the reach of authority is limited and followership is largely volitional. As leadership scholar Richard Couto put it, the idea of civic leadership “challenges the conceptual boundaries that we set for leadership and politics (2014, p. 347).” The dominant cultural narrative of leadership with its central focus on the authority of the leader simply doesn’t work in the civic arena. Couto concludes that a different lexicon of leadership and practice is necessary to make progress.

Despite this lacuna within the field, scholars and practitioners from different disciplines are bringing new insights to the practice of leadership in this arena. Presenters will describe the civic context and how it has changed over the past four or five decades; explore the challenges this context presents for those exercising leadership; provide an overview of ideas and experiments that are shaping leadership practices; connect these ideas with existing leadership theories; and outline areas where research can help advance this study.

In this highly interactive session, much of the time will be reserved for participants to collaborate and shape questions and opportunities for research and practice. Practitioners and scholars are invited to help explore how to design and implement research, incorporate design thinking, prototype and test ideas, and spur innovation that advances civic work. At the start, presenters will provide an assessment of the study of leadership in the civic arena from three different disciplines: leadership studies, communication studies, and civic engagement practice.

Couto describes the civic arena as “The space of civil society, which defines civic leadership, requires some degree of autonomy from government and economic actors…and brings people together individually and in associations…to envision and practice democratic forms of increased equality, representation, and participation in decision making on public matters (2014, p. 352).” Civic leadership takes on issues that are either outside the formal responsibilities of government or where those in positions of public leadership fail to or cannot provide effective leadership. A strong civil society and leadership from anyone who cares enough to help address common concerns compensate for these failures.

Civic challenges are adaptive challenges so demand engagement to make progress, but extreme polarization frustrates many efforts to work across factions. Once people are engaged, it is difficult to keep them in the work. Processes are too often enervating rather than energizing so they don’t generate the affective energy necessary to sustain commitment and action. Information either isn’t credible to multiple stakeholders or isn’t used effectively. Traditional leadership approaches neglect process challenges and tend to direct rather than facilitate, undermining efforts to work together.   

After their initial assessment of leadership in the civic arena, presenters will review a framing question for future research along with the assumptions that define the focus of this inquiry.
Research question: “What is the activity of leadership that mobilizes others to make progress on adaptive civic challenges?”
Assumptions defining the focus of inquiry:
• Adaptive not technical challenges.
• Leadership as a discursive activity that engages others (not positional).
• Adaptive challenges in arenas where ends, processes, and content are subject to engagement (not necessarily pre-determined as in organizations).
• Arenas where formal authority is of limited use and followership is largely volitional (rather than as subordinate to authority).
• Leadership and communication are processes of shared meaning making through engagement (constructionist).
• Leadership as a function of a social system and a relational activity exercised by people within that social system (not leader-centric).
• Progress as measured comparatively rather than as progress towards an ideal (Sen not Rawls).

Presenters will invite participants to explore the following questions and their implications for future practice, theory, and/or research:
• How can a deeper understanding of the civic context and what it demands of leadership be developed?
• What competencies are necessary to exercise leadership in the civic context?
• What is the role of authority in making progress on adaptive civic challenges? What does leadership with little or no authority look like?
• How should progress be measured in the civic arena recognizing the need for both expediency and the production of real and lasting results? What impact does the use of different measures have on making progress on adaptive challenges?
• How can leadership in the civic arena become more energizing than enervating? How do fields such as leadership studies, communication studies, psychology, and neuroscience, etc., inform or support leadership development in the civic arena?
• How do you study these questions? What methodologies offer value? What is the appropriate unit of measurement? What would an iterative loop of learning, design, application/improvement – seamless between practice and research – look like?

Sub Unit

• Public Leadership

Chair

• Ariel L. Kaufman

Presenters

• David D. Chrislip, Kansas Leadership Center

• Tim Steffensmeier, Kansas State University

• Mary H. Tolar, Kansas State University