The Art of Participatory Leadership

Summary

The video script emphasizes the importance of participatory leadership in addressing complex urban issues like homelessness, climate change, and community health. It highlights the need for collaboration across all community sectors and the development of leadership capacity to convene meaningful conversations. The city of Olympia in Washington State is showcased as an example of a community-led approach to creating a long-term homeless response plan. The script invites individuals, regardless of their leadership roles, to engage in participatory processes to design impactful meetings and co-create innovative solutions to urban challenges.

Takeaways

• 🏙️ Cities and communities are facing complex problems like homelessness, climate change, and community health.
• 🤝 Progress on these issues requires collaboration across all sectors of the community.
• 👥 Participatory leadership is deemed crucial for addressing these challenges.
• 📈 The goal is to build capacity among leaders to learn and apply these collaborative approaches.
• 📍 Success has been achieved in Washington State, particularly in Olympia, where participatory leadership was used.
• 🏡 In Olympia, participatory leadership was used to develop a long-term homeless response plan.
• 🔍 The city recognized the need for a community-led approach to tackle complex challenges.
• 🗣️ Difficult conversations and co-creation of innovative solutions were necessary for addressing homelessness.
• 🎨 The process was truly community-led, involving all parts of the community in identifying a path forward.
• 🌟 The training is open to anyone who cares about their community's future and wants to learn impactful meeting strategies.
• 🌐 More communities and partners are needed to bring local challenges and work together to innovate solutions.

Q & A

What are the complex problems that cities and communities are currently facing?

Cities and communities are grappling with complex problems such as homelessness, addressing climate change, and improving community health.

What is participatory leadership?

Participatory leadership is an approach that emphasizes collaboration among all sectors of the community to address complex issues and make meaningful progress.

Why is building capacity among leaders in different communities important?

Building capacity among leaders is important to enable them to learn and apply participatory leadership approaches, convene important conversations, and drive change in their communities.

What success has been achieved in the city of Olympia regarding participatory leadership?

In Olympia, participatory leadership was used to develop a long-term homeless response plan, which was a community-led process involving the entire community in identifying a path forward.

Why was a different approach needed to address the challenge of homelessness in Olympia?

A different approach was needed because the challenge of homelessness is complex and requires a community-wide involvement to identify solutions and create innovative strategies.

How did the city of Olympia involve its community in developing a homeless response plan?

Olympia involved its community by listening and learning from all parts of the community, having difficult conversations, and co-creating new and innovative solutions.

Who is the training for in the context of participatory leadership?

The training is for anyone, whether in a traditional leadership role or not, who cares about the future of their communities and wants to learn how to design and host impactful, participatory meetings.

What is the goal of the participatory leadership training?

The goal of the training is to equip participants with the skills to design and host highly participatory processes that can address local challenges and foster community innovation.

What kind of results is the participatory leadership approach expected to yield?

The participatory leadership approach is expected to yield community-led solutions, increased collaboration, and innovative strategies to tackle complex challenges.

How can communities benefit from adopting participatory leadership?

Communities can benefit by fostering a sense of ownership and collective responsibility, leading to more effective and sustainable solutions to complex problems.

What is the call to action for cities and partners in the script?

The call to action is for cities and partners to bring their local challenges and collaborate to explore what's possible when people come together to learn and innovate.

Outlines

00:00

🏙️ Community Collaboration for Complex Issues

The paragraph discusses the pressing issues faced by cities such as homelessness, climate change, and community health, emphasizing the need for a collective approach. It highlights the importance of participatory leadership and the goal to build capacity among leaders in Washington State. The city of Olympia is mentioned as an example where participatory leadership was used to develop a long-term homeless response plan. The process required community involvement, listening, learning, and co-creating innovative solutions. The paragraph concludes by stating that the training is for anyone who cares about their community's future and wants to learn how to design impactful meetings and participatory processes.

Keywords

💡Participatory Leadership

Participatory Leadership refers to a leadership style that actively involves community members in decision-making processes. It emphasizes collaboration and shared responsibility. In the context of the video, this concept is crucial as it underpins the approach taken to tackle complex issues like homelessness. The city of Olympia used this approach to develop a long-term homeless response plan, involving the entire community in identifying solutions, which exemplifies participatory leadership in action.

💡Homelessness

Homelessness is a social issue characterized by individuals or families lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence. The video discusses this as a complex problem that city governments and communities are trying to address. The city of Olympia's initiative to develop a long-term plan to respond to homelessness is a direct application of addressing this issue.

💡Climate Change

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, often attributed to human activities. It is mentioned as one of the complex problems that communities are grappling with. The video suggests that participatory leadership could be a way to bring community sectors together to address such global challenges.

💡Community Health

Community Health is about the well-being of a group of people living in a particular area, including physical, mental, and social health aspects. The video positions community health as a complex issue that requires collaborative efforts for progress. It implies that participatory leadership can play a role in improving community health by involving community members in health-related decisions.

💡Capacity Building

Capacity building is the process by which individuals, organizations, or communities develop the skills, knowledge, and systems needed to address their challenges effectively. The video mentions building capacity among leaders in different communities as a goal, which indicates that equipping leaders with the necessary skills to facilitate participatory processes is seen as vital.

💡Collaboration

Collaboration is the act of working together towards a common goal. The video emphasizes that making meaningful progress on complex issues requires collaboration across all sectors of the community. It is a key component of the participatory leadership approach, as it involves community members in identifying paths forward.

💡Complex Challenges

Complex Challenges are multifaceted problems that require innovative and multidisciplinary solutions. The video script mentions that cities and communities are wrestling with such challenges like homelessness and climate change. The participatory leadership approach is presented as a method to address these challenges by involving the entire community in finding solutions.

💡Community-Led

Community-Led initiatives are those that are driven and controlled by the community members themselves. The video discusses the development of a long-term homeless response plan in Olympia as a community-led process, which means that the community was actively involved in shaping the plan, reflecting the participatory leadership philosophy.

💡Innovative Solutions

Innovative Solutions are creative and novel approaches to solving problems. The video highlights the need for co-creating innovative solutions to complex issues. This aligns with participatory leadership, as it encourages community members to come up with new ideas and solutions to challenges like homelessness.

💡Capacity

Capacity, in the context of the video, refers to the ability or potential to perform a particular function or action. Building capacity among leaders is mentioned as a goal to enable them to convene important conversations and lead participatory processes in their communities.

💡Convene

To convene means to gather or call together for a meeting. The video talks about the goal of building leaders' capacity to convene their own important conversations within their communities. This is a key action in participatory leadership, as it involves bringing people together to discuss and solve community issues.

Highlights

Cities are facing complex problems like homelessness, climate change, and community health.

Progress on these issues requires community collaboration in new ways.

Participatory leadership is key to tackling these challenges.

The goal is to build capacity among leaders in different communities.

Leaders in Washington State are learning participatory approaches.

Olympia used participatory leadership to develop a long-term homeless response plan.

The plan required a community-led approach to address complex challenges.

Listening and learning from all parts of the community is essential.

Difficult conversations are necessary to co-create innovative solutions.

The process was truly community-led using the art of participatory leadership.

Training is available for anyone who cares about their community's future.

The training focuses on designing impactful, highly participatory meetings.

More communities and partners are needed to address local challenges.

The participatory process explores possibilities for complex challenges.

The city of Olympia is excited about the progress made through participatory leadership.

There was a lack of great models for developing a truly community-led long-term plan.

The participatory leadership approach has been successful in Olympia.

Transcripts

today our cities our city governments

our communities are wrestling with a

series of complex problems like

homelessness like addressing climate

change or community health and making

meaningful progress on these types of

issues is going to require that all

sectors of the community come together

and collaborate in ways they haven't

necessarily done before that's why we

think the participatory leadership is so

important so one of our goals has been

to build capacity among leaders in

different communities and in cities in

Washington State to be able to learn

these same approaches and to be able to

convene their own important

conversations and their communities at

end we've had some good success in that

and we're really excited about what's

happening here at Olympia so in the city

of Olympia we use the art of

participators to develop a long-term

homeless response plan we knew that this

kind of complex challenge required a

totally different approach that would

have to involve our entire community in

identifying a path forward we know that

other cities are wrestling with this but

there weren't that many great models for

how to develop a long-term plan that was

truly community led we needed to listen

and learn from all parts of our

community about how to address this

challenge we needed to have difficult

conversations and we needed to co-create

the new and innovative solutions that

this kind of complex issue calls for by

using the art of pâtisserie leadership

it was truly a community led process so

this training is for anybody whether

you're in a traditional leadership role

or not who cares about the future of

their communities that wants to learn

how to design and host really impactful

meetings usually highly participatory

processes so we need more communities we

need more partners we need more cities

so bring your local challenges and

together we'll explore what's possible

when people can come together and learn

and innovate around some of these

complex challenges

you