BRIDGING DIFFERENCES AND BUILDING COLLABORATION: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF LEADERSHIP
A CONCEPT PAPER
JUNE 2002
Steven D. Pierce
Director Bridging Leadership
The Synergos Institute
9 East 69th Street New York, NY 10021 USA www.synergos.orghttp://www.synergos.org/bridgingleadership/04/c_1_b_bridging_leadership_concept_paper_by_%20steve_pierce.pdf
Executive Summary
Bridging Leadership, is an approach to leadership characterized by the capacity to initiate and sustain a collaborative process designed to achieve meaningful social change through the collective action of multiple and diverse stakeholders. A leadership style uniquely suited to confront the many challenges facing today’s societies, Bridging Leadership stands in contrast to many Western models of leadership, which today are often dominated by the field of management. In today’s world, a new type of leadership is needed to confront extreme poverty, social injustice, devastating and often-violent conflict, severe environmental degradation and widespread disease such as HIV-AIDS. To achieve sustainable results in these and other areas, the combined efforts of many actors—from business, community organizations and government—are required to come up with innovative ideas, new types of resources and the will to work together. Bridging Leadership provides a model or an approach for doing just that.
To make real progress on these issues, society must learn to get past the acrimony, mistrust, prejudice and the many divides that separate us, and establish trust and new types of relationships that make going forward together both possible and practical. By building upon the intellectual foundations of transformative leadership in the field of leadership studies and drawing liberally from the concept of collaboration from the field of development, Bridging Leadership offers an alternative approach that looks at the role of citizens within a partnership framework. Because it is based on the value of inclusion Bridging Leadership easily incorporates traditional leadership ideas and practices. The bridging method offers insights into a process that begins with convening and relationship building, through the development of consensus, all the way to action. It is an attempt to add a holistic focus by considering the needs and potential impact of leadership at the level of the individual, the organization and society.
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