Diane Kalen-Sukra’s Lead with Civility is a timely and substantial civic leadership book that treats civility as a discipline of governance amid mounting strain on civic institutions from rising polarization, declining public trust, and incivility. Written for elected officials, public administrators, community leaders, and people working inside civic institutions, this leadership book begins with a provocative idea: leaders are culture shapers, and the behavior they tolerate, reward, and model eventually becomes part of the culture around them. Kalen-Sukra builds that argument around what she calls “courageous civility,” a form of leadership grounded in dignity, self-mastery, truthfulness, justice, and the common good. She also introduces the “civic intervention,” a deliberate action meant to interrupt destructive patterns and restore healthier norms. That gives the book a practical backbone from the start, with culture presented as something leaders can intentionally cultivate.

One of the most distinctive qualities of Lead with Civility is the way it brings political philosophy into the everyday world of local government leadership and public administration. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, Erasmus, Marcus Aurelius, and other thinkers appear throughout the book, but they’re used to illuminate recognizable leadership problems: ego, fear, toxic meetings, weak civic education, public distrust, poor conflict management, and the misuse of power. Kalen-Sukra’s Civic Braid Leadership Model organizes the material around perceiving clearly, preparing wisely, and practicing what you’ve learned, while the larger Roadmap to Renewing Civic Culture moves through self-governance, culture risk, civil dialogue, civic education, and compassionate governance. The result feels part handbook, part leadership course, and part exploration of the civic traditions that shaped democratic life.

The book becomes especially engaging when those ideas meet lived experience. The book’s practical authority is reinforced by Kalen-Sukra’s extensive experience in civic leadership and public administration. Guest essays and leadership portraits bring readers into floods, dysfunctional councils, toxic workplaces, polarized public meetings, staff teams, citizen academies, neighborhood initiatives, and deliberative processes such as citizens’ assemblies. These stories keep the civic leadership material connected to the pressures people actually face in government.  

Just as useful are the book’s concrete tools: reflection questions, culture-risk exercises, dignity frameworks, civility circles, a civic intervention worksheet, and the Civic Culture Assessment Tool, which places organizations on a spectrum from toxic “Bullyville” tendencies to flourishing “Sustainaville” ones. This is clearly a leadership handbook designed to live on a desk, get marked up, and come back out when a council, organization, or community needs to address toxicity in the public square and civic culture renewal.

What I liked most is the book’s expansive definition of leadership. Lead with Civility connects personal character to institutional health, then connects institutional health to the ability of communities to flourish. Civility, in this framework, means exercising power while preserving dignity, creating spaces for honest disagreement, teaching people how democracy works, measuring trust and belonging alongside conventional performance indicators, strengthening neighborhoods, and bringing compassion into public decisions. Even its discussion of the “digital garden” extends the same logic into social media and online civic life.

That makes Lead with Civility a rich, distinctive, and urgently needed contribution to civic leadership, public administration, and political philosophy with a remarkably consistent message running through its many examples and tools: the culture surrounding public life is shaped through repeated choices, and leadership is the work of making those choices with courage, wisdom, and care.

Pages: 344 | ISBN : 1834384893