Lead with Civility: A Handbook for Uncivil Times
- Kalen Academy
- Apr 8
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 10
Lead with Civility launches today as the handbook civic leaders have been waiting for—already an Amazon #1 bestseller in Government & Politics—written to be in your hands at the council table, in the CAO’s office, and wherever decisions shape civic culture.
This is not another technical manual; it is the missing piece in civic leadership training that finally addresses the culture, courage, and inner life of leaders in an age of outrage.
Why Lead with Civility matters
Most civic leadership programs focus on procedure, policy, and platforms while ignoring the deeper work of character, culture, and courage. Yet it is that deeper work that determines whether your organisation survives the next crisis with its integrity, and its people, intact.
Lead with Civility reclaims civility as a courageous leadership discipline, equipping you to hold the line, tell the truth, and make tough calls without becoming part of the toxicity you are trying to fix.
Threaded through the book are vivid portraits and guest essays from mayors, city managers, clerks, judges, and community builders who have led through scandal, floods, online abuse, dysfunction, and despair without giving in to cynicism or contempt. They show what it looks like to hold your nerve, keep your values, and still get the work done in the most polarized environments.
Built on time‑tested civic wisdom and tested in the public square, this is a handbook for leaders who want to change the culture, not just survive it.
Most importantly, Lead with Civility and its Roadmap to Renewing Civic Culture maximize the impact leaders have on the culture they steward, serving as a personalized culture transformation plan for your council, organisation, and community.
What’s inside this new civic leadership handbook
Lead with Civility is designed as a practical, go‑to manual you can mark up, bring to meetings, and return to after a hard day. It goes beyond “charm school” orientations and into the real work of cultivating a healthy civic culture in uncivil times.
Here are just some of the tools and frameworks inside:
A Tackling Toxicity to Cultivating Civility Spectrum to help you quickly locate where you, your council, board, and/or organisation is on the culture continuum—and what to do next.
The Civic Intervention Framework: a way to use your role, rules, and presence to interrupt harmful patterns in meetings and online spaces without escalating conflict.
A Civic Culture Assessment Tool you can use with your council or senior team to diagnose culture risks before they become crises.
Reflection and practice sections at the end of each part, with questions and exercises designed specifically for elected officials, staff and community leaders.
The Leaders as Gardeners mindest that reframes your role from crisis manager to cultivator of civic culture, with concrete examples of what to weed out, what to water, and what to plant.
The Civic Braid Leadership Model, braiding together inner life, civic virtue, and institutional design so leaders can align who they are, how they lead, and how their governance systems work in practice.
Tools and strategies to end “memoricide” (civic amnesia) in your community by turning city hall into a civic academy, including ideas for citizen academies, orientation redesign, and shared learning.
The Lead with Civility Creed—a short, memorable way to explain what civility is and is not, and why it is essential to civic leadership.
Together, these tools—including the Civic Braid Leadership Model—offer what most civic leadership programs leave out: an integrated way to form the leader, renew the culture, and strengthen the very institutions you serve.
In practice, the book and the Roadmap to Renewing Civic Culture function as a personalized culture transformation plan, helping you translate your deepest values into concrete habits, norms, and governance practices that can change the atmosphere of your council, organisation, and community over time.
Lead with Civility is the culmination of an almost decade‑long global civility tour and the companion to the bestseller Save Your City—bringing the Roadmap to Renewing Civic Culture to life and equipping leaders to do their part to turn the cultural tide.
Enter to win a signed copy at the upcoming Global Civility Summit: Leading Through Uncivil Times, co-hosted with local government executive and top podcaster Chris Eddy, who also wrote the Forward to the book.
Early Praise for Lead with Civility
"Lead with Civility is a phoenix rising from the ashes of toxic culture. Diane Kalen-Sukra weaves time-tested civic wisdom with hard-won insights from years in the fray."
— DR. RON DART, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Theology, Classics
UFV/St. Stephen's University
"Lead with Civility is the leadership handbook we've been waiting for—essential reading for anyone in public life."
— CHRIS EDDY
Local Government Executive & Podcaster, Victorian Local Governance Association
"Diane Kalen-Sukra has catalysed a movement to renew civility and trust in public life."
— Local Government Information Unit (LGiU), United Kingdom
A Handbook for Uncivil Times
If you serve in public life, in a council chamber, a school board, an Indigenous government, a civic organisation, or the broader public square, Lead with Civility is designed to be in your hands now, so you can be emboldened to lead courageously and do your part to turn the cultural tide, one meeting and one decision at a time.
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