Reading Guide – Chapters 7 and 8 - for
Collaborative Leadership: How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make A Difference
By David Chrislip and Carl Larson
1. Successful collaboration produces results, not just structures and activities that
create the illusion that a problem is being addressed. How? What are the differences between these two?
2. Why do you think that people resist change when old ways of doing things fail? What can you do to make this different?
3. Collaboration most often fails because of poor execution rather than poor strategy. Why?
4. How does Chapter 7 restate the collaborative process?
5. What are the four categories of results that collaboration gives as stated in Chapter 7?
6. How does Businessman Frank Fiore describe vision?
7. Why do you feel there is a barrier to action in switching gears from the planning process to the implementation process?
8. Why is common focus important?
9. People readily talk of the need to “empower” others, but no one can figure out how to do it. Who must empower people?
10. Why is it imperative to measure success?
11. Getting results is all too often where collaboration fails, why?
12. What is the role of leadership in collaboration?
13. What are the two predominant types of leadership in our culture? How have you experienced each of these?
14. To assume participants in a collaborative initiative will accept tactical or positional leadership is a mistake, why?
15. How did Prudential’s decisions impact the rebuilding of Newark? Why was this key in the effort?
16. Why is it important to establish long term and short term goals in collaborative efforts?
17. What are the four principles that characterize collaborative leadership?
18. Why is effective leadership in a world of peers (such as in collaborative leadership) so difficult?
19. Do you agree with Burns’ sentiment that leaders and followers are peers, they just have different roles? Why or why not?
20. Why is it said that “the only consensus that matters is that of the people who live ther e?”