Diane Kalen-Sukra: Finding ways how municipalities can overcome toxic culture

Diane Kalen-Sukra is an authority on toxic culture, having studied its growth across not only Canada, but across the globe.

Following her keynote address at the 2019 Ontario Municipal Administrators Association Fall Workshop, Kalen-Sukra. Prior to that, she sat down with Municipal World CEO Susan Gardner to address the growth of toxic culture and how it is manifesting in the local government sphere.

Addressing the Growth of Toxic Culture

“What we are looking at specifically is how toxic culture and incivility and its rising nature everywhere is impacting local governments. To a large extent, we’ve been like frogs in a tepid pot of water over the past 20 years that has been slowly brought to a boil,” she said. “We’ve adopted many different coping mechanisms to address the rising incivility. But, it’s really imperative that we understand those are just coping mechanisms. They don’t actually address the fundamental problem of toxic culture.”

In the video, Kalen-Sukra discusses the cause for this rising level of incivility in the public sphere.

One example, she explains, is what she calls the “breaking of the social contract,” which has been fundamentally shifted because of globalization, shifting economies, the displacement of people, communities, and industries, and a seeming limited ability for local governments to address these complicated situations.

Cooperation, Leadership Drive Sustainable Culture

The solution, Kalen-Sukra said, is a “a complex and multi-faceted process,” but one that begins on the personal level and extends to the workplace, the public sphere, and local governments.

All these perspectives, she said, have a unique role to play, but they need to be driven collectively.

“We need political leadership. We need upstanders. We need a fostering of the kinds of courage and civic values and outspokenness in the faces of this toxicity to begin to address it,” she said. “We’re on one ship with one destiny and we’ve got to cooperate. That involves a revival of civic education and civic values to restore our democracy and build our sustainable future.”  MW

✯ Municipal World Insider and Executive Members: You might also be interested in Diane Kalen-Sukra’s articles: Toxic culture is anti-democratic (Part 1) and Toxic culture is anti-democratic (Part 2). Note that you can now access the complete collection of past articles (and more) from your membership dashboard.

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