The Art and Soul of Civil Leadership

I’m very happy to be back in Belfast and to have this opportunity with you this morning. My topic relates to particularly a book that I’ve been working on for some time and that some of you have been working with here with Mediation Northern Ireland, which was The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. Today, my challenge is to shift the focus ever so slightly toward the question of leadership and in particular civic leadership and how some of the ideas of The Moral Imagination may, in fact, relate very directly to that kind of leadership.

I quoted Einstein in the book at one point and one of his– Einstein always had this capacity to capture something that really sticks with you, but was provocative always. And he said at one point, “Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” And it’s that sort of thing that in the end I will attempt to get at, which is how do we go from situations where we may feel bound, tied to a certain set of parameters and with little leeway breaking out…