Facilitative Leadership in the Public Sector
MIT professor Lawrence Susskind built this four-part dinner series after graduate students in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning asked for a leadership course tailored to public sector work. Each session was filmed and is offered as a standalone video, covering how public officials and planners can lead through negotiation, consensus building, and facilitation rather than top-down authority, since public sector leaders rarely have the formal power that private sector managers do. The course grew out of Susskind's work on mediation and dispute resolution and applies those skills to the specific pressures of government agencies and public planning bodies. Materials include the trailer and full session recordings, released by MIT OpenCourseWare under a Creative Commons license that allows free viewing, downloading, and reuse. There are no assignments or certificate, just the recorded dinner conversations themselves, aimed at practitioners already working in or studying public administration.