
Session 2: Hypotheticals
Lawrence Susskind leads the second session of MIT's Facilitative Leadership in the Public Sector workshop series, part of RES.11-004 at MIT OpenCourseWare. The session works through hypothetical scenarios that public officials and mediators might face, using them to surface the practical choices involved in facilitating negotiations among stakeholders with competing interests. Susskind guides participants through these cases to draw out principles of consensus building, conflict resolution, and collaborative decision making in government and public policy settings. As a workshop recording, the format favors discussion and worked examples over formal lecture structure, giving a sense of how Susskind coaches students in real time through the reasoning behind facilitation choices. The runtime is 43 minutes, consistent with a single class session in an ongoing public-sector leadership course.