Civility Isn't Weakness. It's the Work.

There's a new book worth your attention: Lead with Civility: A Handbook for Uncivil Times by Diane Kalen-Sukra.

Kalen-Sukra is a former city manager turned civic culture advocate — recognized internationally as a top thinker for catalysing a movement to renew civility and trust in public life. Her book is a handbook for leaders who refuse to let public life be surrendered to contempt, chaos, and fear.

At The Human Dignity Project, we think it belongs on the same shelf as any serious resource on anti-racism and anti-discrimination work.

Civility is not niceness. It is a discipline — the active, intentional practice of treating people as worthy of respect even when you disagree with them, even when the room is hostile, even when contempt has been normalized around you. That's not softness. That's moral courage. And it is the daily practice through which human dignity stops being a principle and becomes a culture.

Leadership sets the temperature. One of the book's most useful concepts is what Kalen-Sukra calls "trickle-down incivility." When leaders treat people with contempt — when they mock, dismiss, or dehumanize — they don't just express a personal failing. They grant permission for others to do the same. The room takes its cues. The institution follows. The community absorbs it. We have seen this play out here in the Fraser Valley and beyond — in school board meetings, in public discourse around equity and inclusion, in the way some community members feel unsafe bringing complaints forward. The reverse is equally true: when leaders hold the line on dignity and process, they raise the floor for everyone.

The work starts inside. Kalen-Sukra's most honest argument is also the most challenging: incivility begins with us. Unexamined anger, unprocessed frustration, and blind spots in our own assumptions shape what we hear and what we do. The ancients carved it into the temple at Delphi: Know thyself. Kalen-Sukra brings that forward not as philosophy but as practical civic strategy. Anti-discrimination work that skips the inner work is incomplete.

Communities don't thrive by accident. They are built — deliberately, relationally, through thousands of daily choices about how we treat each other. Research on community wellbeing is consistent: people thrive where they feel safe, seen, and valued. Where they can disagree without being degraded. Where difference is navigated with respect rather than weaponized for contempt.

Civility is the infrastructure that makes all of that possible. It isn't the ceiling of our ambition — it's the load-bearing floor. Without it, belonging is conditional. Participation is rationed. And the community pays a cost that shows up in isolation, disengagement, and harm.

Why this matters now

We are living through a moment when incivility is increasingly rewarded, when contempt is performed for attention, and when the myth that toughness means cruelty is being aggressively promoted. Against all of that, Lead with Civility makes a clear and evidence-backed case: doing right by each other is not naive idealism. It is the precondition for everything we say we want — safe neighbourhoods, strong institutions, resilient communities, and public life worth participating in.

That is what human dignity work is about. Not just stopping harm — but building the kind of civic culture where everyone can show up fully, be treated as fully human, and belong without conditions.

Lead with Civility: A Handbook for Uncivil Times by Diane Kalen-Sukra is available now. We recommend it.

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The Human Dignity Project is an independent initiative focused on anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and community belonging in the Fraser Valley and beyond. We have no affiliation with the author or publisher — we simply think this book is genuinely useful for the work.