Bridge-Building Leadership in a Polarizing World

Bridge-building leadership creates the conditions to live and function together in peace and mutual respect, precisely as we acknowledge the complex and multi-dimensional differences (social, ethnic, political, religious, etc.). Such differences often divide to the point of polarization, instead of generating a sense of wholeness, integration, or unity through distinctiveness and complementarity. Thus, building bridges across intersecting differences will not automatically create healthy collaboration or even harmony, especially in a highly polarized context. The term “polarization” often indicates an unwillingness for one pole to acknowledge or affirm the other. The frequency of this type of discourse is the occasion for this volume, which is not so much a general exercise in bridge-building, which happens and has happened over many centuries, but an attempt to generate knowledge and potential models of bridge-building in a polarizing environment where the poles are so far apart that bridges seem impossible.