Transforming minds, people and places: Leadership coalition building as catalyst for intersectoral collaboratives in urban violence prevention

Abstract

This paper assesses the impact of two pilot leadership development workshops. It tests the potential of an evidence and Place-based transformational Leadership Development (P-BLD) framework for building leader and leadership capabilities across sectors and for acting as a catalyst for collaborative action within an Intersectoral Urban Violence Prevention program (IUVP) in Nakuru County, Kenya. The P-BLD framework deliberately surfaces and works with the inherent tensions in intersectoral collaboration. By challenging assumptions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours it has started to overcome a history of distrust and engender a mindset shift amongst participants. It is argued that the P-BLD framework and IUVP are mutually reinforcing which when merged have increased potential for developing an advanced state of collaboration, a stronger sense of common purpose and collective empowerment. The evidence from this research and practice demonstrates the validity of applying this approach to support peace builders in reducing violence across different countries and other policy areas where there is a shared intersectoral and territorial context. This strongly supports Lee et al.'s (2016: S24) contention that some of Latin America's most violent areas have achieved considerable reductions in urban violence by focusing on “places, people and behaviours” which means changing inter-relational attitudes and values.