AVAILABILITY: Readily available

Publication Date: October 2011
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Binding: Paperback
Topics: Business & Economics - Decision-Making & Problem Solving, Organizational Behavior

Description: A Transition Town group involved in preparations for peak oil and climate change; an intentional community, founded with the highest ideals; a nonprofit dedicated to social change—millions of such voluntary groups exist around the world. These collaborative organizations have the unique potential to harness their members' ideals, passions, skills, and knowledge—if they can succeed in getting along together.

The Empowerment Manual is a comprehensive manual for groups seeking to organize with shared power and bottom-up leadership to foster vision, trust, accountability, and responsibility. This desperately needed toolkit provides keys to:

• Understanding group dynamics
• Facilitating communication and collective decision-making
• Dealing effectively with difficult people.

Drawing on four decades of experience, Starhawk shows how collaborative groups can generate the cooperation, efficacy, and commitment critical to success. Her extensive exploration of group process is woven together with the story of RootBound—a fictional ecovillage mired in conflict—and rounded out with a series of real-life case studies. The included exercises and facilitator toolbox show how to establish the necessary structures, ground rules, and healthy norms. The Empowerment Manual is required reading for anyone who wants to help their group avoid disagreement and disillusionment and become a wellspring of creativity and innovation.

Starhawk is the author of eleven previous books including the award-winning Webs of Power. A highly influential voice for global justice and the environment, she is deeply committed to bringing the creative power of spirituality to political activism.

Review(s): "Strong, sustained leadership at the grassroots is more essential by the minute, given the failure of political and corporate power-holders to stop trashing our world. True social change is a collaborative art. Here's a trove of tips, guidelines, deft strategies, and open secrets that will speed and ease our capacity to work together. It comes to us with Starhawk's signature blend of vast experience, wit, and love for life." - Joanna Macy, author, 'The Work that Reconnects' and co-author, 'Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy'

"It's not easy to meld a sweeping vision with practical steps on how to implement it, but Starhawk has succeeded brilliantly in The Empowerment Manual. Filled with case histories, illustrative stories, and, most importantly, clearly written exercises for honing your collaborative skills, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in building community and truly empowering themselves and others." - Toby Hemenway, author, 'Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture'

"A vitally important manual for those of us stepping forward to build resilient communities together. Starhawk's book should be kept close at hand and referred to before meetings, group decisions, and when dealing with difficult people. Rich in how-to's and real life experience, this book will make the novice proficient as its methods are put into practice." - Carolyne Stayton, executive director, Transition U.S.

"A 'must have' for everyone who lives in an ecovillage or intentional community (or who would like to), The Empowerment Manual offers real-life examples, effective process exercises, and relevant, practical advice on group dynamics arising from Starhawk’s years of experience in collaborative groups. I especially loved the right-on examination of earned and un-earned social power, balancing the power-sharing with fairly rewarding leadership, and Starhawk's often hilarious account of the invented but oh-so-real Rootbound Ecovillage. I'm giving a copy to everyone who takes my workshops!" - Diana Leafe Christian, author, 'Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities' and 'Finding Community', and publisher, Ecovillages newsletter

"With The Empowerment Manual, Starhawk has delivered a work of timely vision with instant practical impact. Good people, leaders, communitarians, and activists of every kind have been needing the help that this work brings just in time. For too long we have been hitting our heads against the wall, trying to find ways to be more effective, as various external and internal challenges have often unmade our successes. This manual will help us refocus, grow together, and be best prepared. Thank you Starhawk!" - Mark Lakeman, founder, The City Repair Project

"In neighborhoods all over the world people are gathering together again, talking about survival on a much-changed planet, and many of them making changes needed so badly in these times when there is no time to lose. The Empowerment Manual is truly a guide to ensure the survival of those of us who are struggling to work collaboratively. It sheds a light on those dark corners of group dynamics that can leave us confused and disheartened. Starhawk gives us the tools to be the change we want to bring to the world." - Donna Read, filmmaker, Women and Spirituality. (Since 1991 she has been collaborating with Starhawk through their film company Belili Productions.)

"Of all the wonderful and gifted leaders I have known, Starhawk is the one who best expresses the values of equalitarianism. In whatever situation I have seen her, she stands back allowing others and holding herself no higher than anyone else. This new book, The Empowerment Manual, is Starhawk at her best—as wise woman elder, articulate thinker and witty writer, experienced leader and fierce guardian of the planet. This is the how-to we've been needing, an eloquent and thoughtful handbook of intelligent advice detailing exactly how to bring the principles of cooperation, caring, and democratic sustainability fully into living practice. Extremely well done!" - Vicki Noble, co-creator Motherpeace tarot; author, 'Shakti Woman' and 'The Double Goddess'; and professor at Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, California