Civility Commitment
“I commit to bring civility into my daily life in all interactions by treating everyone with respect, consideration and kindness, regardless of differing beliefs opinions or actions.”
Development of a Civility Commitment
An Invitation
With the above commitment, Fund for Civility board members have set themselves the personal goal of modeling civil and respectful behavior. They invite you and your group or organization to do the same.
In crafting their group commitment statement, board members recognized that “civility” means different things to different people. To reach agreement, they utilized a simple process that can be easily replicated by groups and organization that also want to discuss civility and support the respectful behavior of their members. Join us in creating and upholding a civility commitment!
Designing a Civility Commitment
- A group facilitator or leader invites individuals to define in their own words what “civility” means to them.
- Individuals are encouraged to write out a civility commitment they would be willing to uphold as individuals and promote to a greater audience.
- Individual statements are consolidated and incorporated by the group into a draft civility statement that reflects individual definitions and commitments.
- Using Survey Monkey, group members are asked to choose three words that best describe what civility means to them. As an example, the following words were responses by Fund for Civility board members: understanding, respect, consideration, kindness, honesty, integrity, empathy, open-minded, appreciation, dignity, nonjudgmental, openness, forthcoming, collaboration, courtesy, tolerance, compassion, common humanity, conversation, cooperation, listening and patience.
- Tally the most-used words and use them to form a final civility statement that all members of the group or organization can adopt as a commitment.
