Reflection Aids for Restorative Leaders

The Mint House has for some time been exercised by the question of how restorative practice can become embedded in organisations and communities.

Thanks to support from the Westhill Endowment, we were privileged to host ‘Building Bridges’, an initial set of research and practice dialogues exploring this question. Participants from a wide variety of backgrounds came together to look at how restorative practice can be embedded in organisations.

We went into the dialogues thinking that what might come out of them was a ‘toolkit for promoting and embedding restorative practice,’ but quickly realised that something else was needed. Restorative practice needs to be nurtured in ways that are sensitive to context, done ‘with’ people not ‘to’ them, so it doesn’t work to say ‘this is how you do it.’

Instead, we offer this set of reflection aids for restorative leaders, in humility and with the hope that they might act as useful prompts and sources of encouragement for people working in organisations large and small, public, private or voluntary.

• We want this to be an ongoing dialogue! Please respond to these reflection aids, layering in your own experience. You can do this by commenting on posts on our LinkedIn page. Once all the reflection aids are published, and layers of insight have been added, we plan to convene an online event where together we can discuss what we’ve learnt about embedding and what next.

• There are 12 reflection aids in total, being published fortnightly starting in September 2024. Please follow us on social media or join our mailing list to be notified when each one has been published.

Humility and hope: reflection aids for restorative leaders

With thanks to the Westhill Endowment for generously supporting this project.