SPEAKING, LEADER/SHIP TRAINING, FACILITATION, & COACHING
SPECIAL FOCUS:
#1 LISTENING CULTURES IN TEAMS
#2 LEADING IN COMPLEXITY
#3 COMMUNITY PRO-DEMOCRACY SUMMITS
Kai Degner offers his services through SIMPLER Leadership LLC.
Exercising leadership in small teams and civic, nonprofit, and community spaces is more complex than ever.
Leaders (and we are all leaders) face burnout, shifting challenges, and the need to balance immediate crises with long-term strategy.
Too many leaders feel isolated, overworked, or unclear on how to maximize their impact. Many have never studied leadership, project team communication, or had a leadership coach.
Without the right skills and strategies, leaders struggle to gain traction.
Organizations stagnate, teams burn out, and real change remains out of reach.
The cost of ineffective leadership is high—our organizations and communities are depending on us to get it right.
With the right tools, support, and mindset, leaders - and teams - can grow and create real, lasting impact.
The SIMPLER Leadership frameworks and Kai Degner's services equip leaders with focused ways to prioritize what matters now, execute with confidence, and strengthen their teams.
Built for Small Business, Civic, and Community Leaders – Unlike generic training and facilitation providers, Kai focuses on local leaders, organizers, and change-makers who are committed to democratic governance and civil society. (Yes, he'll help your business, too!)
Practical, Not (too) Theoretical – No fluff. Just actionable strategies that work, combined with microtraining on tools, frameworks, and (just enough) theories.
Rooted in Experience – Founded by Kai Degner, former Mayor, Congressional Candidate, and PhD candidate in Strategic Leadership with over 20 years of civic leadership experience. Kai has designed and facilitated over 500 community events, including 40 large-scale summits. He is a certified executive coach, is training in agile project management, and has served on dozens of boards and commissions.
Leadership doesn’t have to be complicated—even in complex times.
SIMPLER Leadership LLC was founded by Kai Degner, a former mayor, civic facilitator, and leadership educator who has spent over 20 years guiding individuals and teams through uncertainty, transition, and high-stakes conversations.
Kai's multi-sector experience in leadership roles also gives Kai an ability to understand the context, polarities, and constraints faced by many different types of organizations. He has served as mayor and councilmember, nonprofit executive director, nonprofit board member, small business owner, and higher education administrator. As of 2023, Kai is also a doctoral candidate in Strategic Leadership studies with an emphasis on organizational change, leadership development, and listening.
Drawing from a unique blend of civic experience, adult learning design, organizational change theory, and cutting-edge leadership research, Kai created the SIMPLER Leader/ship Frameworks to help leaders do what matters most: adapt with clarity, integrity, and impact.
Whether leading yourself, a team, a community, or an organization, SIMPLER Leadership equips you with practical tools and mindsets that make complexity feel manageable—and leadership feel possible.
SIMPLER Leadership specializes in:
Facilitating clarity and coordination in messy, urgent, or high-stakes moments
Designing energizing meetings and summits that mobilize people into aligned action
Teaching listening as a core leadership competency
Supporting emerging and experienced leaders through live masterminds, trainings, and coaching
If you’re navigating conflict, polarization, or transition—and want to lead with intention—we’ll help you grow your leadership capacity and move your work forward with confidence.
Kai Degner, M.B.A., has an extensive background in facilitating a range of events, from strategic planning, to team-building, to large-scale community summits.
Kai’s interest in facilitation developed when he founded The OrangeBand Initiative, a civil discourse nonprofit that hosted over 300 discussion events in the Harrisonburg/Rockingham area in 2003-2007. The effort connected him with the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and exposed him to the many facilitation methods and frameworks cataloged in The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future (Holman et al., 2007).
His facilitation strengths include knowledge and experience with a broad array of facilitation methods and frameworks that are designed for problem identification, dialogue, ideation, prioritization, and reaching decisions. This allows him to match and combine tools to fit a specific group’s needs and constraints, rather than continuously applying the same approach for all clients.
Kai’s facilitation experience includes nonprofit, government, university, and small/medium business contexts.
Kai brings over a decade of experience designing and delivering transformative learning experiences for adult professionals. As a university instructor and director of professional development, he has taught graduate and noncredit leadership courses on topics including strategic communication, project management, systems thinking, and facilitation. His teaching style blends academic theory with hands-on learning, allowing participants to immediately apply insights to real-world contexts.
Kai holds an M.B.A., is a certified trainer in adult learning and instructional design, and integrates experiential learning methods into all of his workshops. Whether leading half-day trainings or semester-long courses, he specializes in helping professionals connect leadership concepts to their day-to-day challenges.
He has taught hundreds of students and led trainings for nonprofit staff, government teams, and community coalitions—always with an emphasis on clarity, curiosity, and action.
As a trained executive and leadership coach, Kai supports individuals navigating leadership transitions, burnout, interpersonal conflict, or the desire to grow into more adaptive, values-aligned leadership. His coaching draws from evidence-based practices in adult development, complexity leadership, and communication, including his original work on listening in leader-follower relationships.
Kai has coached mayors, nonprofit founders, community organizers, and early-career professionals alike. He helps clients clarify their priorities, build new leadership habits, and move forward with confidence—even in ambiguity. His coaching style is deeply empathetic, structured, and action-oriented.
Coaching is available as a stand-alone service, which blends small-group coaching with structured peer support and micro-trainings.
Find Kai on LinkedIn.
Thank you for your leadership - and for listening!