Municipal Leaders: Develop Faster, Lead Stronger, Build Better
Every week, you’ll get insights and actionable steps to help you navigate personal growth and professional success.
Think about the most capable person on your team. The one with the most experience, the best judgment, the deepest knowledge of how your organization actually works.
Now ask yourself honestly: how much of their day do they spend waiting for direction from above?
If the answer makes you uncomfortable, you’re not alone. And this week inside the MLDC, we’re tackling this common problem head on.
Our book of the week is Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet, the true story of how a naval commander transformed the worst-performing submarine in the U.S. Navy into the best, by doing something most leaders never try: giving control away.
Marquet calls it the leader-leader model. Instead of one person at the top making every call while everyone else executes, he built an organization where authority lived with the people closest to the information. The result wasn’t chaos. Instead, it was the highest-performing crew in the fleet and a culture that kept producing leaders long after he was gone.
It’s one of the most practical leadership books written in the last two decades. And this week, we’re unpacking it specifically for the context of local government.
Five days of content, all built around one best-selling book, all translated for local government leaders:
Monday: Why the leader-follower model is the default in municipal organizations, and what it’s actually costing you.
Tuesday: How to move authority to where the information already lives and where to start in a civil service environment.
Wednesday: The three-word language shift that transfers ownership in real time. This one is simple, immediately actionable, and most leaders are getting it wrong.
Thursday: Why you can’t delegate to a vacuum: building the competence your team needs before you hand over the wheel.
Friday: Implementation. The real barriers in local government, named directly, and the one first step that works within all of them.
Each day includes a blog post and a podcast episode: different content, same insight, all built so you can engage the way that works for you.
Join the MLDC before April 15th and get 3 months of the Leadership & Culture Program free.
The Leadership & Culture Development Program is a $2,500 value. It’s a structured program built to help local government leaders develop the kind of organizational culture that actually performs and right now, we’re working through the topic of Organizational Culture together.
Join the MLDC before April 15th and the next three months of program access come with your membership, at no additional cost.
This offer ends April 15th.
The MLDC is where local government leaders come to grow, not with generic leadership content, but with ideas translated specifically for the work you do, the constraints you operate in, and the community you serve.
Join the MLDC at HaltingWinter.com/MLDC →
The Municipal Leadership Development Circle (MLDC) is a professional growth community exclusively for city/county managers, administrators, and local government leaders. Each week, we explore insights from transformative books and apply them specifically to the unique challenges of municipal leadership. Join Seth Winterhalter, President of HaltingWinter Municipal Solutions, and leaders from across North America to build stronger cities through stronger leaders. Learn more at HaltingWinter.com/MLDC.
