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.
There’s a question most local government leaders have never been asked.
Not about policy. Not about budget. Not about your council relationship or your strategic plan. A more personal one.
When someone on your staff walks into your office with a problem, how often do you already have the answer before they finish explaining it?
For most experienced leaders, the answer is: almost always. And it feels like competence. It feels like the job. You know your organization. You’ve seen the problems before. You can see the solution faster than anyone else in the room.
Michael J. Marquardt has spent decades studying leaders across industries and continents. And in Leading with Questions, he makes a case that stops most leaders cold: that reflex—the automatic move toward the answer—is one of the most common and most costly habits in leadership.
Not because answers are wrong. Because when answering is always your first move, you’re quietly training your team to stop thinking. To wait. To bring you problems instead of solutions. And over time, the ceiling of your organization becomes whatever you can personally carry.
This week inside the MLDC, we’re going deep into the insights from this book. Five days of content built specifically for local government leaders, city managers, county managers, administrators, and department heads who understand that leading in public service comes with pressures and constraints that most leadership books never account for.
Here’s what the week looks like.
We start Monday with the foundational question: why does this book matter for leaders in your position specifically? Tuesday, we go into what he calls the answer trap. Wednesday, we get into something most leadership content doesn’t touch: organizational silence. Thursday brings a practical framework for knowing which question to ask at which stage of a problem. And Friday, we land on one specific thing you can do in your very next conversation, something simple enough to start next week, yet significant enough to change the culture of your organization over time.
That’s five days of blog posts and podcast episodes, all inside the MLDC.
If you’re not yet a member of the MLDC, this is a strong week to start.
Every new MLDC member who joins before April 15th will receive three months of access to the Leadership & Culture Development Program — a $2,500 value — included with their membership. We’re starting a 3-month series working through the topic of Organizational Culture inside that program, which makes this week’s book a natural entry point. Leading with Questions is, at its core, a book about how the patterns leaders practice every day shape the cultures they lead. The two go hand in hand.
If you’re a local government leader who wants a community built for people who actually understand what it means to lead in public service, head over to HaltingWinter.com/MLDC and take a look at what’s waiting for you.
The week starts Monday. We’d love to have you in it.
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.
