The Condition Your Team Needs Before They Can Perform

Owen Eastwood coaches some of the highest-performing organizations in the world, including elite military command groups, Olympic teams, and professional sports organizations. And the foundation of everything he does isn’t tactics, training, or strategy.

It’s belonging.

In his book Belonging, Eastwood builds a case that most leaders have never seriously considered: belonging isn’t a feel-good add-on to organizational culture. It is the foundational condition for human performance. When people feel genuinely connected to something larger than their job description, their energy pours into the mission. When they don’t, they protect themselves and the organization loses what they actually have to offer.

For local government leaders, that gap between going through the motions and genuinely showing up is enormous. And it’s more common than most leaders realize.

Think about your organization right now. You’ve got employees who’ve been there long enough to know every process but stopped investing years ago. New hires who are technically present but haven’t found their footing yet. Departments that function well in isolation but don’t quite feel like they’re on the same team. A council that cycles in and out, each transition quietly reshaping who feels included and who doesn’t.

None of that is a performance problem on the surface. But underneath, it’s a belonging problem. And it’s costing you more than you know.

Eastwood draws on a Māori concept called whakapapa, the belief that each of us is part of an unbroken chain of people connected by a shared identity. When that connection is present, people show up differently. They take risks. They speak up. They bring their best thinking instead of their safest thinking. When it’s absent, no amount of strategy, process improvement, or performance management fills the gap.

This week inside the MLDC, we’re spending five days unpacking what belonging actually looks like in practice — the Us Story, the silent dance, and why belonging has to come before performance, not after it. All of it translated directly into the context of local government leadership, where civil service systems, council dynamics, and staff turnover make building belonging genuinely hard.

If you’re serious about leading a team that performs, this is the week to be inside the community.

Learn more 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.