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 belief you’re leading from right now that you didn’t choose.
You absorbed it. From your organization, your predecessor, your council, the culture you walked into on your first day. It got handed to you without a label, so it didn’t arrive looking like an assumption. It arrived looking like reality. And you’ve been leading from it ever since.
Tara Westover grew up in a survivalist family on a remote mountain in rural Idaho. No school. No outside voices. No exposure to the broader world. Her father’s version of reality was the only version available and she accepted it, not because she was naive, but because she had no way of knowing there was anything else to consider.
She eventually taught herself enough to get into Brigham Young University. Then Cambridge. Then Harvard. She earned a PhD. And the journey cost her nearly everything.
Her memoir, Educated, is this week’s book inside the MLDC Summer Series and it’s not the obvious leadership book. It’s something more useful than that. It’s a mirror.
Because what Westover is really writing about isn’t school. It’s the maps we inherit. The assumptions we accept as reality. The beliefs we perform so automatically we’ve forgotten we never actually chose them. And the costly, disorienting, necessary work of examining those maps honestly and deciding what you actually think.
For local government leaders, that work is rarely comfortable. The pressure to conform inside institutions is real. The culture around you has its own gravity. The council has expectations. The organization has norms. And somewhere inside all of that, there’s a leader who may have gotten very good at reflecting back what others want to see and lost track of what they themselves actually believe.
Westover calls the alternative self-authorship. Taking custody of your own mind. Evaluating ideas, histories, and perspectives rather than simply inheriting them. It’s the difference between occupying a role and actually leading.
This week inside the MLDC, we’re going deep on five ideas from Educated that land hard in the local government context — the inherited assumptions running your organization, the blind spots doing quiet damage, the loyalty that needs to make room for honesty, the conviction you can’t keep borrowing from others, and what it actually feels like when growth is real.
It’s a week worth showing up for.
If you’re not yet a member of the MLDC, this is a good time to change that. Every week we go this deep: daily blogs, podcast episodes, and conversation guides built specifically for city managers, county administrators, and local government leaders who take their development seriously.
Join us 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.
