Introducing: The Municipal Leadership Development Circle (MLDC) - Save 50% During Launch Phase
Every week, you’ll get insights and actionable steps to help you navigate personal growth and professional success.
This week, we’ve explored powerful tools for saying “no” while preserving relationships. But what does this actually look like in real municipal leadership? Let’s examine how three city managers have transformed their effectiveness by implementing these principles, and how you can do the same.
Imagine: A developer is pressuring you to fast-track their project. Council members are echoing their urgency. Your planning department is already overwhelmed. You feel backed into a corner, but what if you had a secret weapon – a way to negotiate from strength rather than desperation?
It’s budget season. Department heads are fighting for resources, council members are pushing pet projects, and community groups are demanding increased services – all while your finance director insists on maintaining healthy reserves. Some days, it feels less like city management and more like referee duty at a championship wrestling match.
Welcome to what I call the “municipal pressure cooker,” where competing interests collide and conflict seems inevitable. But what if conflict wasn’t the enemy? What if it was actually your gateway to stronger relationships and better solutions?
In our latest episode of The HaltingWinter Podcast, we sit down with Mike Land, City Manager of Coppell, Texas and ICMA President-Elect, for a fascinating conversation about intentional culture-building in municipal government.
Mike’s journey from delivering bread in Houston with his father to leading one of Texas’s most culturally innovative cities offers powerful insights for every municipal leader. “Culture is either by chance or by choice,” Mike explains. “And I would say throughout our organization, we believe in and work towards culture by choice.”
Your parks director just proposed an ambitious new project. It’s innovative, community-focused, and completely impossible with your current budget constraints. You know you need to say no, but you also need to maintain the enthusiasm and creativity that sparked the idea. What do you do?
Enter the Yes-No-Yes formula, a revolutionary approach from William Ury’s “The Power of a Positive No” that transforms how we handle these delicate situations. Let’s break down how this framework can revolutionize your municipal leadership.
Last week, a city manager told me something that stopped me in my tracks: “I came to this role passionate about serving my community. Now I feel like I’m just surrendering pieces of myself every day.”
Does that resonate with you?
The Scene: It’s 8:00 PM on a Tuesday. You’re finally sitting down to dinner with your family (your kids ate hours ago) when your phone buzzes. A council member wants your thoughts on a new policy proposal – right now. Your fork hovers halfway to your mouth as that familiar tension rises. You know you should protect your personal time, but saying “no” to elected officials feels like a political minefield.
Sound familiar?
This week, we’ve explored three critical insights about burnout in municipal leadership:
Today, we’re turning these insights into action. Because understanding burnout isn’t enough – we need a concrete plan to transform how we approach leadership sustainability.
Ever notice how the same qualities that make someone excellent at public service can also lead to their eventual burnout? There’s a reason for this paradox and understanding it could transform how you approach municipal leadership.
In their groundbreaking work on burnout, the Nagoski sisters identify something they call “Human Giver Syndrome” – the deeply held belief that certain people must give all their energy, attention, and resources to others. Sound familiar? In municipal leadership, this syndrome takes on a unique and particularly challenging form.
What happens when your hometown becomes your workplace? When every trip to the grocery store is a potential town hall meeting? When the water superintendent whose work you watched as a child becomes the foundation for your own leadership journey?
This week on The HaltingWinter Podcast, we dive into these questions and more with Bill Wagoner, who’s celebrating 20 years as Arcola, Illinois’ first and only City Administrator.
