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.
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.”
Picture your city hall transformed. Not just a better version of what it is today, but a beacon of municipal excellence that other cities aspire to emulate. A place where innovation flourishes, where employees are genuinely excited to come to work, and where your community sees tangible results from well-executed initiatives.
This isn’t just a pleasant daydream – it’s an achievable reality. But like any significant transformation, it requires a solid foundation. Today, we’re diving into the architecture of municipal excellence and how to build it systematically in your organization.
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?
How to balance competing demands without falling
Every municipal leader knows the feeling.
You’re in a council meeting, defending your budget while your phone buzzes with an emergency at Public Works. Your inbox is full of resident complaints about the new parking policy, while your calendar reminds you of three overdue performance reviews. Meanwhile, that strategic plan you’ve been meaning to update sits untouched on your desk.
Welcome to the municipal leadership tightrope.
One wrong step, and everything falls.
Too far one way, and you lose balance.
Too much focus here means dropping something there.
But what if you could do more than just survive this balancing act?
What if you could master it?
Hello, Impactful City Leaders!
Welcome to this week’s edition of “The Leader’s Lens!” In our journey to build stronger cities through stronger leaders, we’ve been challenging a pervasive myth in municipal leadership: that self-sacrifice equals dedication. Through Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s helpful book “Burnout,” we’ve discovered how sustainable leadership practices actually lead to better service for our communities.
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.
How to transform your municipal culture by design, not by chance
Culture isn’t something that happens to your municipality.
It’s something you engineer.
Yet most municipal leaders treat culture like the weather – something to be observed, discussed, and endured rather than designed, built, and improved.
Let me show you what intentional culture engineering looks like.
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.
