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.
It’s not a comfortable question. But it’s the right one.
This week inside the Municipal Leadership Development Circle, we’re working through Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and it starts with a finding that’s hard to ignore. Leaders who diminish the people around them, often without any awareness that they’re doing it, typically access only about half of their team’s actual capability.
Half. The other half is showing up every day and going unused.
Wiseman calls the leaders responsible for that gap Diminishers. And the most important thing to understand about them is that most aren’t difficult, ego-driven, or careless. They’re exceptional. Hardworking. Deeply committed. They rose to their positions because they were the smartest, most prepared, most reliable person in the room, and now, without meaning to, that same competence is quietly crowding out everyone else’s contribution.
She calls them Accidental Diminishers. And for local government leaders, it’s the concept that hits closest to home.
Because the path to city manager, county administrator, or department head is almost designed to produce this pattern. Council expects you to have answers. Staff looks to you when things get hard. Public scrutiny makes caution feel like wisdom. Every one of those pressures pushes you toward doing more, knowing more, and controlling more and away from the kind of leadership that actually builds organizational capacity over time.
This week, MLDC members are working through the five disciplines Wiseman identifies in leaders who consistently expand the people around them and what each one looks like inside the specific constraints of local government. Civil service systems. Elected oversight. Budget pressure. Communities that are watching.
It’s not a theoretical conversation. It’s a practical one, built for the environment you actually work in.
If you’re not yet a member of the MLDC, this is what we do every week. We take the best leadership thinking available and translate it into something immediately useful for local government leaders who are serious about growing and serious about the profession.
Daily blog posts. Daily podcast episodes. Conversation guides designed for your context.
Come 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.
