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.
What does flying Coast Guard rescue missions have in common with running a city? According to Peter Troedsson, City Manager of Albany, Oregon, more than you might think.
In this week’s episode of The HaltingWinter Podcast, Troedsson shares how his 30-year military career—including time as a helicopter pilot and commander—shaped his approach to municipal leadership. His insights come at a crucial time when cities face increasing complexity and pressure.
If leadership had a secret weapon, it would be the question. Not just any questions, but the right questions, asked at the right time, in the right way. For city managers, mastering the art of inquiry isn’t just about gathering information – it’s about unlocking innovation, building consensus, and transforming how your municipality approaches challenges.
Building a systematic approach to municipal transformation
Excellence in municipal government isn’t accidental. It’s engineered.
Just as every great building starts with architectural plans, every great municipality needs a development framework – a systematic blueprint for creating, sustaining, and multiplying excellence throughout the organization.
Let’s build that blueprint.
Imagine this scenario: Your city’s downtown revitalization project is stuck. The economic development director sees it through data and revenue projections. The urban planner visualizes spatial relationships and pedestrian flows. The community engagement manager focuses on conversations and stakeholder relationships. Each brings valuable insights, yet instead of creating a richer solution, these different perspectives are causing friction and delays.
Sound familiar? What you’re experiencing isn’t a conflict of personalities or priorities – it’s a collision of mind patterns. And understanding this hidden dynamic could be the key to unlocking your municipality’s innovative potential.
When a city faces its toughest challenges, conventional wisdom tells us to find the smartest solution. But what if the real key isn’t about finding one right answer, but understanding how different minds can work together to create better solutions?
In this week’s episode of The HaltingWinter Podcast, we dive deep into the science of collaborative intelligence, exploring groundbreaking insights from Markova and McArthur’s “Collaborative Intelligence” and what it means for municipal leadership.
As a city manager, you’re facing a paradox. Your community’s challenges are becoming increasingly complex, requiring more sophisticated solutions than ever before. Yet the traditional model of heroic, solo leadership isn’t just ineffective – it’s obsolete. Today’s municipal success depends, not on having all the answers yourself, but on your ability to harness the collective intelligence of your entire ecosystem.
This week, we’re diving deep into “Collaborative Intelligence” by Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur, a groundbreaking work that revolutionizes our understanding of how minds work together. Through the lens of our ABCs of Municipal Leadership framework, we’ll explore how these insights can transform your approach to city management and help you create a more innovative, resilient, and effective municipality.
Let’s be honest: most cities are struggling with collaboration. Despite our best intentions, we see:
The cost? Wasted resources, missed opportunities, burned-out staff, and communities that never reach their full potential.
The conventional wisdom about collaboration – just get people in a room together, create a shared vision, and magic will happen – ignores fundamental truths about how different minds work together. Markova and McArthur reveal three critical insights that change everything:
1. Cognitive Diversity is Non-Negotiable
2. Collaboration is a Learned Skill
3. The Environment Shapes Success
Each day, we’ll dive deep into practical applications of collaborative intelligence:
Before we dive deeper tomorrow, take a moment to reflect on your municipality’s collaborative capacity:
Your answers will help you get the most out of this week’s insights and tools.
Creating a truly collaborative organization requires more than occasional inspiration – it needs sustained focus and proven methods. The Municipal Leadership Development Circle (MLDC), launching January 2025, offers a unique solution for city managers looking to build collaborative intelligence across their organizations.
Through our innovative model, you’ll join a community of municipal leaders all working to transform their organizational dynamics. You’ll gain access to cutting-edge tools for assessing and developing collaborative intelligence, along with expert guidance on implementing these approaches in your specific context.
Seth Winterhalter is President of HaltingWinter Municipal Solutions, dedicated to making stronger cities through stronger leaders. Through executive coaching, consulting, and the Municipal Leadership Development Circle (MLDC), HaltingWinter helps city managers and municipal leaders transform their leadership impact and their organizational culture.
How intentional development creates exponential municipal impact
Let’s talk about municipal math.
If you invest $10,000 at 1% annual interest, in 30 years you’ll have $13,478. At 10% compound interest? You’ll have $174,494 – nearly thirteen times more money from the same initial investment.
The difference isn’t just the rate – it’s the power of multiplication over time.
Now apply this to leadership development:
Municipality A develops one leader at a time.
Municipality B creates leaders who develop other leaders.
The difference? Not just growth – but exponential impact.
Impactful City Leaders,
Welcome to this week’s edition of “The Leader’s Lens!” What makes some city halls feel electric with possibility while others seem stuck in bureaucratic quicksand? This week, we’ve explored Daniel Coyle’s “The Culture Code,” discovering how invisible patterns shape organizational excellence – and what it means for municipal leadership.
This week, we’ve explored Daniel Coyle’s “The Culture Code” through the lens of municipal leadership. We’ve discovered how psychological safety unleashes innovation, how strategic vulnerability builds trust, and how shared purpose drives performance. But here’s the question that matters most: How do we turn these insights into actual change in your city hall?
Today, we’re getting tactical. No more theory. No more concepts. Just practical, actionable steps you can take in the next 30 days to begin transforming your municipal culture.
Bridging the gap between knowing and doing
Your shelves are filled with leadership books.
Your team has attended countless training sessions.
Your walls display inspiring mission statements.
And yet…
Nothing really changes.
You’re not alone. The gap between leadership theory and practice isn’t just frustrating – it’s the number one reason municipal development efforts fail. Let’s bridge that gap.
