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.
Episode 362 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Most leadership stories celebrate the moment someone says “yes” to a promotion. Benjamin Marentette’s story is different. When he was unanimously selected to become the City Manager of Traverse City, Michigan, he turned the job down.
Not because he lacked the qualifications. Not because he didn’t love his community. And not because he didn’t aspire to lead. He simply knew he wasn’t ready. That decision became one of the defining moments of his leadership journey.
Episode 361 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Every leader has experienced it. An employee follows the process, checks every box, and completes exactly what’s required…but something is missing.
Initiative. Creativity. Ownership.
On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. That same day, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Weeks later, France would fall. And for the next year, London would face nightly bombing raids that killed tens of thousands and left the city’s leadership wondering, night after night, whether they’d survive to lead again.
This summer, The HaltingWinter Podcast is doing something different. Instead of working through leadership frameworks, we’re reading stories, because watching a real leader face the impossible teaches you things a framework never will.
Episode 359 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Every local government leader knows retirement is coming. The challenge isn’t replacing a position. It’s replacing decades of experience and knowledge.
Every organization has employees who know where the undocumented utility line runs, why a policy exists, how a recurring problem was solved ten years ago, or which resident to call before a project begins. Much of that knowledge lives only in their heads and when they retire, it often leaves with them.
That challenge is at the heart of today’s episode of The HaltingWinter Podcast.
Episode 358 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Most people assume exceptional careers are carefully planned. Choose the right degree. Find the right job. Earn the next promotion. Keep climbing.
But what if that’s not how the best leadership journeys actually unfold?
In 1962, a twenty-four-year-old named Phil Knight had no money, no team, and no business plan…just a conviction he couldn’t shake that he could build a better running shoe. Shoe Dog, his 2016 memoir, tells the story of what came next: a company that nearly collapsed more times than it succeeded, before becoming Nike.
Episode 356 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Some leaders make an impact measured in months. Others leave a legacy measured in decades.
For 33 years, Mike Van Milligen has served as the City Manager of Dubuque, Iowa, helping lead one of the most remarkable community transformations in local government. During his tenure, the city rebounded from economic decline, revitalized its historic downtown and riverfront, invested in neighborhoods, strengthened partnerships across the community, and became a five-time All-America City.
Episode 355 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Most leaders believe experience is what makes them better. But experience alone isn’t enough.
Some leaders repeat the same year of experience twenty times. Others intentionally learn from every challenge, every conversation, every success, and every setback. Those are the leaders who continue to grow and whose organizations continue to grow with them.
That idea sits at the heart of my latest conversation with Opal Mauldin-Jones, City Manager of Lancaster, Texas.
There’s a moment in the 1936 Berlin Olympics that still gives me chills.
Nine young men—sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers from the Pacific Northwest—sit in a wooden boat, about to race for gold in front of Adolf Hitler and a crowd expecting a German victory. They weren’t the biggest. They weren’t the most celebrated. And they won anyway, not by outworking everyone in the final stretch, but because something clicked in that boat that the other crews couldn’t manufacture.
That story is the foundation of The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown and it’s our second book inside this summer’s series, Stories That Shape Leaders.
Episode 353 of The HaltingWinter Podcast
Brought to you by Tyler Technologies
Ask a room full of city managers and county administrators how they arrived in local government, and you’ll quickly discover there isn’t a single blueprint for ascending to the role.
Some studied public administration. Others came from engineering, planning, finance, public works—or entirely different careers.
Jeremy Scott’s story may be one of the most unconventional yet.
