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.
Take a look at your calendar from this week. How many meetings involved department heads bringing you problems to solve? How many decisions crossed your desk that someone else in your organization probably understood better than you?
If you’re like most local government leaders, the honest answer might be uncomfortable.
This week inside the Municipal Leadership Development Circle (MLDC), we’re diving into Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet—a revolutionary account of leadership transformation that has direct applications for every municipal leader drowning in decisions that shouldn’t require their approval.
The Command-and-Control Trap
For generations, municipal leadership has followed a predictable pattern: → City manager makes the decisions → Department heads execute the orders → Problems flow upward for resolution → Authority stays concentrated at the top
But here’s what we’re discovering: this model is killing your effectiveness.
When every choice requires your approval, you become the bottleneck to progress. When talented professionals wait for your direction on matters within their expertise, you’re not ensuring quality—you’re creating dependency.
Marquet inherited the worst-performing submarine in the Navy fleet and transformed it into one of the highest-performing vessels through one radical insight: giving control actually increases your influence.
Here’s What We’re Exploring This Week in the MLDC
1. Giving Control to Gain Control: We’re challenging the assumption that good leadership means tight oversight. Instead, we’re exploring how pushing decision-making authority to where the information and expertise exist creates better outcomes and more resilient organizations.
2. Building Competence, Not Compliance: What happens when your team stops following orders and starts thinking strategically? We’ll explore how to build both technical knowledge and decision-making confidence throughout your organization.
3. Creating Clarity When Everything Is Foggy: Municipal organizations face competing priorities daily. We’re diving into how clear guiding principles enable autonomous decision-making while maintaining organizational alignment.
4. From Commander to Conductor: The best city managers aren’t solving every problem, they’re creating conditions where problems get solved at the right level by the right people. We’ll explore practical steps for this leadership transformation.
5. Implementation Without Overwhelm: Leadership change doesn’t require organizational restructuring. This final episode focuses on small, immediate shifts that create significant impact in how your team operates.
The Bottom Line
If you’re exhausted by decision bottlenecks, overwhelmed by operational details that pull you away from strategic priorities, or frustrated by a team that seems to wait for your direction instead of taking initiative, Turn the Ship Around! offers a different path.
It’s not about working harder. It’s about leading smarter.
Join us this week and get full access to:
Start your free 7-day trial today now
You don’t need to approve every decision to maintain accountability. And you don’t need to solve every problem to demonstrate leadership.
Let’s turn your municipal ship around—together.
The Municipal Leadership Development Circle (MLDC) is a professional growth community exclusively for city managers, administrators, and municipal executives. 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 around the nation to build stronger cities through stronger leaders. Learn more at HaltingWinter.com.
