Like any organization, local governments need to build strong teams to get important things accomplished.   Even the mundane tasks are done with greater ease when we operate like a team.  

We recently completed a LinkedIn poll and asked local government leaders what key topics they liked most in retreat. By large margin the top two most popular aspects of retreats were team building time and goal setting time.

Team-Building Exercises

Next time you plan an offsite retreat for your Department, City or County staff, City Council or County Commission, we encourage you to include exercises that bring the team together and grow the level of trust and understanding among individuals.

Here is a list of several exercises you can consider. Let us know if we can help you think through the rest of your offsite retreat needs. 

1. Two Truths and a Lie: Have each team member share three statements about themselves, two of which are true and one of which is a lie. The rest of the...

The movement for racial and social justice and a global pandemic has focused a spotlight on diversity training and its role in building a workplace culture of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in local government.

As part of a multipronged strategy, diversity training can be a valuable tool in the DEI toolbox to engage, educate and motivate employees to be more inclusive in their thinking and actions.

A modern, interactive approach to training offers HR leaders new ways to:

1. Amplifies senior leadership’s commitment

Diversity training provides leaders with a dynamic platform for communicating the organization’s commitment to DEI, the importance of everyone  participating in training and other initiatives, and setting expectations for behavior.

2. Raise awareness of unconscious bias

Unconscious bias or implicit bias − hidden attitudes based on social stereotypes which everyone has −is another concept that is part of the conversation on race,...

In this blog we discuss the Servant Leadership quality of being a healer.  You may not think you have much to do with healing as a leader, but there’s more to this idea than you may think.   Servant leadership is a set of ten qualities or traits that help accomplish your team’s goals by valuing people and putting others first.

The idea of being a servant leader healer is that you have an active role in healing relationships and you can provide resources for the emotional and physical healing of others. 

Simon Senik, the leadership thought-leader says in a YouTube video, “You’re not the one “in charge” but you are to care for those “in your charge”.  Oftentimes, those in your care experience times of stress, sickness, conflict and other set-backs that affect them personally and affect the quality of their work.   When others suffer on your team, they experience pain and the team does as well to a...

Ever wonder why you just don't get along with certain people? 

They rub you the wrong way or they aren't as responsive as you'd like?  

When these people are your employees it's especially important that you have tools to resolve team conflict.  Part of your role is to engage, approach, coach, inspire and lead all sorts of personality types.  But we need to value, understand and know how to support them.

LeaderGov now offers a new system to help you do just that. 

LeaderGov's Team Assessment System is a powerful way to compare personalities on your team and visually see how and where you are different.

Knowing how to modify your approach to others is a key to successful management.   LeaderGov's new system gives you a way to better relate, coach and work cooperatively with your team. 

Below is a sample of how Tim and I compare.  You can use the drop down to select any team member to compare yourself to.

The LeaderGov Team...

We all have natural tendencies in how we lead in local government.  There are four important words that will provide insights into how you lead that all point to your overall DISC personality type.   DISC is a personality assessment that helps you better understand your natural style and how your style can be an asset or sometimes lead to unhealthy leadership. 

The four words are: Problems, People, Pace and Procedure

Problems:  Every leader encounters problems.  But how we approach them varies greatly.  Do you naturally move toward problems to resolve them or do you move away from problems?  Maybe you hope they'll diminish or resolve themselves.   But D-style personality types naturally move toward problems.  They like addressing problems directly.  But if you don't naturally move toward problems (as another style), you may want to consider a more assertive stance toward problems.  As we all know, unaddressed...

All great organizations have one thing in common... they hire smart, good-fit candidates onto their teams.  While easily said, hiring can be a stressful and challenging.   In this LeaderGov blog we'd like to share six ideas to help you supercharge your hiring processes.

1. Hiring Process Input - Do you have a team of people interview each of your final 2-3 candidates or do one or two people do all the interviewing?  We'd recommend that you have up to 5-7 people interview the final 2-3 candidates so you get a well-rounded view of the person.  Making those interviews 1-on-1 also allows each person to get to know the candidates in a more informal setting versus a large room with five people interviewing one person at the same time.  Talk about stress!
2. Reference Checks - Although this is a basic idea, we usually see that these calls are to mainly check on skills.  We want to encourage you to probe not only for skill...

I recently read fictional stories based on real experiences from an Emergency Room doctor. He told a story about a girl who was a meth addict running into the ER with a baby that was almost dead. The addict was a mess with badly scarred arms and missing teeth. And she was not giving any helpful information as to what happened to the baby, causing great frustration among the staff. Just when the child was within a minute of dying, the doctor removed a piece of plastic blocking its airway, bringing the baby back to life.

At that very moment, another woman burst into the treatment room, picked up the baby, and thanked the drug-addicted woman for saving her baby’s life! What?!?! See, this mother was in a parking lot when her baby began to choke, but her keys were locked in her car. The drug addict was in a car nearby with her friends. She quickly grabbed the baby and left for the hospital. The ER staff first saw only an addict. But after seeing the whole picture, they also saw...

Feedback is a great way to support, re-direct and encourage your employees.  But as leaders in local government you can take those 1-on-1 feedback sessions one step further by asking your employee “what can I do differently to better support you or make your work more effective?” This simple feedback question allows the employee to share their concerns, it models your authenticity to them and helps you improve as a manager.

Monthly or quarterly “sit-down” feedback sessions are great, but another type of feedback called 360 Feedback can be even more transformative.

The public safety model

In local government, public safety teams regularly hold “after action” reviews of emergency calls to discuss lessons learned from an event.  In those feedback sessions the group reviews the call and then determines how to reduce errors and challenges in future calls based on what they just experienced.   This idea of getting a broad range...

According to a study by the University of Scranton’s Journal of Clinical Psychology, roughly forty-five (45%) of Americans make New Year’s resolutions.  Seventy-five (75%) maintain them for a week and sixty-four (64%) maintain their resolutions for one month.  Only forty-six (46%) maintain their resolutions for more than 6 months. 

As a leader influencing your local government, it’s important to set strategic goals or resolutions for yourself each year – you might call them resolutions for your City, County or Department.  While you probably have a Council or Commission or Manager eager to set goals for you, it’s important to pursue a few goals you see as vital to your team’s success.

The first step is to document your resolutions in writing.   People are 50% more likely to achieve a goal if it’s written down.

A Look Back: Look back on the past year and consider what you did well and what you...

Having a high level of trust on City and County teams is paramount to the success of everything you do.  Trust between individuals and teams can either stifle success or multiply success.  Great sports teams who were under-rated in terms of skills often beat teams with much greater talent because they trusted each other and worked as a team.

Having a high level of trust on your team (whether it’s a department team, project team or city management team) has a range of positive benefits to those in local government.   Below are a few indicators to know if you have high trust on your team: 

• Is your team open to hearing honest feedback?
• Do your team members express their ideas in a transparent and honest way?
• Are your team members protective or careful in how they talk to each other?
• Do they know that the intentions of the people they work with are good?
• Does your team take input personally?

Your team may or may not have these attributes and it’s...