Local government leaders know that it’s important to have a succession plan and a way to identify each person’s development needs related to future roles.  A terrific tool for cities and counties to use to identify gaps in readiness the 9-Box Grid.

Since local government base salary can sometimes sway employees to leave (and make it hard to attract quality talent) city and county leaders need to do all you can to groom and develop the talent you have in-house.

A 9-Box is a fairly simple approach to assessing your employees’ current potential and performance.

As the title describes, there are nine boxes in this assessment grid. Each box represents a type of employee that’s on your team and each type needs something different to grow and prosper.

 The vertical part of the grid has to do with potential.  

• Do your employees have the potential to grow and develop into a leader and into a future larger role, of say….Water Billing Manager?

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At LeaderGov we embrace the comprehensive leadership practices of ICMA and put them to work in our online workshops.   We hope you enjoy this overview of 14 areas of quality leadership for local government.   

1. PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY

Being fair, honest, and ethical in all personal and professional relationships and activities

Leadership dimensions that contribute to this core content area are:

• Fostering ethical behavior throughout the organization through exemplary personal actions
• Ensuring the decision-making model reflects integrity, honesty, and openness.

Management dimensions that contribute to this core content area are:

• Conducting professional relationships and activities fairly, honestly, ethically, and in conformance with the ICMA Code of Ethics and the policies of your local government to maintain public confidence in the profession and local government
• Performing official and personal affairs in a manner that clearly conveys that...

In local government there is a lot of stress on teams to get more done with less.   This is also true in private industry, but since local governments literally serve everyone in a community, the pressure to get things done is unique. 

Without good listening instructions fall apart, people feel dismissed, mistakes occur, projects fail or are delayed, productivity goes down and frustration pervades. 

Your personality plays a role in how well you listen.   

• If you’re a dominate or driver style personality, you may have a hard time listening to others because you already know the answer….so why even listen!   Strong driver styles are actually often right, so they get impatient with listening, gathering others' input and needless research.

• If you are an inspiring and influencer style personality, you may struggle to listen as your mind can easily get overloaded as you take in the information around you.  This personality...

Leaders intrinsically know that motivation comes in many shapes, sizes and colors.  Growing up, I was highly motivated to attend Boy Scouts on Monday nights because I wanted to achieve the next merit badge and I enjoyed having fun  with my friends.

In managing a City or County team, it’s important to continually leverage various motivational approaches so your team is inspired to do great work each day.

Below are four common ways in which most people are motivated:

• Having clear goals
• Receiving regular performance feedback
• Being coached to help make progress toward goals
• Receiving private or group recognition

You may not think that having clear goals and giving feedback (yuck!) is motivation but it actually is.  Most people WANT to know where they stand and where you expect them to be in 30, 60 or 180 days.   We all desire clarity and focus and having clear goals and regular feedback is a simple way to do that. 

Coaching and recognition are...

At LeaderGov we frame much of our local government workshops and online training around the four major personality styles as defined by DiSC.  DiSC is the worlds most popular personality profiling program and is used by over 1,000,000 people per year.

The DiSC model includes styles called Driver, Inspiring, Supporter and Cautious.   Each style has inherent positive qualities and challenges in how they communicate.  In our workshops we help local government leaders learn their styles (or take the assessment) so that they can know their own style (strengths and weaknesses) and also learn how to approach other styles for maximum effectiveness.

Which style are you and how do you sometimes see yourself communicating in ineffective ways?

• The Driver Style:  This person is results-oriented and highly focused on the end goal.   Their communications can be blunt and to the point and sometimes be misunderstood as aggressive. They may tend to talk over others and not...