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:
Your team may or may not have these attributes and it’s...
There are some great coaches that have influenced athletes over time. You probably can think of some examples.
In local government, you're the coach and the players are your employees. As with all coaching, it’s the athlete who has to carry out and execute the plans. You're not "on the field" and shouldn't be….you're on the sidelines encouraging, cheering and directing, just like a coach.
Coaching is based on the idea that you believe the person is capable of solving their own issue. Your goal is to help them develop a path to address a need by asking great questions.
Coaching is not a few things….
Coaches facilitate, they don’t offer...
Whether you are Director of Finance at a City, a County Manager or a Public Works Manager, providing customer service to other departments or to citizens is everyone’s job and it’s job #1. As a leader you should be involved in the design, implementation and measurement of a customer service strategy to ensure your department is serving others well.
Citizens are becoming more and more accustomed to next day delivery and ease of shopping all brought about by customer service innovation at Amazon and other online retailers. They’ve tried to perfect the experience of shopping and they’ve raised the bar for other providers of services, including cities and counties.
In this blog we want to share six service strategies you can oversee to ensure the delivery of exceptional customer service in your department, city or county.
#1 Define Success
As a leader or manager, you should oversee the successful definition of customer...
Most of us think of meetings as boring or dislike them for one reason or another. So, often they lack real progress, decisions are often avoided, they lack purpose, the wrong people are at the meeting or they last too long.
To avoid this history, here are three principles, you as a leader, can employ for more effective meetings:
Consistency and Clarity of Purpose: No one wants to hold a meeting “just to hold a meeting” and one shouldn’t. Here are just a few reasons why holding regular team meetings can add value to your team.
Want something you can do that is free and yields a 40%+ growth in productivity?
In today’s blog we want to remind you of a free, yet powerful tool in your arsenal to help motivate employees and get them more engaged - showing appreciation.
Different from appreciation is recognition, where you point out something wonderful someone did. Recognition is conditioned on behavior. But appreciation has to do with the person… and how they add to the team.
Appreciation is based on who you are (your identity), and recognition is based on what you do your performance. The benefits of expressing appreciation are stunning. Both recognizing others and appreciating others has tremendous impact on employee performance.
According to a study by the HAAS School of Business at UC Berkeley, when people are recognized for work they did well (their actions) they are 23% more effective and productive over those that were not recognized.
Yet, when people felt...
As a leader, it's important to know the people you work with. Strong relationships lead to stronger teams, and stronger teams lead to a more productive and more successful company. But getting to know people isn't just knowing their favorite TV show or the name of their spouse. That's trivia. To effectively manage your team, you've got to be aware of and understand your team members' personalities.
There are tons of personality tests out there: Myers-Briggs, Big Five,...
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.
...
Being fair, honest, and ethical in all personal and professional relationships and activities
Leadership dimensions that contribute to this core content area are:
Management dimensions that contribute to this core content area are:
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.
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:
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...
50% Complete
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.