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...

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...

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….

• Coaching is not an annual review
• Coaching is not feedback per se
• Coaching is not being someone’s friend, although you may like the person
• Coaching does not rely on your inspiration, but rather the person’s
• Coaching is not directly telling someone what to do

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...