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Join Bill Stark and Lindsey Snyder from LeaderGov as they dive into an insightful discussion on fostering ethics and integrity in local government. Featuring guest speaker William Whitson, the episode highlights the importance of ethical behavior and core values in public service. Learn practical strategies for reinforcing ethical standards within your team, hear real-life examples, and gain valuable advice from seasoned public administrators. Whether you're a municipal leader or a frontline employee, this workshop offers essential guidance on maintaining high ethical standards in local government.

00:00 Welcome and Introductions
02:20 Workshop Overview and Team Ethics
03:12 LeaderGov's Services and Announcements
06:46 Survey Insights on Ethical Behavior
07:47 Challenges in Maintaining Ethical Standards
12:25 Guest Speaker: William Whitson on Ethics
23:22 Practical Ideas for Promoting Ethics
29:35 Interactive Session: Sharing Ideas
35:03 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

Transcript

0:00
Bill, welcome to the leader gov podcast, America's premier source for local government leadership and teamwork training. And now your host, Bill starry, we would love

0:10
to introduce our speaker today, our guest speaker, we're going to basically just have a conversation with our guest, William Whitson. William is with us down in Florida. William is a graduate of West Florida University with a BA in Political Science, Master's in Public Administration. He had a Presidential Management internship at the US Office of Personnel Management. William has worked with a lot of local government agencies, primarily here in the southeast, for a number of years since 1993 been credentialed by the ICMA since 2002 and a part of emergency response centers operations for nine hurricanes. So if you all are experiencing hurricane or any emergency, I'm sure William could probably give you some good tips, and you've probably seen a lot and and William resides in Jacksonville, Florida with his wife, Becky. Had been there about 40 years. They have three grown children and five grandchildren. And William, it is great to have you with us. How you doing today, sir? I'm

1:14
doing great. Glad to be with you guys. Bill on a worthy and important topic like this, yeah,

1:21
yeah. We just wanted to Lindsay and I wanted to just have a conversation. This is a big topic. We got a a lot of interest in this topic today on this particular session, and we just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your experiences in local government. We know you've been around doing your thing, primarily in the southeast, for a number of years, and just want to tap into some of your stories, some of your experience, what comes to mind for you, and then, and then we'll take it from there. Hannah Lowe, I would just love to just first ask, as you think about ethics and your work, why does this matter? Why are we making a big deal of this? What's what when your experience? What is that? What's that like? Thank

2:01
you, Bill for the question, and before I get into the specifics of the answer, I'd like to tip my hat to a very dear friend who passed. His name was Dan Clayman. Dan was city manager of Tallahassee, Florida for 20 years. He was the county manager of Hillsborough County for 10 years. And when you think of ethics, you would have Dan's picture there. And I will never forget the workshops that he would hold with the Florida City County Management Association, where he would dress up in a robe and put on a Baron's wig like he was in court, and go through the cases and ask the questions, and he had a humorous side to him, but also a serious side, and he held the bar high, and that's the kind of example that we all need to follow. I want to tip my hat. His funeral service was today in South Florida, and God's godspeed Dan, and we will remember your example and try hard to aspire to that level.

3:05
Yeah, thank you for saying that. It's amazing the legacy that we leave as local government leaders. And none of us are perfect, right? We actually all have ethical lapses at times, right? We sometimes we have performance lapses. Sometimes we have ethical left. So nobody's perfect here. We're not. It's just, are we focused on this? Do we want to get better, and how do we get our team to that next level?

3:30
Yeah, I agree, and I just have a few examples. Or when I think of this subject, kind of an old guy, I have gray hair, and I don't know how many of y'all on this call remember Rand McNally maps, okay, guiding you in a direction you want to go. When you want to go on a trip, you want to get to a destination which is an ethical and fair workplace. The more modern analogy would be GPS. Ethics is our GPS. It sets the direction, and it's guys like Dan Klayman and Randy Reed and Ken Parker and other people that I've had in my life as mentors that kind of set that bar so that you know that you measure yourself. And when professional teams, for example, go out there, they practice. And I think ethics is about practice. It's about there's no silver bullet. You have to want to do it. It's intentional, and you try to remind yourself of the bar, the examples and the roadmap that you want to head towards. And those are things that, when I think of the topic, I like to reflect on.

4:35
Yeah. So as you think about ethics and local government, you know what? Why does it matter? It seems like I know that local government were under a much more scrutiny, maybe than private maybe more so than public companies on the stock market, there's a lot of there's a lot of spotlight on local government. So what, in your experience? What? Why is this so important for us?

4:58
I call it living. The fish bowl, everything we say and do, especially here in Florida with Sunshine laws, the way they are, you're anything you write, anything you say, anything you speak, is public and it's public record, and so you have to be held to account. And one of the little tests that I use is, would I be comfortable saying that to my mother? Would I be comfortable seeing that in the front page of the newspaper tomorrow? You have to watch yourself and always have those examples in your life. I've mentioned before the mentors to hold yourself high and to practice and work towards the goal. And one of the things is that my first city, for example, how I broke into local government was in a small town in the Florida Panhandle called Milton, Florida, and one of the reasons I was invited to apply for that position was, not only was I from there, people knew me, but the assistant city manager had taken over as the city manager, and he had just recently gotten sent sentenced to federal prison for a Bid rigging scheme, and they were looking for someone ethical and that they could trust to come in and write the ship. And I've just tried to live my life that way. I've tried to be honest and forthright. Have I made my mistakes? Yes. Do I have things I could have done better? Yes, but at the end of the day, you still have that GPS, that North Star, those examples, the maps that focus you and head you in the right direction. And you practice and you work at it, and the consequences of it are that you'll be on the right side of history or the wrong and you always want to be on the right side of history and making sure that anything you say and do is worthy of your name, that is worthy of your organization. They never want to embarrass your employer, and those kinds of things. And those are the things I try to work on. Like I say, I'm not perfect. I've had my I've been on the field, and I've got my battle scars, but at the end of the day, I don't think you'd ever see my name associated with a Bid rigging scheme. You never see my name associated with cheating or any kinds of unethical behavior, because that's just not the standard that I've been taught and not the standard I want to set.

7:19
Yeah, I think, William, one thing comes to mind there as you're speaking, and it has to do with having close relationships around us, people around us that we can confide in when things get dicey. And I would just ask everybody on the Zoom today, do you have a close friend, confidant, maybe someone in local government, maybe not in local government, and do you feel safe around them enough to speak up and say, You know what? I'm facing a really uncomfortable situation at work with this potentially sexual harassment or Bid rigging or and I'm in the middle of it, and I don't and to be in community with other people, to have friendships, trusted friendships, where we can lean on people, get their advice if we're so low, Rangers, if we're alone by ourselves. As leaders, isolation is not a good thing as a leader. We need that sunshine, as you say. William and I just so it's just an encouragement I wanted to share for everybody on the on the session today, let's be sure we're surrounding ourselves with people who are also people of high integrity, who can help us meander those tough situations. I local government leaders have a lot of where the I was thinking about this, William, think about code enforcement. Yeah, if you're my cousin and your yard has grass three feet high and two cars in the front yard on the cinder blocks, and you're my cousin, I'm not going to write you up because you're my cousin. I'm going to, I'm going to bend the rules, I'm going to cheat the system, right? And I'm justifying it because I know you, but that's that. That's not good ethics, right? That's not good integrity. And so there are probably lots of examples. Again, I can count things personally in my life where I've cut corners and just as leaders on on this session today, it's important for us all to talk about and get clarity about what does it mean to have high ethics and standards. And

9:18
I think you bring out such a great point bill, the people that I have been fortunate and blessed to have in my career, to have as mentors. Heck, I've I've been doing this a long time, and I have mentors, and I would be willing to be a mentor to anybody who cared, to reach out, and I know there are other professionals in local government that would do the same, because your honor and integrity can't be for sale, and you have to associate yourself with people that pull you up and help you navigate the tough times. It's easy when there's no reporters outside and there's sunshine and breezy skies, but the issue is when it gets tough, who do you have? That you can call on, that you could count on, that you could buy it in to help you navigate, to rise you, raise you up and make you think about things and be your GPS in in tough times. Yeah, yeah.

10:13
Tell us I want like to transition to some practical ideas I think about, I was at a city the other day, and they were very excited. They had just rewritten their SOPs, all of their employee manuals. And I said, that's great. How big is this book? And they said it was 100 pages. Now it's 50. I'm like, I don't know who's going to read a 50 page book. It's like, how do we communicate in a smart way, our ethics, our guidelines, our principles, our values. How do we do that without having to write 100 page book, and now, now we all need to read the book, and we need to do training scope, SOPs and all that, but I just think, How can we make ethics and integrity a focus? How do we practically do that? Any thoughts about that?

11:00
Yeah, I spoke with another one of my mentors before this call, and I hope I do justice to what he has shared with me. But for those of you who may know, Bob Lee, he was city manager of Naples, Florida for quite some time, and he's enjoying life now in South Florida. And he told me, he said, William, it's simple. He said, I talked with every employee when they were brought on board the organization, and you tell them to work hard, do their job, be honest and be truthful. It wasn't complicated. And he gave me several examples of how that those simple bullet points helped lead his staff and to make some tough decisions and the right decisions, in his opinion. And then I have a few other references. I'd like to give a shout out to the Georgia Municipal Association for its program on ethics and government. I would certainly highly endorse that there's some principles involved in that. There's things as simple as the rotary four way test serve others and not ourselves. And is it the truth? Is it fair to all concern? Will it build goodwill and better friendships, and will it be beneficial to all and and again, those are the kinds of simple things you can remember on the spur of a moment in a situation, if you can't think of all the thick rules. And in the pm magazine, the public management magazine, which circulated in at the ICMA, there was two articles, one by one of my mentors, Kim Parker, that's coming out in the March issue. It's March 1, and it's about the code of ethics and the value that it served him throughout his career. And Ken was a city manager for over 40 years, and that's amazing to me. So this guy, he knows, and he's my North Star. And then there's another article that was in the February article, February pm magazine, by Kevin Dugan and again, give some good insight. Let me just read one thing, quite possibly the greatest threat to fulfilling our ethical obligations is when we are put in a position to lose or gain something important to us based on the ethical choices we make. In other words, you have to have those that discipline, to keep it simple, to keep it focused, to keep the GPS the North Star in your career, where you headed, where you want to go, and make sure that you make the right choices along the way. And yes, it takes training practice, all of those things that we encourage people to do, but it doesn't have to be complicated either.

13:44
Yeah, I think about in this doesn't really just apply to local government. I think about we say that skills are taught attitudes. Skills are taught attitudes are caught. So we teach skills, but we catch attitudes. Yes, those so attitudes are caught, skills are taught. And so what that means, I think, in this example, is, yes, we need a manual, and we need rules, and we need guidelines, and HR needs to put out publish documents that are the Council and the Commission all all approved, and people need to read them. But there's also this thing of, Am I seeing my manager act in an ethical way? Right? It's almost like servant leadership. You really can't teach servant leadership. You model servant leadership, correct? I model it, then it becomes part of the culture. And now people see that, oh no, we don't cut corners that way. Here. We do it this way. And so again, it's back to the same thing of just starting with ourselves right, holding ourselves up to a very high ethical standard, and then having those people. Around us that can help us maneuver through the gray areas, right? Life is full of gray, right?

15:06
I always tell my staff that you handle the black and white. Let me work on the gray. And I try to model, as you say, what ought to be. Am I always perfect at it? No, but it takes time and seasoning and patience to move forward, and those are the kind of things you just have. Those people in your life that are GPS, that are North Stars. Call it what you want, but they guide you in the right direction. And hopefully, at the end of the day, after 4050, years in the business, you end up in a really good place, and you have people wanting to remember your legacy, because we all have one. What will yours be?

15:48
Yeah, great way to end the conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank

15:54
you for listening to the leader gov podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe and for more information on LeaderGov's, workshops and programs for state and local governments, visit www.leadergov.com