Successfully Leading Local Government Teams

Lewis Bender, Mary Bender

• Publisher: LEWIS G. BENDER
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781087895598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management

Successfully Leading Local Government Teams is a collection of stories that describe the unique challenges facing public sector teams that their private-sector counterparts do not face. It contains stories that describe the struggles, victories, defeats, and challenges of local public-sector service organizations. The focus is on how problem people impact leaders and team members and how to handle their games. Each of the stories in this book reflects events and situations that happened. Names, places, and many contributing factors have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent people described in these stories.

The Story

Annie was probably the most popular person in the entire park system. Everyone liked her. She knew everything about everyone: their families, their children, their joys, and their challenges. There wasn’t ever a birthday that went unnoticed. A card and a phone call were her standard modus operandi. Everybody liked Annie. Indeed, Annie was a genuinely nice person.

Annie was one of those people you hated to say no to because she was so nice and giving. Her rapid ascendency to the county park system director was primarily due to the relationships that she had built over a brief time. Her appointment was celebrated as a new, fresh and humane beginning for the organization and a clear departure from the previous uncaring, even oppressive, leader. It also marked the beginning of a whole new set of challenges for Annie and her six-person senior leadership team. Sitting in the left seat meant either/or and yes/no decisions and choices that would inevitably please some and disappoint others. No place to hide. No wiggle room. Just choices and decisions that could potentially make Annie look like the bad guy.

The uncomfortable reality of no-win choices came soon after Annie was appointed director. It came in the form of a step-3 grievance filed by a staff member in the maintenance shop. The union weakly supported the grievance and was not going to take it to an arbitrator. The issue was relatively simple and straightforward. Over the Fourth of July weekend, the busiest weekend for the parks, the staff member refused to report to work. The contract and past precedents were clear that vacation and comp time could not be used during these designated busy times. The employee claimed that she had purposely earned the comp time to spend time with her family. Annie knew the staffer and her two young kids. She also knew that the woman was in the midst of a trial separation with her husband of eight years.

In one of her first decisions as director, Annie reduced the penalty from a day without pay to a verbal warning. With the stroke of a pen, Annie changed long-standing past practices and undermined the maintenance department’s chain of command. She also rendered the “all hands on deck” approach during busy times meaningless, signaling to the union that they could regularly challenge management decisions. “I want to be your friend” was quickly translated into low or no accountability.

Despite mild protests from her maintenance leadership team, Annie defended the young woman, stating that she saw “both sides of the question.” Following a series of similar decisions, it became clear to the senior leadership team and others in the organization that compassion and a good sob story would override accountability—even the contract. Annie’s wide-open door also contributed to a series of end-arounds that further undermined all leadership levels in the organization. Her daily phone calls and weekly luncheons with the union president only added to the leadership and supervisory team’s helplessness.

Annie couldn’t say no. And everyone knew it.

The inevitable impact of all of this was a leadership team that stopped leading and supervising. Indeed, supervisors who tried to manage and hold people accountable were quickly admonished to back off by their bosses or even a phone call from the director herself. Facts didn’t matter. Contracts, past practices, and rules became secondary to the relationships that staff had with Annie. Compassion and caring were the mantras of the new director. Annie’s personnel decisions were 180 degrees from the previous director’s draconian approaches to people. Supervisors who attempted to enforce the rules and hold people accountable were quickly labeled as mean-spirited assholes who didn’t care about people. In a couple of cases, Annie ordered supervisors, who had a pattern of writing up offenses, into her office and admonished them for causing problems with their persistent attempts to hold people accountable for “little infractions.”

Impacts and Consequences: What Makes You Great Can Also Bite You in the Rear End

Predictably, supervisors stopped supervising. Problem children ran wild. And the average, steady and consistently reliable workers remained silent. Productivity in all four parks, as well as the maintenance department, fell to an all-time low. The parks weren’t as clean as in the past. Several bathrooms became inoperable, and other problems began to emerge at an increasingly alarming rate.

facilitator sidebar

Leadership is learned. It is not an inborn trait. However, the prospective leader has to be willing to learn. Over the years, I have worked with successful leaders across the continuum—from nice to stern. It isn’t where a leader starts, it is whether they can learn and adapt their approaches to deal with changing circumstances, situations, and people. What makes you great will bite you in the ass if you can’t learn and adapt. The “hard nose” leader needs to apply compassion and caring under certain circumstances and conditions. The “nice guy” leader needs to call the foul and hold people accountable. These are learned capabilities. If a leader is not honest with him/herself, and ultimately, his/her team, they will not create the culture that allows for learning and adapting.

It took less than a year for the public’s complaints to reach a new high. Several cases were directed at members of the park system’s board of commissioners. Board members were quick to redirect the concerns to Annie. A local television station ran a short on-air segment entitled: “What’s Happening to Our Parks?” Video of trash blowing in the wind at the beach and maintenance crews sleeping in their trucks cast a very negative light on Annie’s leadership. The wheels were coming off the bus, and Annie was in the driver’s seat. Her leadership led to a brewing crisis, and she finally called for a meeting of her senior leadership team.

You could cut the tension with a knife. Annie, who was alien to interpersonal conflict, started the discussion with a big “we.” “What are ‘we’ doing wrong?” she asked. After much hemming and hawing, it was John, the Eastern park superintendent and on the drop program for retirement, who finally spoke the truth. “It’s not ‘we’ Annie—it’s you.” He pointed out how her history of “humane” decisions had undermined the entire leadership team. His litany of examples was compelling and unavoidable. John went on to say that if something significant wasn’t done soon, the parks would become unmanageable. The rest of the senior team—with their heads bobbing up and down—showed their agreement with John’s observations. Annie was stunned but not surprised.

The meeting ended with no decision—no plan of action. Annie’s head was spinning.

The Call and the Following Workshop

After her truthful senior staff meeting—and about a week of reflection—Annie decided to give me a call. We had met years before when she attended the Michigan Public Service Institute (MPSI). I remember her as a nice person with a great personality. After some opening pleasantries, she recounted the senior staff discussion and her shock and disappointment at hearing what John and the team had shared. I asked, “Is all of this true?” Her response indicated a reluctance to grapple with the truth. Yet, she also knew that her team was outlining facts that could not be denied. It was clear that the team meeting forced her to grapple with who she was as a person and a leader.

Our telephone conversation went on for over an hour. It came down to how much Annie wanted to lead. And how willing she was to make adaptations that were contrary to her past behaviors. It was also clear that her current behavior and actions would only lead to more significant problems for her and the organization. Choices would have to be made. As part of that process, she asked if I would spend time with both her and her senior leadership team. I agreed with the proviso that she and I would have a frank discussion afterward.

The workshop with the senior leadership team proved to be a productive moment of painful truth for Annie. Nobody was mean or hurtful. The facts and realities were painful enough. After discussing and analyzing a few examples of mistakes and errors from the past, the team discussed mutual expectations and a way for carving a healthy path forward. Annie was ready to learn and adapt to a new leadership reality. The most significant parts of that new reality included (1) backing her leadership team, (2) learning to say no, and (3) creating a management structure that allowed her to work to her strengths and mitigate her weaknesses.

Also, Annie led the way in establishing weekly senior leadership meetings, and the agendas would be set by members of the team and the director. To establish consistency across the four parks and address each park’s issues, senior team members would meet for an hour before meeting with Annie. Furthermore, end-arounds were p...

Table of contents

• title
• copyright
• contents
• IntroductionAndOverview
• Section1.DealingWithProblemEmployees
• Story1.IllSmileInYourFace
• Story2.ThePCPuppeteer
• story3.WhyIsEverybodyAlwaysPickingOnMe
• story4.EveryoneNeedsToKnow
• story5.WhatHillAreYouWillingToDieOn
• section2.ExcellentAndPoorLeaders
• story6.TheTeamLiturgy
• story7.KeepingTheWheelsOnTheBus
• story8.DoYouLikeMe
• story9,OnceInAwhileTheGoodGuysWin
• story10.TheExcellentLeader
• Section3.DysfunctionalElectedAndAppointed
• story11.FaithAndTrustAndPixieDust
• story12.ThePlateGlass
• story13.LackOfCourageAndBacking
• story14.WeHearNothingWeSeeNothing
• FinalThoughts
• Acknowledgments
• LewisGBender.PhD
• MaryRBender