AuthentiCity FM | Local Government Leadership

We came home from the ICMA Annual Conference in Long Beach with full suitcases and a lot to unpack.What does it take to sustain a career in local government without losing the judgment, perspective, and relationships that make us effective? Our session on sustainable leadership sparked some candid reflections about the five margins we all need to protect, the ones we tend to sacrifice first, and the people in our lives who care enough to tell us what we need to hear.The conference offered plenty to think about. Simon Sinek demonstrated the power of receiving difficult questions with grace, while historian Jon Meacham brought a welcome dose of historical perspective to an era that can feel uniquely uncertain. Both reminded us that leadership requires the ability to look beyond the immediate moment.And then there were the hallways, where so much of the magic of ICMA happens. Old friends, new connections, unexpected conversations, and the occasional reminder that local government is a remarkably small world. We celebrate the leadership of three ICMA presidents and reflect on the humbling experience of meeting people who actually listen to our podcast. Apparently, we're not just talking to each other.There is no shortage of issues demanding attention in our profession. Public finance, artificial intelligence, policing, land use, and the changing economics of development are all shaping the conversations local government leaders need to be having. We have plenty of ideas for where AuthentiCity FM goes next.Perhaps the most powerful perspective of the week came from city leaders in Ukraine, who spoke about the extraordinary responsibility of maintaining essential public services through another winter of war. Keeping water flowing, children learning, and homes warm is familiar work to anyone in local government. Doing it under the constant threat of war offers a sobering reminder of why that work matters.This episode arrives on Election Day. We hope you vote.Chapters00:00 Unpacking Long Beach05:08 Our session in Ballroom A08:48 The five margins12:42 Which margin disappears first17:25 Thanks to the people who name our gaps18:38 Simon Sinek and the art of the hard question22:26 Jon Meacham and the rearview mirror25:30 Hope for the American experiment26:42 Sit up front, with one caveat33:13 Honoring three ICMA presidents41:49 A milestone ahead48:30 The most human moment of the week57:47 Closing and a reminder to voteMusic licensed through Soundstripe.Code: THLCXGAVWDTPDHLN

Bayside, Wisconsin is a village of about 4,400 people on the shore of Lake Michigan. Andy Pederson has managed it for more than twenty years, and later this month he becomes president of ICMA. We sat down with him before the annual conference in Long Beach to talk about what a small place teaches about leading at a much larger scale.Much of the conversation lives where jurisdictional lines start to blur. Andy walks through the partnerships Bayside shares with its North Shore neighbors, from a consolidated dispatch center to a shared fire department and an IT team that now serves several communities. Each one had to improve the service, hold or lower the cost, and prove it could last. Trust sits underneath all of it, built slowly and kept with care.We also talk about staying. Long tenure is rare in this profession, and Andy describes what fit feels like when the community, the staff, and the board keep asking more of you. He also shares why he keeps raising his hand to serve, and how board service changed the way he sees his own elected officials.For anyone heading to a first national conference, there is a generous stretch of practical advice. Andy's counsel to his own assistant manager is to keep it small, say hi, and take the one open seat at the lunch table. We add a few favorite openers of our own.Andy offers an early look at the theme he will carry into his year as president, built around the word we. Then he turns the questions on us, asking what each of us believes now that we would have argued with a decade ago. The answers move through the weight of the chair, the cost of saying yes to everything, and the boundaries that protect public servants.There is plenty of Midwestern fun along the way, including Brewers legends, a Friday fish fry confession, and a long-promised trip to a cheese castle.00:00 Welcome and a stop in Bayside02:16 From law school to the village hall05:24 Why a small community11:31 Twenty-two years in one place13:37 Why give back to the profession17:30 Hallway conversations and an open invitation19:39 Icebreakers for first-timers28:15 What the ICMA president does31:19 Reconnecting the membership33:58 Showing up in every state38:36 Wisconsin and Illinois, together47:04 Up north, fish fry, and the cheese castle53:06 Andy asks the hosts1:00:54 Making local government cool1:03:27 Looking two and three years ahead1:08:35 Sit up front1:10:16 Andy's final wordMusic licensed through Soundstripe.Code: JCDGU5WQKUPPX7XY

Ron Holifield has spent more than forty years in local government. He started in the city manager's office, then moved into the chair and went on to build the companies and networks that serve the profession, including SGR and Civic Marketplace. He no longer does city management, but he still calls himself a city manager. In this conversation, we talk about what that identity asks of people, and why the profession needs to remember where it came from.Ron traces his path from an internship in Lubbock to small-town Texas to Garland, where he wore a bulletproof vest for a year and was eventually fired. That experience taught him how isolating a forced exit can be, and how rarely the profession shows up for its own in those moments. It also gave him the belief he has carried ever since. It's not about me, it's not about now.From there the conversation widens. We talk about servant leadership as a working philosophy, the leadership pipeline the profession hollowed out after 2008, and why the best way to keep emerging leaders may be to prepare them to leave. Ron makes the case that the defining skill of a manager is the ability to engage, inspire, and lead people. We also explore why innovation needs room to fail, how councils elected by district can learn to serve as one body, and what it would take to equip elected officials for greatness.At the center of it all is a question the profession has been slow to answer. Who are today's Cookinghams? City management began as a reform movement, built by people who believed government could be truer, cleaner, and finer. Ron believes we have stopped telling those stories. He argues that the sewer plant operator keeping a city alive, and the council that protected public harbor access centuries ago, deserve the same telling.This is a conversation about camaraderie, courage, and the long view of public service.00:00 Welcome Ron Holifield01:09 From Lubbock to Sundown03:03 Leaving the Chair, Keeping the Lens09:01 Servant Leadership Out Loud17:20 The Road to SGR20:40 The Pipeline We Lost32:30 Who Are Today's Cookinghams?41:07 Connecting Beyond Communicating47:31 Innovation and the Freedom to Fail53:46 Equipping Elected Officials for Greatness1:03:08 Ron Turns the Questions Around1:17:53 The Last Word Music licensed through Soundstripe.Code: RFMCVJPBXZTHGTPN

We are back. The return came wrapped in a run of eighties movie references, because of course it did, and underneath the fun was something real. After a few weeks of stepping away to enjoy the end of summer, we sat back down to do the thing leaders rarely allow themselves to do, which is stop long enough to notice what the pause was teaching us. This episode is part homecoming and part preview, a conversation about rituals, return, and the quiet renewal that comes from slowing down.We start with what the last five weeks actually held. A shadow from the past that resurfaced without warning. A week among 1,500 strangers at a conference far outside local government, where being a complete beginner turned out to be its own kind of gift. Two and a half days of full immersion with the newest members of the ICMA board, and the surprising speed with which shared purpose turns strangers into friends. Different experiences, one throughline about belonging and the value of seeing familiar work through unfamiliar eyes.From there we circle back to the ideas that stayed with us from our end of summer episodes. History rhymes. What feels like unprecedented instability has arrived before in different clothes, and the profession has always found its footing. Judgment, we keep returning to, is a form of civic infrastructure worth protecting.Then we turn toward what is coming. The ICMA conference in Long Beach and how to make a room of thousands feel human again. The questions we cannot keep deferring about how communities will pay for what they have promised. And a line one of us wrote while working through it all, that nostalgia is not a business plan.This is a return episode and a road map for the season ahead, made for anyone who has felt the pull to slow down and wondered what waits on the other side of the pause.CHAPTERS00:00  Opening03:13  Why Leaders Rarely Let Themselves Stop12:05  The Episode That Stuck15:52  Sometimes We're Our Own Worst Enemy21:35  From Telling Stories to Building a Living Lab24:41  Why Conferences Still Feel Like School33:00  Navigating a 6,500-Person Conference36:58  Mike's Masterclass in Making Friends37:40  Change Agents and the Meaty-Topic Challenge39:40  The Future of How We Pay for Everything40:56  Reform, Reckoning, and Doing Less43:37  We Built It Long Ago and Never Rebuilt It46:03  Nostalgia Is Not a Business Plan48:12  Not a Hobby AnymoreHOSTSPhil Kiraly, Village Manager, Glencoe, IllinoisLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkiraly/Mike Sable, City Manager, Maplewood, MinnesotaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-sable-b7994a14/Corri Spiegel, President & CEO, Arete StrategicWebsite: www.aretestrategic.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corrispiegel/Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: UQ1GVTQBOR9IE5UBFollow AuthentiCity FM for more conversations with the people doing the work of local government: https://www.linkedin.com/company/authenticityfm

Coherence was the note the summer kept building toward, the thread that holds when everything else is pulling apart. This is the conversation about what that thread is actually for.We close the season with Bob O'Neill, former executive director of ICMA and one of the most respected thinkers this profession has produced, for an hour that keeps returning to a single idea, that the power that matters most in local government is the power to convene.Bob makes the case that local government is the last fully functioning level of government we have, which means the work of rebuilding civic life is going to bubble up from communities rather than arrive from anywhere else. That puts the manager in an unfamiliar seat. Writing a check used to solve most problems, and it rarely does anymore. What the moment asks for instead is someone who can bring a room together, hold a hard conversation inside a set of shared values, and keep it grounded when the forces nobody controls start to pull.Along the way we get into the traits that carry a leader through disruptive change, from anchoring an organization around mission and values to becoming what Bob calls the chief meaning officer, the person who keeps reminding everyone why the work matters at all. We talk about working across the lines on the map, the boundaries drawn long ago for taxation that no longer match how communities actually live. We talk about reverse mentorship and the handoff already underway, because the next generation is watching how we carry the work far more closely than they are reading any job description.There is a night at the White House and a conga line, because Bob tells a story as well as anyone in the business. And underneath all of it runs a steady, hard-won optimism, the belief that this profession has met moments like this before and found its way back toward the middle.Chapters00:00 Closing the summer and what coherence is for01:40 Welcoming Bob O'Neill07:35 The last fully functioning level of government09:19 When facts get treated as partisan18:03 We have been through disruptive change before20:38 The chief meaning officer27:22 The social network that keeps you steady35:50 The biggest power is the power to convene41:15 The four traits that matter most45:30 Putting meaning back into the work47:59 Three reasons for optimism53:10 Reverse mentorship and blending the generations56:24 A night at the White House1:03:14 ICMA, and why the network is the whole point1:10:18 What better looks like for the profession1:21:31 Welcoming people in and generational work1:29:44 Closing thoughtsGUESTBob O’NeillLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-o-neill-5206a010/HOSTSPhil Kiraly, Village Manager, Glencoe, IllinoisLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkiraly/Mike Sable, City Manager, Maplewood, MinnesotaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-sable-b7994a14/Corri Spiegel, President & CEO, Arete StrategicWebsite: www.aretestrategic.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corrispiegel/Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: S9H34SYCGYLJ18VLFollow AuthentiCity FM for more conversations with the people doing the work of local government: https://www.linkedin.com/company/authenticityfm