Workbook
The City Manager's Leadership Workbook
Serving the Public When Every Constituent Has a Different Definition of 'Good'
The council gives direction. The community has needs. You carry both. Name your position.
For the city manager who sits between the council and the community and has never written down what holds when the pressure arrives.
The Name It First Experience
City management sits at the intersection of politics and administration — required to stay apolitical while navigating deeply political terrain. Your City Manager Charter is built across five chapters: public administration strengths inventoried, reactive patterns traced, role confusion with elected officials confronted, leadership philosophy drafted, signed. The document holds when the community is divided and the pressure is on. The output is not a management manual. It is Your City Manager Charter.
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Sample questions
- What do you believe public administration is actually for — and is the work you're doing aligned with that?
- What professional values hold when the political pressure escalates — and how do you protect them while staying in your lane?
- Who are you as a public servant when the community is divided and everyone wants you to take a side?
Research basis
ICMA Code of Ethics / Perry and Wise on Public Service Motivation / Svara on the politics-administration dichotomy / Maslach and Leiter on local government executive stress.
Choose your format.
Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.
Print Paperbackpersonalize
A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.
$22.99
eBook + journal
The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.
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Audiobook
We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.
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Hardcoverpersonalize
The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.
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Digital Fill + membership+membership
Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.
$12.99
Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership
Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.
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Everything packages
The Paperback Everything Package
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The Hardcover Everything Package
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The Premium Hardcover Everything Package
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Choose your pace.
The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.
Essential path
Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.
Full depth
Every question. Every scenario, every angle.
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