Day 6: Invest in Professional Development

So often we see our city council people and mayoral staff ill-equipped with the soft-skills necessary to interact with each other and the public in an effective way. 

Sexual Harassment Training, Diversity Training, Conflict Resolution Training, Project Management, and the list goes on. 

When was the last time you heard of any of your local government officials participating in such training? I don't mean a conference. I mean training. 

This should be part of any local government's Human Resources set of deliverables and the professional development plan of our appointed and elected positions. 

When I was consulting with the City of Wilmington, Delaware I worked to make Fair Housing training a mandatory requirement for key city staff and sub-grantees so that our local leaders were educated about this fundamental commitment and had the knowledge to help constituents.  

I want to see more of this happen. There are so many low-cost trainings available that can help us build the capacity of those tasked with making the tough decisions that impact our lives. We talk so much about building soft-skills training and workforce development for  citizens, but what about our local leaders? Shouldn't we start there?

What kind of training do you think would benefit your local government?