During the campaign, candidates spend months looking at their agency through the eyes of the community: They hear what is working, what isn’t, what residents want changed and what they believe the agency should be doing differently. They develop priorities, make commitments and, if elected, arrive ready to get to work.
Once elected, their role changes almost overnight, but their perspective may not. They enter office with the same priorities, commitments and community perspective they developed during the campaign. What they do not yet have is the view from inside the organization – the people, budgets, existing Council direction, legal requirements, contracts, competing priorities and sometimes years of history behind the issues they encountered on the campaign trail.
There is a lot a newly elected official needs to learn as they move from campaigning to governing, and it can be tempting to try to cover it all at once. In my experience, a more effective approach begins by beginning with an understanding of what the new member is trying to accomplish, then using those priorities to explain how the organization works, how decisions get made and how they can become part of the governing body.
Effective onboarding helps a newly elected official add organizational understanding without losing the community perspective that brought them to office in the first place. Over time, they begin to understand not only how the agency and their elected colleagues works, but how they can work within the governing structure to move their priorities forward.
Helping a newly elected official make that transition—from campaigning on the outside to governing from within—is what onboarding should be about. And it takes more than a single orientation meeting or a packet of materials.
Orientation is an event. Onboarding is a process.
What Should Onboarding include
So, what should onboarding actually include? I tend to think of the content in three buckets.
- What the new member needs to know now: their role and authority, the agency-manager relationship, and the basics of ethics and the Brown Act.
- What they need to learn during the first 60 days: the budget, departments, strategic priorities and decisions their previous colleagues have already made.
- What they need as reference material: policies, procedures and other resources they can turn to when a question comes up. Those materials should be available, but you should not simply hand the new member a book of rules and say, “Read this.” They most likely will not even open it.
Start with the transition from Campaigning to Governing
The most important question to address in the first meeting is: What does it mean to be an elected member? Newly elected officials come in with promises they made during the campaign, and now they want to know how they are going to get those things done. That is the right place to begin.
City managers or agency leaders can start explaining the organization by saying, “Here is how you get things accomplished in this organization. You have your list of things you said you were going to do. Let’s talk about how we might make those things happen.”
That creates a very different conversation. The new member begins to see themselves as part of the organization, and it starts building relationships. That is how the trust piece begins to evolve.
Once they are interested in how their own priorities can move forward, you can put the other pieces into that framework, including the budget, the authority of the Council and staff, existing policies and commitments the Council has already made. Establishing that framework is key to getting off to a good start.
Use their priorities to explain how the organization works
Newly-elected officials bring valuable experience and unique perspectives with them to their elected roles. They may have been a local or regional businessperson, astay-at-home-parent who’s navigated all the community’s bureaucracy, , a public-sector employee or something entirely different. What most have not done before is serve as one member of a governing body.
Part of onboarding is helping them understand how that role differs from the roles they have held before – particularly the distinction between setting policy and managing the day-to-day work of the organization. Elected members establish policy and make sure the necessary resources and financial structures are in place; The agency’s manager and staff are responsible for carrying out that direction.
Suppose a newly-elected Council member wants to fix potholes. A city manager might say, “Let’s talk about where we are with that. I know it is a problem and something you ran on, but let us look at what currently exists within the city structure, what has been committed, how much money is available and what our capital improvement program looks like. Then let us identify the gaps and figure out how to make it better or faster.”
The member still sees a path toward the goal, but also begins to understand the structure already in place.
Sometimes a new member wants to do something completely different from what the agency spent years developing through public meetings. Part of onboarding is helping them understand where the existing direction came from without simply saying “no”.
The worst possible response is, “That is never going to work. We cannot do that.” Instead, identify what they are really trying to accomplish and say, “Let us talk about how we might get there.”
Once elected, that individual becomes one member of a governing body that establishes policy and provides direction collectively. Learning how to turn an individual priority into a governing-body priority is one of the most important skills a newly-elected member can develop.
Help the new member join the governing body
Newly-elected officials also have to understand that they are now part of a team. Helping the individual become part of the governing body is a key responsibility of the manager, particularly when a campaign has created conflict or strained relationships among candidates, existing members or community groups.
If you do not start on the right track, those relationships can be difficult to repair because conflict is often emotionally driven. Part of the manager’s role is bringing the conversation back to what the agency as a whole is trying to accomplish and what they are there to do.
The new member also needs to understand that their colleagues have priorities of their own. Getting to know those colleagues and understanding what matters to them is important because a new member will need to build relationships—and often a coalition – to move an idea forward. That does not always happen overnight, particularly if the campaign was difficult or divisive.
New members also need to understand the rules of engagement. When you are in public representing the agency and your city, professionalism matters. That expectation should be reflected in the Agency’s code of ethics or adopted norms, and the manager can help facilitate that understanding. How elected officials conduct themselves at the dais begins with expectations introduced early in the process including how they treat staff and the manager.
Part of onboarding is helping them understand how that role differs from the roles they have held before – particularly the distinction between setting policy and managing the day-to-day work of the organization. Elected members establish policy and make sure the necessary resources and financial structures are in place; The agency’s manager and staff are responsible for carrying out that direction.
Suppose a newly-elected Council member wants to fix potholes. A city manager might say, “Let’s talk about where we are with that. I know it is a problem and something you ran on, but let us look at what currently exists within the city structure, what has been committed, how much money is available and what our capital improvement program looks like. Then let us identify the gaps and figure out how to make it better or faster.”
The member still sees a path toward the goal, but also begins to understand the structure already in place.
Sometimes a new member wants to do something completely different from what the agency spent years developing through public meetings. Part of onboarding is helping them understand where the existing direction came from without simply saying “no”.
The worst possible response is, “That is never going to work. We cannot do that.” Instead, identify what they are really trying to accomplish and say, “Let us talk about how we might get there.”
Once elected, that individual becomes one member of a governing body that establishes policy and provides direction collectively. Learning how to turn an individual priority into a governing-body priority is one of the most important skills a newly-elected member can develop.
Build the Relationship Between the Manager and the New Member
Perhaps one of the most important outcomes of onboarding is the opportunity to begin building the relationship between the manager and the new member.
That relationship works both ways: The new member is learning how the organization operates and how the manager can help them navigate it. At the same time, the manager is learning what motivates the new member, what they heard from the community, how they prefer to receive information and what they hope to accomplish.
Those conversations should continue well beyond the first orientation meeting. Regular check-ins outside of 1×1 meetings should occur at 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. The manager can check for learning and be helpful by asking what is making sense, what remains confusing and what they have encountered that they did not expect.
The goal is not for a new member to know everything about the agency in 90 days: They won’t, and they don’t need to. The goal is to help them make the journey from the outside in – to understand their role, build productive relationships, learn how the organization works and know how to move an idea through the governing process.
Just as importantly, they should do that without losing the perspective, priorities and connection to the community that brought them to public service in the first place.
That is the real transition from campaigning to governing.
Shirley Concolino has over 35 years of experience working with elected officials and city managers. Shirley retired as City Clerk of the City of Sacramento and has also held positions supporting elected officials and city managers/county administrative officers in the City of Davis and the County of Solano. Shirley is certified as an MMC, a distinguished city clerk Master Municipal Certification, and is past president of the City Clerk Association of California (CCAC). In 2010, she was selected by CCAC as California City Clerk of the Year. Shirley is also active in the International Institute of Municipal Clerks (IIMC), having taught national seminars and serving as a coach to City Clerks all over California.