Have you participated in a conference, seminar, executive program, online training, read professional readings, or completed other activities that you think would be valuable to other ICMA Credentialed Managers? Please share by submitting the activity HERE and we will add it to this list of opportunities and resources.

Remote Learning Opportunities

Opportunities by ICMA Practice Area

1. Personal and Professional Integrity

  • Ethics Workshops or Briefings for State Associations. ICMA offers the executive board of state associations a virtual briefing on the state association’s role in ICMA’s ethics review process or an in-person briefing in conjunction with a state conference
  • Playing With Fire is a fictional account of a city manager who is struggling to do the best thing for his city and keep his job and family.

2. Community Engagement

  • Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community explain why Americans want to live in a more civil, caring, and trustworthy community.
  • For the Love of Cities provides examples of what communities are doing to ensure they are growing and thriving. The residents themselves play one of the biggest roles for retaining talent and supporting growth. This book describes specific examples of things residents have done to improve the atmosphere of their city to the point that they develop a heartfelt emotion for their town/city. Some believe their city is the best place to live in. This feeling is based on culture, safety, services, arts, and more intangible things, like a neighborly atmosphere. 
  • Who's Your City by Richard Florida defines the characteristics of cities and what attracts people to cities. It explains as to what residents expect from the city, community, and region to maintain its attractiveness.
  • Democracy at the Doorstep: True Stories from the Green Berets of Public AdministratorsFormer city manager Mike Conduff shared anecdotal stories from his decades-long career in local government management and tied each story to a practical skill as well as tied the stories as a whole to ICMA’s code of ethics. 

3. Equity & Inclusion

4. Staff Effectiveness

5. Personal Resiliency and Development

  • Berkeley Executive Leadership Program 5-day flagship development program that helps executives to build and activate their strategic leadership plan through a series of lectures, case studies and practical exercises from top Haas faculty.
  • ICMA Gettysburg Leadership Institute is the opportunity of a lifetime and so pertinent to this profession.
  • two-week SEI (Senior Executive Institute) is also available from the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia in July.
  • Jack: Straight from the Gut is the story of Jack Welch’s career and how he helped to make General Electric one of the most successful companies of the 20th century.
  • Habits: How They Form and How to Break Them helps us understand how we develop habits in our everyday personal and business lives. It forced me (and others in our management team whom I challenged) to challenge the reasons why I have performed some repetitive tasks and daily business habits--to challenge my assumptions about the benefits I derive from these habits. 
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a comprehensive program based on developing an awareness of how perceptions and assumptions hinder success--in business as well as personal relationships.
  • Switch - Illustrates change in the context of the rational mind and the emotional mind and successful patterns for driving change.
  • 175 Ways to Get More Done in Less Time is a quick read. Full of great suggestions for saving time by modifying your behavior.
  • Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement is a phenomenal look into an officer’s daily routine and how that routine affects his or her personal life.

6. Strategic Leadership

7. Strategic Planning

8. Policy Facilitation and Implementation

9. Community and Resident Service

10. Service Delivery

11. Technological Literacy

12. Financial Management and Budgeting

13. Human Resources Management and Workforce Engagement 

  • Get Rid of the Performance Review by Samuel A. Culbert, Business Plus Books, NY, 2010. This book provides a detailed criticism of the traditional performance review process and shows how destructive it is of organizational productivity and morale. It proposes an alternative system of "performance previews" which are much less threatening and more supportive.

14. Communication and Information Sharing