All your hard work and planning paid off. The election is over, necessary arrangements are in place, and you are ready to take your seat at the local council table. During the campaign, you heard about many issues in your community. You debated with your opponents, traded ideas, and put your best foot forward. With a council term of three or four years ahead, you are going to jump in and make some changes, as you are full of enthusiasm. You are ready to give 110% of your time to make a difference.

A scant month later, you may well be asking what you have done. Where did all the rules and regulations, bylaws and procedures come from? How come you did not know about these impediments to your plans before you were elected? And who arethese former opponents, now your colleagues, and how can they think so differently than you do? Your 110% intentions are now going in another direction, and you feel powerless to redirect. It feels like a situation out of control and the term just started. What have you done?

If your council is like most in Canada, you are a part time councillor meeting a few times each week to conduct municipal business. Aside from all the plans you have to make your community better, ongoing agendas take the forefront. Quickly you find zoning changes before you, followed by subdivision and conditional use approvals; you often feel overloaded with terminology and timelines. Environmental issues crop up, there are recreation projects and transit changes to deal with, and the public wants more funding for special occasions. Legal issues and union agreements take their turn on the agenda. There is so much to learn and so little time to learn it.

Some of the learning is easier than other parts, particularly if you can abide by the procedures and structure of public government. As you come to terms with how municipalities work (generally accepted to take the first year of your term), there is another part of earning your honorarium that needs to be addressed.

Do any of the flowing scenarios strike a chord?

• Every time a good idea comes up, one of your colleagues immediately brings up insurance and liability issues, putting a damper on the discussions.
• Council seems to entrap itself in long term planning, and cannot seem to seize the moment and throw support behind an exciting new opportunity that just appeared.
• Council talks for far too long about the process when a quick decision would let council move forward on a project and move on to the next problem to solve.
• There never seems to be enough time to go over all the details, read all the background reports and get every question answered.
• Colleagues show up for late for events and meetings, if they appear at all.
• All the discussion is about bottom line without enough thought given to the important aspect, which is how people feel about the concept.
• You feel as if you are the only one that sees the situation clearly, and you cannot figure out why others do not see the situation the same way.

Considering that it takes a majority on council to take action, a confrontational situation may quickly arise if the vote is always narrow and one side seems pitted against the other side. An acrimonious term can obstruct service to the community due to personality differences. Better then, to learn more about your fellow councillors and understand the background behind their thinking than to be stuck in a difficult situation with councillors always at odds with each other. Senior management, working closely with council, can benefit greatly from being part of the group understanding.

One way to gain this understanding is to work with each other (the team) for the term, and informally pick up personality traits as various situations arise. This is a slow and cumbersome process, and often frustrating for all. Enter the blame game, due to lack of knowledge about your new coworkers.

Another more immediate and enlightening way to gain understanding is through personality assessments. An ideal time would be during councillor orientation. Some councillors and managers have pre-exposure to personality testing depending on prior occupations; for others it is a new and enlightening experience. Along with individual assessments, a team report is a useful tool when used as a reference guide on a regular basis.

Suppose you understand your colleagues fall into four categories.

• Problem-solvers, who are skeptical, independent, and goal oriented. Thinking theoretically and strategically, they exhibit calmness, are always looking for knowledge, and will be on time.
• Organization-joiners, who uphold authority and dependability. They will accomplish tasks before they are due. Quoting facts and excelling in logistics, they show caution and concern.
• Keepers of the whole, who show imagination and talk of romance. They show empathy, enthusiasm and trust in others. Always looking at the future, their diplomatic skills and kind-heartedness shine though.
• In-the-moment personalities, who are optimistic and act on impulse. While adaptable, they are also generous and tactical minded.

Think of the four examples above, and then of your colleagues. Who among them is likely to stay until the bitter end in the strategic planning sessions, and will never seem to utter an angry word? Who will pore over financial statements looking for tiny errors, and want to see every report every published on a project? Who will treat a deadline as a starting point, and seem to hop from project to project without following through? Which councillor will wander off topic and always be looking out for those less fortunate?

It is obvious that individual councillors demonstrate different perspectives. Temperaments are built-in; much like a herding dog’s instinct to round up sheep. No amount of asking a person to change his or her ways is going to make someone less logistical, less tactical, less strategic, or less diplomatic. Or exhibit more empathy, dependability, grace, or ingeniousness. So what is the point then, of understanding each other?

Understanding each other is about the give and take of personalities, particularly in stressful situations municipalities face in times of pressure to do more with less. As the old saying goes, “You can’t pick your relatives.” You can’t pick your colleagues on council either. However, with a bit of time and patience, you can learn to understand one another and learn to appreciate where the strengths of each will carry the load for the team. With foresight this understanding will happen at the beginning of your council’s term, and not begrudgingly through trial and error by the end of the term. With a bit of effort, you will soon understand who is on your team and use this knowledge to council’s advantage for the betterment of the overall community.