Christa Liebenberg Business Coach

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗸𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁. The most dangerous thing happening to municipal managers in South Africa right now is not political interference. It is not budget cuts. It is not even the audit. It is this. The most capable, experienced, and committed municipal managers are quietly falling apart and nobody in the system is designed to catch them.

There is mentorship for junior staff. There is training for middle management. There are conferences and frameworks and competency assessments for everyone.

For the municipal manager, the accounting officer, the person whose name is on everything, the person who is personally liable when anything goes wrong anywhere in the organisation, there is effectively nothing. There is no confidential space. There is no peer who is safe to talk to. There is no one who understands the specific and extraordinary pressure of this role without an agenda of their own.

And what happens? The capable ones start making decisions from fear instead of clarity. They start isolating themselves. They start losing the passion that brought them into public service in the first place. They start surviving instead of leading.

Eventually the system loses them, either to suspension, to resignation, or to tiredness so deep it takes years to recover from.

The secret is that the struggle is unnecessary. Calm is not a personality trait. It is a skill. Support is not a luxury. It is a leadership tool.

The municipal managers who access that support early, who create a confidential space to think clearly, decide boldly, and lead without losing themselves, outperform, outlast, and outserve everyone around them.

I work with municipal managers to create exactly that space. Not a coaching programme. Not a course. A confidential thinking partnership with someone who has lived this world from the inside and knows exactly what it demands.

DM me if you are ready to stop being the best kept secret in your own municipality.

Things municipal managers say that sound normal to them and absolutely terrifying to everyone else. It's fine.

I only got three emails from the Mayor before 7am.

The Auditor-General finding is not that bad. We've had worse.

At least I wasn't suspended this quarter.

I'll sleep in December. The council meeting only went until midnight. That's practically early.

My stress level? I'd say a comfortable seven out of ten. Eight on Mondays.

The Union called an urgent meeting. So. Normal Tuesday then.

I forgot to eat again but I did have four coffees and a Marie biscuit; so technically I had a balanced diet.

The Councillor just wants a quick five minutes. (There is no such thing as a quick five minutes.)

I'll just quickly check my emails. (Six hours later.)

And my personal favourite. I'm fine. Municipal managers are the only people on earth who can say all of the above in one week and still show up on Monday morning ready to go again. You are remarkable. Genuinely. But remarkable people also need support.

DM me if you are ready to trade the Marie biscuit breakfast for something that actually sustains you.

𝗢𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝟱𝟯% 𝗢𝗳 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁. 𝗜𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀? An excellent heading of the - Future Cities Africa Newsletter of May 2026.

So What Are We Doing About The Other 47%? Only 53% of senior municipal managers are competent. That is the headline. And it raises more questions than it answers. Who was this question intended for? The public? The politicians? The managers themselves?

Who actually has the power to do something about it? And more importantly, what does competent even mean in a role this complex? Does competent include navigating political landmines daily? Does it include leading a team through chaos while managing an audit, a union dispute, and a mayoral enquiry simultaneously? Does it include doing all of this without a single peer to call, without a confidential space to think, and without any meaningful support structure?

If only 53% are deemed competent, what investment is being made in the other 47%? Or are we simply going to keep measuring the problem without resourcing the solution?

Professionalisation in local government is long overdue. A certificate without support is not professionalisation. It is administration.

Appreciation goes out to the many academics, government senior managers, and service providers who are working on this challenge.

What do you think needs to change? Drop your answer in the comments.

DM me if you work in local government and want to talk about what real support looks like.

𝗜 𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻.

These are the words of a Municipal Manager I worked with for two years. They came in qualified. Experienced. Ready. And completely disconnected from a team that did not know them yet.

What they discovered changed everything. Trust is not a feeling. It is a behaviour. Respect shows up in the smallest actions including when you contact someone. In their own words. 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘥. 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘶𝘱 𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦.

This was never just about the team. It was about a leader learning to see herself clearly. Get help earlier rather than later.

DM me if you are stepping into a new role and want the right support from day one. Follow. Every minute with a new team counts.

The competency nobody wants to put on the job spec.

I am going to say something that might ruffle some feathers. There are far more competent municipal managers out there than anyone is willing to admit. The problem is not competence. The problem is politics.

You can ace every technical requirement, every governance framework, every compliance standard and still lose everything because of one relationship that went wrong in a Council chamber.

Political navigation is the one municipal manager competency that nobody formally assesses, nobody properly develops, and nobody honestly talks about. Yet it determines more careers, more suspensions, and more service delivery outcomes than any other single skill.

How do you interview for it? How do you train for it? How do you measure it? You cannot. But you can feel it when it is missing. And so can the municipality.

The most capable leaders I have worked with were not undone by incompetence. They were undone by politics. Is it time we got honest about that?

DM me if you want to talk.

𝗔 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺. 𝗔 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲. I want to share a case study that I believe every municipal manager stepping into a new role needs to read.

This read is not because it is a success story, although it is, but because of how honest and how hard the journey was to get there.

The client was a Municipal Manager who arrived in a new organisation with a new team. Experienced. Qualified. Capable. And completely starting over.

The presenting challenge was not incompetence. It was connection. How do you take a team that does not know you, does not yet trust you, and has its own established ways of working and build something coherent enough to actually lead a municipality together?

The first turning point was the moment the manager realised that showing trust to a team member means focusing on what is expected and by when and then stepping back. Not doing their work. Not hovering. Not intervening before the person has had a chance to deliver. Trust is not a feeling. It is a behaviour.

The second turning point was the realisation that respect shows up in the smallest actions. Including when you contact a team member. Not just what you say, but when.

The third was the commitment to genuinely get close to each team member. The actions that followed were consistent and deliberate. Agreed ways of working. Shared priorities. Stepping back before stepping in. Finding personal connection alongside professional accountability.

Perhaps the most profound moment of this entire two year engagement came from the manager. In their own words. "I went through a process to slow down and realise that every word, email and interaction had to be used to show respect to team members. I had to slow down and think about how all my actions are being interpreted. I had to slow down in my personal life also to take small steps to attend to my health and be a family member who showed up at home." That sentence. That one honest sentence. Changed the entire frame of our work together. This was never just about the team. It was about a leader learning to see themselves clearly, their pace, their patterns, their impact and choosing to lead differently because of what they saw.

My reflection is simple. They were 200% committed throughout. Every minute counts when a manager starts with a new team. And this case study does not even touch on the additional complexity of building political relationships alongside everything else.

The key takeaway for every municipal manager reading this is: Get help earlier rather than later. Broken relationships are far more difficult to heal after the fact than to build and navigate correctly from the very beginning.

DM me if you are stepping into a new role, a new team, or a new chapter and you want the right support from the start.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿. I want to recommend a book that every municipal manager in South Africa should read slowly, deliberately, and more than once. The Reciprocal Relationship of Culture and Leadership by Millicent Lindiwe Ndaba, published in 2024.

What makes this book particularly remarkable is the person behind it. Millicent Lindiwe Ndaba is not only a deeply thoughtful author, she plays a leading role in Internal Audit and specifically serves as a Board Member of the Institute of Internal Auditors South Africa.

A woman operating at the highest levels of governance and accountability, writing with extraordinary depth about culture, leadership, and what it actually takes to lead across difference. This is an easy read. And that is precisely why every single word should be read and reflected on. Do not rush it. Every sentence earns its place.

Throughout the book I kept asking myself the same question. Why do we not make more time, at work, in our teams, in our personal friendships to genuinely learn about each other? Not as a diversity exercise. Not as a compliance requirement. But as a human being sitting across from another human being asking who are you really and what shaped you?

Ndaba explores cultural diversity with real depth and rigour touching on the dimensions of culture including power distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, long-term versus short-term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint. And she does not stop at theory. She analyses the real results of cultural misalignment, including the impact of prejudice and injustice and how trust, once eroded, continues to undermine Ubuntu as a living value in our workplaces and communities. That section stopped me completely.

The conclusion of the book is where Ndaba makes her most powerful argument for a strong and compelling motivation for an action plan to cultivate servant leadership as the foundation of Ubuntu, alongside agile and transformational leadership, and for these to become not aspirational statements but embedded leadership behaviours. Not what leaders say they are. What they actually do. Every day. In every interaction. Across every cultural difference. This book is a mirror. And municipal managers, who lead the most diverse, complex, and pressure-filled environments in South Africa need to sit in front of it. Buy it. Read it slowly. Then ask your leadership team to read it too.

DM me if you want to talk about what culturally intelligent leadership looks like in your municipality.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝘆𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗲. Municipalities support each other. They share best practice. They twin with lower capacity councils. They learn from each other. They lift each other up. That is the official story.

Here is the real one.

There is no meaningful incentive for a well-run municipality to share its innovative practices with a struggling one. There is no real twinning that visibly and sustainably builds capacity where it is most needed. There is no structured safe space where municipal managers across the country can honestly share what is working, what is breaking, and what is keeping them awake at 3am.

What actually exists is this.

A municipal manager sitting at the head of a table, experienced, capable, qualified, and completely alone in the complexity of their role. Pulled in seventeen directions by politicians, auditors, unions, residents, and staff. Carrying the weight of an entire community's wellbeing on their shoulders. With no peer to call. No confidential space to think things through. No system that meaningfully connects them to the collective wisdom of the profession they have dedicated their career to.

I know this because I spent 34 years inside this world. And I know it because every municipal manager I work with arrives carrying the same invisible burden.

The isolation is not a personal failing. It is a structural reality that nobody talks about loudly enough. And it has a direct and devastating impact on decision-making, on wellbeing, on service delivery, and on the communities that depend on these leaders to be at their best. The myth says you are supported. The reality says you are alone.

I work with municipal managers who are done carrying the burden alone. Who are ready for a confidential space to think clearly, decide boldly, and lead without losing themselves in the process. If you are ready to stop being the best kept secret in your own municipality, DM me. Let's talk.

𝗪𝗲 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴.

The Gallup 2026 data should make every African organisation ask some very hard questions. I am going to say something that might make some HR departments uncomfortable. Focusing on job performance alone is not leadership. It is administration.

Every single day 46% of employees experience significant stress and that figure increases year on year. 25% experienced anger yesterday. 25% experienced sadness yesterday. 28% feel lonely, not occasionally, but daily. In the African region daily loneliness sits 6 points higher than the global figure, while we keep talking about engagement scores.

The Gallup 2026 report is clear on something too many organisations still refuse to hear. Engagement alone cannot fix suffering. When manager engagement drops and it dropped again this past year by 3 points, suffering cascades down through every team, every department, every resident interaction, and every service delivery failure. Your people are not just employees. They are whole human beings who arrive at work already carrying the weight of their lives. Right now far too many of them are suffering or struggling in complete silence while their managers focus exclusively on KPIs and performance outputs.

The Gallup framework defines the daily experience of work simply and powerfully. Suffering is crisis with low outlook for now and the future. Struggling is worried about now or what comes next. Thriving is high for today and tomorrow.

Ask yourself honestly how many of your people are truly thriving?

Research is consistent. Three to four close authentic relationships at work are the key to employee wellness. Not team building days. Not wellness apps. Real relationships deliberately built and consistently maintained.

If you asked your team today whether they are suffering, struggling or thriving, do you actually know what they would say? What does your team need from you right now that goes beyond performance management? Who on your team do you genuinely know; their strengths, their pressures, their hopes? Are you a source of hope and stability for your people or are you running on empty yourself? What would change in your municipality if managers were measured not just on outputs but on the wellbeing of the people they lead?

You cannot be a source of light for others if your own flame is burning out. The question is no longer whether your people are performing. The question is whether they are thriving and whether you as their leader are making that possible.

Reference: Gallup 2026 State of the Global Workplace Report.

DM me if you want to explore what this looks like in your municipality.