"Today the eyes of
all people are truly upon us – and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill – constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities."
President-elect
John F. Kennedy
January 9, 1961
Michelle Poché Flaherty
Founder and President
"Michelle has superb political instincts, and her experience at every level of government -- local, state, and federal -- is exceptional.
But where she really excels is in helping you unlock the solution to that one leadership challenge that keeps you up at night."
Michelle Poche Flaherty is a professionally trained coach to elected officials and chief executives from all levels of government. She is familiar with the unique challenges faced by both political and apolitical government leaders.
With 20 years of public service experience, Michelle has held senior executive positions in federal, state and local government.
She served at the U.S. Department of Transportation as acting Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Assistant to Secretary
Norman Y. Mineta.
In state government, Michelle received a gubernatorial appointment to the position of San Francisco Bay Area Regional Director for the California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency. She also served as an ex-officio member of the California Coastal Commission.
In local government, Michelle held the position of Assistant County Manager for Washoe County, Nevada, and served as Chief of Staff to Supervisor Joe Simitian in Santa Clara County, California. She continues to work for the City of Rockville, Maryland, as an internal consultant responsible for leadership development, change management and performance improvement.
Michelle’'s leadership workshops have been featured at national conferences for the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and the National League of Cities. She is a member of the International Coach Federation and the Organization Development Network, and serves on the Board of Examiners for the U.S. Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.
Norman Y. Mineta
Secretary, US Departments of Transportation and Commerce
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
Origin of the "City on a Hill" Name
Our name is inspired by John F. Kennedy's "City on a Hill" speech, which he delivered to the Massachussetts State House upon his departure to Washington to be sworn in as the newly elected President. He quoted John Winthrop as he proposed an inspiring vision of all of our levels of government as a "city on a hill" -- elevated by leaders with courage, judgment, integrity and dedication. Tolisten to an original recording of the speechand to read the full text, click here.
Executive Coaching
"Michelle's coaching has been an integral part of my success as town manager. "
True leadership in public service requires the best in us: courage, judgment, integrity and dedication. At City on a Hill, we're looking for a few senior government executives and elected officials who are ready to draw on these talents and strengthen them, who are committed to making a real difference, and who are ready to take their efforts to the next level and beyond.
Why Work With a Coach?
Obtain a Strategic Confidant.
Take advantage of an experienced and confidential sounding board; someone outside your political circle -- without an agenda in your environment -- with whom you develop your ideas and discover new possibilities.
Navigate Transition with Success.
We understand the dynamics of a changing political environment. If you're a newly elected or appointed official, you must learn and adapt to a new environment while simultaneously championing the changes you committed to bring with you. Every day can feel like a tightrope walk. Even if you're well established in your position, each new election introduces new players to the field. Public sentiments shift and community issues evolve. Changes in leadership and priorities create new complications for the most experienced leader. We'll help you adapt to these new demands and relationships, and explore ways to leverage them to your benefit.
Advance Your Agenda. Leave Your Legacy.
Our coaching services keep you on track to achieve more ambitious goals more quickly. Clarify what you really want, position yourself for your next step, develop adroit strategies and concrete plans to make your vision a reality. Return to why you chose public service, and make the difference you came here to make.
Roger Van Alyne
Town Manager
Minden, Nevada
"Our coaching appointments let me focus on my own priorities and give me valuable feedback from someone I trust. "
Jenny Kimball
Assistant City Manager
Rockville, Maryland
How Does Coaching Work?
City on a Hill provides coaching services to clients across the country via telephone, and via Skype for clients who prefer a visual connection. Our coaching engagements typically consist of two sessions per month, interspersed with fieldwork conducted by the client between sessions to build on the ideas and plans developed during the sessions. We work with you to clarify and focus your vision of what you want, explore the possibilities, strategize a plan of action, anticipate obstacles and diminish them, and expedite your progress toward your greatest goals. Each client determines the unique content of the work. You set the agenda for coaching. Bring your ambitions and challenges, and we'll help you work toward the maximum possible results.
To find out more about executive coaching, click here.
Upcoming Webinars
Click Here to Register for Upcoming Webinars
Managing Stakeholder Relationships
A government "of the people, by the people and for the people" requires effective collaboration between community members, elected officials and government personnel.
In 90 minutes you'll learn:
Participate live on the following dates:
Friday, June 24, 2011
10:30AM-Noon Pacific / 1:30-3:00PM Eastern
Leading Change
Leadership is about making change happen. Great leaders are not remembered for maintaining the status quo. So, how do you successfully lead change?
Friday, April 15, 2011
Communication & Persuasion
When it comes to communication, it's not enough to be right. It doesn't matter how brilliant your point is, if your audience doesn't understand it or isn't buying it.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Leadership Development
We offer training through group webinars and personalized, one-on-one instruction for our coaching clients. We also provide customized leadership assessments to help our clients focus their efforts for the greatest gain. In addition, we host discussion groups for government leaders to discuss challenges and solutions in a confidential environment.
Webinars
Our Internet-based seminars introduce you to proven models and theories for leadership success, and provide practical techniques to put them to work for you. Each session lasts 90 minutes. Different topics are offered monthly, Popular
subjects include: Leading Change; Managing Stakeholder Relationships; Excelling at the Vision Thing; andCommunication, Persuasion & Negotiation. For information about upcoming webinars, click here.
Assessments
Our assessment services incorporate a range of options from a simple questionnaire completed by you, the client, to online surveys distributed to your colleagues and constituents, to personal phone interviews conducted with your key stakeholders. Assessments are designed to focus on leadership skills and/or personality dynamics, depending on your unique challenges and priorities.
City on a Hill uses assessments in the same way a personal trainer uses a scale to measure your weight. The process doesn't stop after you read the scale; rather, this is the starting point from which the trainer works with you to develop new levels of fitness. Similarly, we provide our assessments in conjunction with continued coaching services, in order to partner with you in analyzing the data, then developing and implementing your plan of action built on insight gained from the assessment.
"These services are carefully crafted to meet our unique needs as government leaders.
Michelle continues to bring integrity, quality and relevance to everything she does."
Joe Simitian
State Senator
California
Discussion Groups
If you're like many of our clients, you've probably found that it's lonely at the top. Political dynamics can make it risky to discuss the kinds of vulnerabilities and concerns that threaten the success of great leaders. City on a Hill offers a solution by hosting confidential conversations among specific groups of government leaders, to allow you to compare your own situation with others in similar positions of authority and visibility.
We convene each discussion group via telephone, like a conference call. Participants commit to respect each other's privacy and are identified to the group by first name only to encourage confidentiality. We facilitate each discussion around a topic of interest to the group members, and create an environment in which the politically sensitive challenges that you face at home can be described and explored with others who have dealt with similar issues, understand what you're going through, and may have some helpful ideas to share.
To find out more about discussion groups, click here.
We minimize travel and other costs typically associated with consulting contracts in order to offer low government rates while maintaining the high quality of our unique services.
"Now, more than ever, government leaders must seek both low costs and outstanding results from consulting contracts.
Leadership coaching from City on a Hill provides exactly that.
At reasonable rates, public officials get invaluable and timely feedback, guidance, and practical advice. "
Most coaching engagements last one or more years, although we offer coaching contracts as short as three months.
3 months of coaching: $2,400
month-to-month rate thereafter: $800/mo
6 months of coaching: $4,320 (10% discount)
month-to-month rate thereafter: $750/mo
12 months of coaching: $8,800 (one month free,
plus unlimited leadership development services)
Webinars and Discussion Groups are available as stand-alone services. Find out about upcoming sessions by clicking here.
90-minute webinar: $149
1 month subscription [2 sessions] for $49
1 year subscription for $490 (2 months free)
Professional Assessments
Assessments are provided only in conjunction with coaching (minimum of three months) and are offered in three levels:
Silver:Data collection from the client only
With three months of coaching: $2,700
With six months of coaching: $4,600 (10% discount)
Gold:Silver plus online data collection from
colleagues/constituents
With three months of coaching: $2,950
With six months of coaching: $4,850 (10% discount)
Platinum:Gold plus telephone interviews with select
With three months of coaching: $3,600
With six months of coaching: $5,500 (10% discount)
One Year of Consulting Services for Less Than $10,000
Purchase a one-year coaching contract and receive one month free, plus unlimited access to all of our leadership development services for the full year.
Rob McCord
State Treasurer
Pennsylvania
To receive notification of future webinars
and qualify for early bird registration discounts
click here.
Interested in learning more about executive coaching and/or assessments?
Click here.
City on a Hill Consulting
1629 K Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 204-9002
President & Founder
Michelle_mailcityhill.com
General Information
If you're interested in all of the above, or some combination, click here and we'll follow up with you.
Would you like to learn more about discussion groups and be notified when one is forming with others holding positions like yours? Click here.
Leadership Resources
Click here for
the full text of John F. Kennedy's
"City on a Hill" Speech
Delivered to Massachusetts State House
great books recommended by
organized and summarized for you at Amazon.com
Click here on play/pause for audio of the full speech
The "City on a Hill" Speech
Address of
President-Elect John F. Kennedy
Delivered to a Joint Convention of
the General Court of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
The State House, Boston
I have welcomed this opportunity to address this historic body, and, through you, the people of Massachusetts to whom I am so deeply indebted for a lifetime of friendship and trust.
For fourteen years I have placed my confidence in the citizens of Massachusetts -- and they have generously responded by placing their confidence in me.
Now, on the Friday after next, I am to assume new and broader responsibilities. But I am not here to bid farewell to Massachusetts.
For forty-three years -- whether I was in London, Washington, the South Pacific, or elsewhere -- this has been my home; and, God willing, wherever I serve this shall remain my home.
It was here my grandparents were born -- it is here I hope my grandchildren will be born.
I speak neither from false provincial pride nor artful political flattery. For no man about to enter high office in this country can ever be unmindful of the contribution this state has made to our national greatness.
Its leaders have shaped our destiny long before the great republic was born. Its principles have guided our footsteps in times of crisis as well as in times of calm. Its democratic institutions -- including this historic body -- have served as beacon lights for other nations as well as our sister states.
For what Pericles said to the Athenians has long been true of this commonwealth: "We do not imitate -- for we are a model to others."
And so it is that I carry with me from this state to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories of firm friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts -- the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant -- will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation's executive mansion.
They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future.
Allow me to illustrate: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests.
But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier.
"We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill –-- the eyes of all people are upon us."
Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us –-- and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill –-- constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.
For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within.
History will not judge our endeavors – -- and a government cannot be selected --– merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these.
For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us –-- recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state –-- our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions:
First, were we truly men of courage --– with the courage to stand up to one's enemies –-- and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates –-- the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed?
Secondly, were we truly men of judgment – -- with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past –-- of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others –-- with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it?
Third, were we truly men of integrity –-- men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them –-- men who believed in us --– men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?
Finally, were we truly men of dedication –-- with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest.
Courage –-- judgment --– integrity --– dedication --– these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State --– the qualities which this state has consistently sent to this chamber on Beacon Hill here in Boston and to Capitol Hill back in Washington.
And these are the qualities which, with God's help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government's conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead.
Humbly I ask His help in that undertaking –-- but aware that on earth His will is worked by men. I ask for your help and your prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey.
