The Leadership Catalyst is where municipal power and women’s leadership collide. I expose how staff culture builds or breaks public trust, and why women leaders must set the standard for their teams and their communities. This is unapologetic strategy, rooted in SCALE™, for leaders who refuse to carry the weight of broken systems alone. Subscribe and join a community that’s rewriting the rules of government leadership.
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Issue 43: She did not defend me. She testified. | The Record™ Series | Issue 3 of 5
Published 25 days ago • 4 min read
Dear Reader,
In Issue 42 I told you about the day I stopped explaining myself.
I told you the documentation was already older than the attack. I told you the people who wanted to understand already understood and the people who did not never would. What I did not tell you is what made it possible to trust the record enough to stop. It was not the paperwork. It was the people who watched me build it.
The Catalyst Perspective
When I decided to create the Mayor Chasity Wells-Armstrong African-American Civic Leader Scholarship™, I needed a partner who could administer and endow the fund so it would sustain itself beyond my term in office. I reached out to the Community Foundation of Kankakee River Valley. That conversation did not begin with a transaction. It began with a shared value. I explained why the scholarship existed. I explained who it was for, created the criteria for which the students would be measured, and addressed the barriers I was seeking to remove for Black students in my community. The Community Foundation said yes. Not because I was the mayor. But because the purpose aligned with their own commitment to the community they served. From that moment, the relationship was built in public. Every dollar raised was documented through them. Every student awarded was processed through their records. The partnership was not a private arrangement between me and a friendly organization. It was a transparent, documented alignment of shared values made visible from the beginning.
Photo Credit: City of Kankakee - Mayor Wells-Armstrong with Scholarship Recipient, Jerika Harris & Nicole Smolkovich, Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Kankakee River Valley
So when the unsigned letter arrived at my office accusing me of misusing taxpayer money and bullying the Community Foundation, something happened that I want you to understand completely.
The accusation collapsed against the record of that relationship. The Community Foundation did not defend me. They confirmed what they already knew from their own direct experience of working alongside me.
Their words were not advocacy. They were testimony. That is the difference between a relationship built for convenience and a relationship built in alignment with your values and made visible to the public record. One supports you in the moment. The other becomes a permanent part of your record.
The SCALE™ Framework Connection
Component 3 of The Record™ maps directly to A — Aligned Values and Boundary Negotiation™ in the SCALE™ Framework for Public Sector Leadership™. And every letter of SCALE™ lives inside this story.
S — Strengths-Based Leadership™ Your narrative anchors tell the room why you moved before anyone can tell them you moved for the wrong reason. When your partners can confirm those anchors from their own direct experience, the accusation has nowhere to land. I knew why I built the scholarship before I built it. My witnesses confirmed what I had already said in my own words.
C — Confidence and Cognitive Reframing™ Building relationships publicly around shared values rather than shared convenience requires a specific kind of confidence. Those relationships make certain that your purpose is documented and your partners can speak to it from observation rather than loyalty.
A — Aligned Values and Boundary Negotiation™ This is the heart of Component 3. Alignment is not agreement. It is a shared purpose made visible before it is ever tested. Every relationship I built around the scholarship was rooted in a shared value documented in the public record before anyone questioned my motives. That is what turns a partnership into testimony.
L — Leadership Longevity™ The leaders who sustain across seasons are the ones whose relationships were built with enough transparency that the attacks cannot rewrite the record. Relationship Transparency is infrastructure. It is what holds your leadership across the long arc of public service.
E — Emboldened Ecosystem Building™ A coalition is built on shared ambition and holds only as long as your decisions serve it. An ecosystem is built on shared purpose. It includes everyone whose values aligned with yours and whose witness to your work is in the record before anyone comes looking. The 19 students, the donors, the Community Foundation — that is an ecosystem. Every one of them became testimony before I needed any of them to speak.
Photo Credit: City of Kankakee - Mayor Wells-Armstrong w/Trinity Christian College Social Work Students & Professor Cini Bretzlaff-Holstein
What I Want You to Walk Away Knowing
You are not just building relationships. You are building testimony. Every partnership you form around your work is either a relationship of shared purpose made visible or a relationship of shared convenience kept private. One becomes a witness. The other becomes a liability when the room gets loud. The work of building your room of witnesses is not separate from the work of public leadership. It is the work. It is what you do in the quiet season so the loud season does not find you alone.
Take Action Today
Before your next visible decision, look at the relationships you are relying on to support that work and ask three questions about each one.
Does this person know why this work matters to you, in your own words, before anyone questions your motives?
Is your partnership visible to the public record in a way that can be confirmed independently?
Was this relationship built around a shared value or around shared convenience?
Photo Credit: City of Kankakee - Mayor Wells-Armstrong w/Phil Kambic, CEO at Riverside Health Center
That is your Component 3 diagnostic. Write down your answers. Date them.
And reply to tell me about one relationship that passed all three. I read and respond to every reply.
Issue 44 of The Leadership Catalyst™ arrives Saturday, June 13, 2026. It is Part 4 of 5 of The Record™ Series.
We are going to talk about Component 4: Community Witnesses. Not your partners. Not your allies. The people whose lives your work was built to serve. The students. The families. The residents. The people who are not in your inner circle but are the living evidence of what your leadership was built to accomplish. They are your most powerful witnesses. And most leaders never think to name them as part of their record until it is too late.
Forward this issue to one woman in your network who is navigating public leadership. She can subscribe and confirm her subscription at the link below so the next issue lands directly in her inbox.
The relationships you built in alignment with your values are not only professional history. They are your record speaking before you say a word.
Stopping the explanation was the beginning. Building the witnesses is the work. Not after the criticism arrives. Not after the room turns. Now. In this season. Before anyone is paying attention.
Leadership Strategist for Municipal Teams Former Mayor | Village Manager | City Councilor | Congressional Staffer Creator of the SCALE™ Framework for Public Sector Leadership
The Leadership Catalyst is where municipal power and women’s leadership collide. I expose how staff culture builds or breaks public trust, and why women leaders must set the standard for their teams and their communities. This is unapologetic strategy, rooted in SCALE™, for leaders who refuse to carry the weight of broken systems alone. Subscribe and join a community that’s rewriting the rules of government leadership.
Dear Reader, In Issue 43 I told you about the Community Foundation and the moment their words became testimony rather than advocacy. What I did not tell you is what happened after the meetings ended. What happened when I walked through the door and my husband could tell from the way I closed it what kind of night it had been. Nobody warned me about that part. The Catalyst Perspective I served as mayor of a city with 14 council members. Approximately half had been aligned with the previous...
Dear Reader, In Issue 41 I introduced you to The Record™ and why every woman in public leadership needs to build it before anyone comes looking. I told you that the criticism is not coming because you did something wrong. It is coming because you did something visible. What I did not tell you is where I learned that. This issue is that story. The Catalyst Perspective I served as the first Black mayor of Kankakee, Illinois. The City of Kankakee loves St. Patrick's Day so much that they...
Dear Reader, If you saw my LinkedIn post yesterday, you already know about the man who questioned my leadership development on Facebook. The one who could not spell the word he was using to question my ambition and competence. What I did not tell you on LinkedIn is what I chose to build in private.Because the public response is not what protected me.The record I had already built before he ever showed up is what made his accusation groundless. That is the story behind this issue. The Catalyst...
