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.
Share
Issue 43: She did not defend me. She testified. | The Record™ Series | Issue 3 of 5
Published 3 months 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, 𝙉𝙤𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮 𝙖𝙙𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙘𝙠 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙖 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙟𝙤𝙗 𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙚𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙙 𝙪𝙥 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩. You know what 2 a.m. looks like on the ceiling above your bed. You have run the numbers in your head so many times you could recite them in your sleep, except you are not sleeping because the grievance you have not resolved yet is still open somewhere behind your eyes. The Catalyst Perspective When I became Village Manager, the HR function was in transition. While I searched for the right...
Dear Reader, The man who recruited me became the man who tried to destroy me. He knew my record before he ever offered me the job. He needed my competence enough to hand me the seat. Then my competence became the thing he could not forgive. The Catalyst Perspective Before I sat in a Village Manager's chair, I had already built a national profile in public leadership. I served on the Board of Directors of the National League of Cities, representing small cities and towns across the country. A...
Dear Reader, The Catalyst Perspective You already know how this works. Someone who has followed your reputation for years finally makes the call. Comptroller to city manager. Finance director to assistant village manager. Director brought in from outside because the organization needs exactly what you have built. The person recruiting you knows your record. That is precisely why they want you. What they rarely tell you, and what you cannot always see coming no matter how carefully you ask, is...
