News & Events
Letter from the Staff
Millennials and Mentoring
Personal relationships are key for inviting young talent in southeast Michigan to be active civic leaders. Ferndale City Manager Robert Bruner once worked as an assistant manager both in Oak Park and for Ypsilanti City Manager Edward Koryzno. Bruner credits the mentoring of Koryzno and other experienced leaders for guiding him into his current role in city government.
Bruner and Koryzno shared their thoughts on mentoring in local government with the Suburbs Alliance.
Suburbs Alliance: How did you come to be involved in local government?
Bruner: I was laid off and I needed a job. The story really began, though, when I was a Boy Scout—I'm actually wearing my Eagle Scout pin today—and I became interested in public service. At first it's about helping little old ladies across the street. For a while I thought about running for office, but I found that I didn't really like that hand-shaking, baby-kissing piece all that much. When I was an intern at the White House and living in Washington, D.C., I thought the city was an alien place; there's sort of a ruling class, a disconnected feel. You could spend you're whole career there and never get anything done.
In college, I studied economics and public policy. After I graduated I got a job in technology and management in the private sector, but I ended up feeling a call back to public service. I wanted to make my community a better place to live and work. On September 9, 2001, I saw an ad for a job to be the assistant to the city manager in Oak Park. That sounded interesting--but I didn't even know what a city manager did.
Koryzno: When our assistant city manager in Ypsilanti left, we advertised for a replacement. I saw Bob at a Michigan Suburbs Alliance meeting in Southfield, and he introduced himself. His credentials were well-deserving.
Suburbs Alliance: So you gave him a chance in Ypsilanti. How did you two work together in the city?
Koryzno: My style is to give folks an assignment and let them run with it. I'm not the type to hover over people
Bruner: Spatially, my office was down the hall. We communicated face-to-face as needed. I functioned in a department head capacity with a fair degree of autonomy.
Koryzno: He came in as an assistant city manager, but he held multiple department hats
Bruner: The recreation department, human resources ...
Koryzno: He was also crunching numbers for a budget. Bob, by the way was close in age to my son. I think you were the youngest (assistant that I've worked with), Bob, easily.
Suburbs Alliance: What kind of mentorship did you offer?
Koryzno: I always try to be an example, an adviser to those I've hired. To be an ethical manager. I try to give them strategies, and to look for teaching moments. Any day and every day there's an opportunity for that. As Bob will attest, we had a lot of teaching opportunities in Ypsilanti.
Bruner: It's not like you sit down and say, 'now we're going to mentor.'
Koryzno: On slow days, there's time to reminisce tell stories from other cities. And it's funny how much momentum mentoring can take on. All but one of the assistants I've worked with are still in local government. I see them at MML and ICMA events, and I'm able to keep in touch. Bob kickstarted our internship program again while he was here, and we're using that heavily now. We're using almost as many interns at City Hall as full-time staff. It's important for people, especially young people, to have that kind of hands-on experience. You can do all the book work, but you've got to be in the city.
Bruner: The most important thing is to be good at what you do. I got an opportunity to work with three outstanding city managers and I learned to do the right thing the first time. I have colleagues who didn't have such great role models who make it a positive experience for the mentee, whether that's an intern or a full-time employee.
It's also important to have those entry-level positions in the first place. The position I started out with in Oak Park has been eliminated. In Ypsilanti, I had a lot of space and could bring interns into city hall. In Ferndale, we don't have that space. Maybe we want to have interns, but where do we put them?
Suburbs Alliance: If someone's interested in finding an internship or one of these entry-level positions, what can they do to seek out the kind of positive experiences you had?
Bruner: Even if you went and asked other city managers what it's like to work with the manager you're thinking about working for, they probably won't say anything bad. You can Google a person to see what kind of issues they're dealing with in the community and in the media. Maybe talking to college professors will help, if that city has a long track record of being an internship host.
At an employment level, pick your positions carefully and bosses even more carefully. You can make yourself miserable working for the wrong person. It's an interesting difference from an internship--you can learn something by working with someone you don't mesh with, if you have a specific end date where you can leave it behind. Might not be worth it for an employee.
Koryzno: When an internship doesn't work well, you leave it. My first job, I worked for a retired military guy, a nice guy. I learned from people who didn't necessarily set out to teach me.
Bruner: You could try talking to other college students too. And talk to other people who worked for other people in the same organization, or, if it's a small community, neighboring organizations. That's what I'd do if no one I knew worked in the city I was looking to step into. If you want a good experience, it's important to do your homework.
Koryzno: When there's not a lot of money, there's a lot of opportunity to be creative. Policies that might've fallen off the radar, they might suddenly be elevated.
Suburbs Alliance: How have you both made the transition from being someone who is new in local government to being a mentor yourself?
Koryzno: I went from being an assistant to the city manager in Fenton in 1981 to being an interim manager in the city after just six months. We had to eliminate some positions, and one of those positions was an assistant--so I had a real interest in getting good at being a city manager. It took me awhile to get my feet on the ground because I didn't work under anyone for very long. For my circumstances, it was important to understand the manager’s role before hiring anyone under me. Plus, we didn't have the money.
Bruner: We have a very experienced staff and no physical room for interns, so I don’t have daily contact with anyone new to local government. However, I’m always looking for opportunities to help students and new professionals. A lot of the faculty at Eastern Michigan and Wayne State universities know me, so graduate students interview me for school projects and I get invitations to speak to journalism and political science classes. I’m also involved in professional organizations like ASPA, ICMA and MLGMA, so I speak on panels from time to time. Some contacts just come out of the blue.
Suburbs Alliance: You both have a built a culture of future leaders. Ed, you had experience of making a point of having assistant city manager roles whenever possible. Other cities let those go. And internships that actually do something.
Koryzno: You're definitely on the front line here as an intern in Ypsilanti, but it’s a great learning experience. It's a baptism by fire, but with support by at least two different people at all times. I've called other cities, and many either don't have a system for taking in interns, or they just don't take them.
Bruner: You have to give interns meaningful things to do. You can't just sit them in the corner. They've got to do real stuff.
Koryzno: It's better not to have an internship program at all then to give them fluff work.
Bruner: A good internship program takes effort. You can't just expect an intern to just show up. You get out of it what you put into it.
