SML Academy · Level 3
Leadership: Creating Direction, Trust, and Public Value
Advance from managing programs to leading organizations, partnerships, and communities. This Florida-focused level helps experienced public works, utilities, local-government, engineering, and construction professionals lead ethically through strategy, change, crisis, and long-term stewardship.
Who this level serves
For professionals responsible for more than today’s work
Best fit
- Department, division, utility, and program leaders
- Experienced managers preparing for executive responsibility
- Engineering, construction, and infrastructure leaders working with public agencies
- Professionals who influence budgets, policy, partnerships, or community outcomes
The leadership shift
Leadership asks you to connect daily decisions with mission, law, ethics, funding, workforce capacity, public trust, and future conditions. You will practice seeing the whole system while remaining accountable for people and results.
Level 2 is recommended but not required when comparable management experience can be demonstrated.
Learning outcomes
What you will be prepared to do
Set direction
Translate mandates, community needs, risk, and evidence into defensible priorities and measurable strategy.
Lead with integrity
Navigate ethics, governance, political realities, transparency, public records, privacy, gifts, fairness, and public confidence.
Steward resources
Connect federal, state, and local responsibilities with grants, general funds, local-option sales taxes, gas taxes, assessments, and user fees.
Build capacity
Shape culture, accessibility, talent development, succession, and lifelong professional learning.
Lead change and crisis
Guide deep change, innovation, technology, cybersecurity, emergency operations, continuity, and recovery.
Create public value
Strengthen partnerships, negotiation, engagement, performance measures, accountability, and trust.
Eight modules
Leadership curriculum
- L1 · From Manager to Organizational Leader
Identity, systems thinking, authority, influence, and avoiding the Peter Principle. - L2 · Ethics, Governance, and Political Acuity
Roles, boundaries, transparency, gifts, privacy, fairness, and public confidence. - L3 · Strategy, Finance, and Infrastructure Stewardship
Bryson-informed strategy, capital priorities, funding sources, and intergovernmental responsibility. - L4 · Culture, Talent, Accessibility, and Succession
Belonging, ADA-aware leadership, development pipelines, knowledge transfer, and continuity. - L5 · Leading Change, Innovation, and Technology
Quinn’s deep-change challenge, improvement, data, AI, cybersecurity, and responsible adoption. - L6 · Crisis Leadership and Community Resilience
NIMS/ICS alignment, emergency decisions, continuity, recovery, and leader communication. - L7 · Partnerships, Negotiation, and Public Engagement
Elected officials, agencies, vendors, unions, residents, media, and regional collaboration. - L8 · Sustaining Performance and Public Value
Measures, accountability, learning systems, succession, and the leader’s continuing-development plan.
Blended experience
Self-paced depth with 12 live sessions
Each level includes twelve two-hour live sessions. The four themes below are illustrative, not the full schedule; the complete session calendar and sequence will be confirmed for each intake.
Orientation and leadership baseline
Meet the cohort, establish expectations, and define your leadership challenge. A recording option is available.
Current Florida issues and scenario lab
Work through a timely public-sector challenge involving governance, funding, ethics, risk, or public trust.
Project clinic and executive tabletop
Test assumptions, stakeholder strategy, measures, and implementation risks with peers and instructors.
Closing reflection and next commitments
Present learning, identify the next leadership practice, and connect professional development to public value. A recording alternative is available.
Applied work
A project grounded in a real organizational need
Preferred pathway
Complete a strategic public-value or organizational-improvement project for your workplace or a participating host. Define the issue, stakeholders, authorities, funding, risks, measures, and change approach.
Inclusive alternative
Job seekers, contractors, and participants facing confidentiality restrictions may complete a realistic fictional Florida case. TBT may also help identify a suitable project location when practical.
Project, reflection, field observation, and other practical assignments are completed in addition to the 56 instructional hours.
Professional foundation
Leadership is a continuing practice
This level draws on enduring work in strategic planning, organizational change, motivation, management, and leadership—including John M. Bryson, Robert E. Quinn, Peter Drucker, Mary Parker Follett, Edgar Schein, Ronald Heifetz, and others—while grounding discussion in Florida public-service realities.
Participants are encouraged to continue building technical depth through relevant TBT offerings such as emergency management, stormwater and environmental compliance, temporary traffic control, workplace safety, equipment operations, communication, conflict resolution, and computer applications when those capabilities support their responsibilities.
Support and next step
Ready to lead at the organizational level?
Cindy Torres can help with registration, technical difficulties, administrative questions, certificate guidance, or routing you to the right instructor or staff member.
Complete the progression
Supervise the work. Manage the system. Lead the future.
Participants may enroll in one level or complete all three for the full SML Academy credential.