What happens when trust is broken before you even walk into a room?

What happens when public pressure, political dynamics, and organizational tension collide?

For Erin McDaniel, Director of Communications at the City of Newton, Kansas, the answer wasn’t more control. It wasn’t tighter messaging. It wasn’t avoiding friction.

It was learning how to lead with Compassionate Accountability®.

In this episode of The Compassionate Accountability Podcast, Erin joins our host, Nate Regier to share her leadership journey, what wasn’t working, what shifted, and what became measurable as a result.

What’s in this episode?

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why being “the problem” often comes with the job, before anyone knows you.
• How conflict between leadership and staff quietly erodes culture.
• The turning point that forced a different approach.
• How compassion and accountability rebuilt trust, without compromise.
• What it looks like to put ego aside and lead with openness.
• Practical insights for navigating conflict in polarized environments.

This conversation isn’t theory. It’s lived experience, small wins, hard lessons, and lasting change.

Rapid-fire reflections include:

• One truth about conflict leaders often miss.
• What trust actually requires.
• The mindset shift that changed everything.

Watch the video

Listen to the audio

Read the transcript

Dr Nate Regier: Hello and welcome to the Compassionate Accountability® Podcast. I’m Nate Regier, and this is where we explore what it really means to lead with both compassion and accountability without separating the two through the real journeys of leaders who have lived it. If you’re navigating people, pressure or responsibility, you’re in the right place.

Dr Nate Regier: My guest on this episode is Erin McDaniel, the Director of Communications for the City of Newton, Kansas. For 20 years, Erin has overseen the city’s communication activities, including media relations, website, and interacting with the community as the official spokesperson for the city. For the last 10 years, Erin and the city of Newton have been applying Compassionate Accountability to address thorny in communication challenges, improve their culture, address political divisiveness, form a strong collaborative relationship with the city council, and build trust with the community.

Dr Nate Regier: Erin, welcome to the Compassionate Accountability Podcast. I’m so glad you’re with us today.

Erin McDaniel: Thank you. It’s really nice to be here.

Dr Nate Regier: So, to get started, tell us a little bit, tell us who you are and what you do for your job.

Erin McDaniel: Yeah. I am the Communications Director for the City of Newton, Kansas, and we are kind of a small city in the middle of Kansas. As the Communications Director, I am in charge of all of the public information, communications, and marketing activities of our local government.

Dr Nate Regier: I was looking at you a little bit on LinkedIn, at the description of what you do. And it’s like, wow, you have your hand in and oversee everything, lots of things from social media to being the spokesperson for the city. You probably have a lot of communication related and people related issues you deal with every day.

Dr Nate Regier: So I want start by asking you, what is one people related challenge that you face at work that maybe most folks don’t realize or appreciate?

Erin McDaniel: I can tell you, when I first started at the city, what was surprising to me, and it sounds a little bit quaint now in the world that we’re living in, but it really surprised me how often I was distrusted or even disliked.

Erin McDaniel: Based solely on the fact that I work for the local government. Wow. There’s a barrier. A lot of people have distrust of government and the people who work for government which was sad for me, and it was something I had to really get used to.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, and that had nothing to do with you. They didn’t know you as a person, had no history with you. Just because you worked for government.

Erin McDaniel: Yes, exactly.

Dr Nate Regier: Wow.

I know that for quite some time, you and the city of Newton have been on a journey to improve the quality of your culture, how you communicate with the city and with the community, and build that relationship. When you think back to before you were on this journey, what was the situation and some of the challenges you were facing?

Erin McDaniel: We first met in 2015 and we at the city, the leadership team contracted with Next Element, because we were having a lot of conflict between the elected officials, here in Newton, we call it the city commission and the city staff. That’s something, another thing that a lot of people probably don’t think about is that there is sometimes a healthy or unhealthy tension between the elected officials and the staff. And at that time, we had elected a couple of commissioners who were overtly antagonistic toward the staff. And so, it was a real challenge for the staff to know how to navigate that relationship. We inherently have to work together to get things done for the community, and so we really wanted to explore some new tools to be able to navigate that relationship and communicate better.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, I bet you, I bet those who are listening to this can relate. I’m sure that’s a challenge in every municipality, at least. We hear that quite a lot when we’re dealing with other government entities and I remember, you know, there’s so many different staff in the city that have to interact with the community and with the city council.

Dr Nate Regier: And so, if those relationships are strained, it can really, really be tough on them because they might not be in a public facing role. They might not have a lot of experience dealing with that.

Erin McDaniel: Yeah, absolutely. The tension trickles down throughout the organization. Yeah. And so even our employees who had no contact really with the elected officials could feel that.

Dr Nate Regier: Yeah. Where did conflict or this drama show up the most and how did it affect your people?

Erin McDaniel: I think, there was blame to go around, on both sides of the equation. From the elected officials side, they came in, like I said, with this strong distrust of government in general. They assumed negative intentions by the city staff.
Any kind of mistake or misstep was immediately seen as some kind of fraud or waste or corruption. And then I think on the city staff side, knowing some of the public statements that these commissioners had made, there was distrust there as well, and a sense that we are the experts and we know better, and these commissioners don’t know as much as we do as the subject matter experts, and so they will never be able to, know as much as us, and there was a lack of value of their contributions.

Dr Nate Regier: That must have been really hard, where the default assumption is you’re crooked, you’re incompetent, you’re trying to cheat the system, we can’t trust you and you know you’re working your butt off.

Erin McDaniel: Absolutely. Yeah. Really frustrating. And, people took it personally. Yeah. And it became emotional for a lot of people.

Dr Nate Regier: So, what happened to shift your perspective? Why did you end up deciding to do something about it?

Erin McDaniel: I think we were at a point where we realized that if we didn’t do something about it, people’s jobs could be on the line. And it could be really negative for our community.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, and I suppose you could have easily felt like a victim.
Like, we didn’t elect these officials. We can’t change their minds. There’s nothing we can do. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. Like, well, what are we supposed to do if they’ve already decided we’re bad? But you decided to kind of take things into your own hands. So what happened? What’d you do?

Erin McDaniel: We contracted with Next Element. We brought in our entire leadership team. It was about 12, 12 people. And we had a pretty intense training, using your tools and I think opened up our eyes to seeing these people from a different light, understanding where they were coming from. Trying to be more open about our intentions and motivations, understanding the different types of people and why they might behave in certain ways. Empathy was a big part of it.

Dr Nate Regier: Man. It’s hard to have empathy for people that have decided that you’re bad. And I’m reminded of the quote we share a lot and, and we probably talked about this quote. Wayne Dyer is famous for saying, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Did you have a shift where you started looking at the situation differently?

Erin McDaniel: I know we changed the way that we tried to communicate with them. Understanding that communicating with all of them the same way, didn’t necessarily work. There were certain of the five elected commissioners who were very different from the others and maybe required a different approach.

Dr Nate Regier: I know one of the things we talked about a lot was, you know, different people need different styles of communication, different ways of addressing and, different people need to be approached in a certain way to be open or to start trusting and you build trust in lots of different ways.
Were there some things you did differently where you started to see those bridges get built or you started to experience trust because you were changing the way you approach things?

Erin McDaniel: We definitely saw small wins along the way. We would have certain projects or initiatives that we tried to communicate in a different way to certain commissioners that better fit their preferences. And, we definitely saw a difference in the responses that we got.

Dr Nate Regier: So, over these years, as you’ve been applying these tools, and this wasn’t just a one time event, this has been really a dedicated effort over the last decade that you’ve been trying to build these tools in, use them in your strategies, how do you use some of these tools on a daily basis in your job now? How does it help you do your job?

Erin McDaniel: I would say that these tools have just changed the way I think. I don’t always notice the difference, but I can. I’m not necessarily consciously doing things differently, but like you said, this has been a long journey and so I’ve kind of absorbed it.
But I think the, one of the biggest things for me is the idea of starting with openness. And that has made a huge difference, not only within our organization, within our co-working groups or with the city commission, but also with the public. If I get messages from a citizen who’s had a bad experience, and I can right away relate to them and build a bridge of connection, that can really help diffuse the situation.

A lot of times people just want be heard and feel like someone cares about what their concern is. I can’t necessarily always fix their problem, but if I can help them feel heard and make that connection, it helps a lot.

Dr Nate Regier: Wow. You’ve touched on something that is such a big important part of Compassionate Accountability, which is that we treat people as valuable, capable, and responsible in every interaction. I know you weren’t being treated that way as a city when this all started, but you made the choice. We can turn on those switches. We can choose to treat people as valuable, capable, and responsible. And it starts by just meeting people where they are and honoring their lived experience.

And I’m sure citizens, City council members, they come and they might be completely whacked. They might not really understand what’s going on. Maybe they haven’t done their homework. Maybe they’re jumping to conclusions. But the point is, you meet them where they’re feeling and you start there building a common connection.

How does that change the outcome?

Erin McDaniel: Oh, it makes a huge difference. You can almost see it when you’re talking to someone and their defences just come down. And that’s when you can maybe get to that resourcefulness piece and start helping them with problem solving. But first you got to take the heat out of it, because a lot of times people come at you pretty emotional.

Dr Nate Regier: Yeah. And we talk about how compassion means to struggle with, that we’re in this together. And you know, I’m sure from your perspective as a public service entity, you’re here to serve the community. But it’s a joint effort. We all have to do our part, but yet when we get into distress, we expect the other person’s at fault.

They have to do everything to fix it. And so, it sounds like when you meet people where they are, then you can really move into collaborative problem solving where we can take shared ownership for the solution. And we both are contributing citizens in this community.

Erin McDaniel: Yeah, exactly.

Dr Nate Regier: Yeah. Oh, that’s fantastic.

So I understand that recently you won an award, and I know you don’t like to brag about yourself. You’re a very humble person, but what award did you win and tell us about it.

Erin McDaniel: I received the Kansas Communicator of the Year Award from the Kansas Association of Public Information Officers. It’s my state association of government communicators. It was, it was really nice to be acknowledged by them. Yeah.

Dr Nate Regier: Wow. It sounds like they recognize some of the things you’ve been describing and the impact that you’re making.

Erin McDaniel: I hope so. Yes. I think that’s the key. It’s a very hard field and it, it gets harder all the time, I think with how polarized our political environment here is now and social media is such a challenging landscape to operate in. And so, for my peers who understand that dynamic to honor me, it’s, it’s really touching.

Dr Nate Regier: Oh, that’s really neat. So, I guess, by recognizing this award, they must believe that you have learned some things and you’re doing some things right.

So I’m curious, this whole journey you’ve been on, 10 years since you started working with our tools, but much longer, what, 20 years that you’ve been in this, in this role?

Erin McDaniel: Yeah.

Dr Nate Regier: What has this journey taught you about leadership?

Erin McDaniel: I become more convinced all the time that leadership is all about authenticity and that human connection.
And I’ve seen many leaders over the years experience a lot of difficult situations when they don’t allow themselves to be vulnerable with their people. They adhere to that sort of old school philosophy of the leader being the boss and having all the answers and, I think it doesn’t work anymore.

Maybe it never did. But, but nowadays, I think people want openness. They want authentic connection with their leaders, and they need to know that you as a leader have struggles just like they do.

Dr Nate Regier: Wow, that’s a message we hear so much and it’s so great to hear you saying it, but also experiencing that it works.
And one of the lessons, it sounds like one of the things you’ve learned is that starting at open makes a huge difference. Is there anything else you’ve learned about conflict communication in this polarized, tension-filled, volatile environment that we live in?

Erin McDaniel: I think I’ve learned to check myself and ask myself, how am I contributing to this conflict? Am I adding drama to this? Are there assumptions that I’m making? Obviously, I can only control myself and my reactions in a conflict, and so that’s been really helpful to me to, to build that self-awareness. I think only then can you try to bring more compassion into interactions.
With the public or with coworkers is if you, if you understand what you might be contributing negatively.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, that takes a high level of self-awareness and self-management. And also, you got to put your ego on the back burner to be able to say, how I show up makes a huge difference in how things go.
Aaron Chappell Deckert, one of the members of our team, you might remember, he wrote this on the bathroom wall in our old office, and he said, what’s coming at you is probably coming out of you. And I thought, isn’t that interesting? If we could step back and say, well, maybe I could change the way I show up, the energy I put out to the world and I can’t control other people.
But it sounds like when you’re applying these Compassionate Accountability principles, you’re seeing different energy come back at you.

Erin McDaniel: Definitely. Yeah. I think ego ruins a lot of things. And, I think that really the first step is setting that ego aside.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, I can imagine, there might be people listening in positions like yours that are maybe dealing with what you were dealing with, and struggling because these are real, real troubles.
What advice would you have for a leader in your position dealing with what you were dealing with before?

Erin McDaniel: I think it would be just that, to set your ego aside. In our initial conflict that we came to you with in 2015 not all of us came out of that conflict with our jobs intact. And, I think some of the issue was ego and people weren’t willing to give a little. People dug in their heels. And I think in the long term we came out great. People landed where they should have landed, but in the moment, there was a lot of drama and it did not feel good.

And so, I would just encourage people to be real. Admit what you’re feeling. Be a human. You’re not a leadership robot, and it’s okay to give a little and try to understand where the other folks are coming from. If you don’t, you’re not trying to win.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, that’s huge because you know, when we talk about compassion is struggling with people, the opposite is drama, which is struggling against, where everything is a win-lose scenario and everybody loses.

Erin McDaniel: Right. Yes, exactly.

Dr Nate Regier: Very sage advice. Thank you. So really appreciate you sharing your journey, where you’ve come, how you’re using these tools. And again, congratulations on that award.

What is one truth about conflict that you’ve learned?

Erin McDaniel: Conflict is a test of your organizational health because it’s very easy to say we all get along great and we’re such a great team when things are going well and when you’re agreeing on everything. But when that conflict comes up, that’s the, the test you do, you really have it all together. It’s where the rubber hits the road.

Dr Nate Regier: Wow. Okay. What is one thing leaders forget about trust or you think they should know?

Erin McDaniel: If you expect people to trust you, they have to know you, and so you have to open yourself up a little bit.

Dr Nate Regier: Wow, that is so powerful. Stephen Covey shared with me, in a previous episode, he said, “companies are filled with trustworthy people that don’t trust each other because they don’t open up and they don’t take the first step to be vulnerable and to show you who they are.” What amazing, amazing advice.

What is one shift that changed everything for you?

Erin McDaniel: I think that I don’t have to have all the answers. Wow. I like to have all the answers. That’s my, I’m much more comfortable.

Dr Nate Regier: Well, we’ve known each other for a long time and I know how important that is. What you said. I know, I know exactly what you mean. I can relate.

So, what is, looking back on your journey, what is one thing you do differently next time?

Erin McDaniel: I think I would push my team a little bit more to be more open, to relate more as people to be more open. Sometimes it’s hard when you’re not the boss to do that pushing, but sometimes even the boss needs a push.

Dr Nate Regier: Yeah. Well, reading between the lines, I have gathered that this journey is not an easy one. It’s hard. It takes putting your ego on the side. Sometimes, some of us don’t make it on the journey because maybe we aren’t willing to make the changes inside. And so, culture change, transformation, this journey is hard and it takes concerted effort.

But the rewards, the rewards are great. If people would like to get a hold of you, maybe they’re curious, maybe they, they want to dig in a little bit to your history and get to know you. How could people reach out to you?

Erin McDaniel: LinkedIn is a great platform for me. Also, or if you’d want to send me an email, I’m on the City of Newton’s website.

Dr Nate Regier: Awesome. Well, let’s do a shout out to the city. Is there anything going on right now or anything about your city, your employer, your town that you would love, that you are so proud of?

Erin McDaniel: Yeah. Newton is a great place to live and work. You know, it’s, it’s our hometown and it’s a great family friendly, kind of small town, but not too small. It’s a, it’s a great place to live.

Dr Nate Regier: It is. And thanks in part to the work that you have done and being part of that. Erin, thank you so much for sharing your journey. Thank you for what you’re doing in our community. My wife and I raised our kids there. We lived there. We just moved after 27 years, and we miss our town.

It’s a wonderful place and we’ve seen this transformation that you’re talking about. So, thank you so much for being on the show, sharing your story. And again, congratulations on being the 2025 Kansas Communicator of the Year.

Erin McDaniel: Thank you so much. It’s been fun.

Dr Nate Regier: You’ve been listening to the Compassionate Accountability Podcast.

I’m Nate Regier, and in this episode we explored how a municipality transformed their reputation and trust in the community by meeting people where they are, putting their egos aside, and struggling with each other, using Compassionate Accountability instead of struggling against each other with drama.

If this episode resonated and you want to learn more about building a culture where compassion and accountability coexist, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. You can also rate, review and share the podcast to help us reach more listeners. And if you’d like to learn more about Compassionate Accountability or connect with us directly, visit us at next-element.com.

Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.

Copyright, Next Element Consulting, LLC 2026