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Growing Good Library Leaders
by Zahra M. Baird
Library leaders are vital to our profession, as they determine the direction that our libraries and library associations take. They shape the library culture by using and creating necessary management tools, learning strategies and opportunities, and they encourage others to do the same. In our field, therefore, there is a need to find out which leadership strategies work and to use them on a regular basis to nurture our library leaders.
Leadership Development Strategies For Library Associations
There is a need for sustained, formal, and substantive leadership development training. Too often, leadership programs get off to a flying start, and then fizzle out from lack of follow up or of a long-term plan for continued monitoring and training. Library associations also need to recognize the drastic need for increased financial support of their members, in the form of scholarships, awards, and stipends for members of all job levels (library professionals as well as support staff).
Another way that library associations can bolster leadership is by coming up with creative delivery of classes, workshops, and seminars. This could include taking successful library conference programs on the road, or holding them regionally or in local libraries, rather than making members travel great distances. The timing of meetings and training events needs to be more varied, and to include evenings as well as weekends.
Online book discussions are another method to foster leadership; these can focus on books that encourage the development of leadership skills. Varied perspectives and input from people from all backgrounds and jobs in the library setting will enhance members' understanding of complex leadership and library issues, and this strategy will highlight the importance of reading widely outside of our field.
We need to create new ways of sharing information. By developing e- journals and e-zines, where members can submit articles and share program ideas and innovations that work, leaders can keep abreast of innovations in the field and implement new initiatives in their own settings.
Leadership Development Strategies For Employers
It is important to recognize the need for leadership skills and behaviors at all levels, not just at the top. Employers can include leadership as a criterion in personnel evaluations. Employers can also emphasize the value of risk taking and find opportunities to celebrate constructive failures that can nonetheless advance the library.
Libraries that allow their employees to aid in the development of the library vision and in setting goals allow everyone to feel ownership of "the big picture." Staff can see how their piece of the puzzle (their job) fits into the working of the library as a whole. Having full staff meetings and offering library in-service training helps ensure that all employees are aware of what everyone is doing, and helps to involve employees in decision making. This allows them to see the value of group participation in the role of consensus building. Potential leaders need to be given the opportunity to listen and to partake in informed, constructive decision making, in order to hone their own debating, logical and deductive skills.
Encourage department heads to delegate, so that people are more active and have the power to make decisions and act autonomously. This gives employees the feeling that they are competent and increases their confidence, one of the many important leadership traits which need to be fostered in employees.
In times of budget crunches, libraries need to protect the budget line that enables their staff to participate in professional development activities such as conference going, workshop attendance and seminars. If we want to grow leaders, we need to ensure that staff members have the chance to participate in library workshops, conferences, training programs and seminars. Everyone should be given outlets and opportunities for augmenting and honing their skills. Encourage staff to join professional associations such as ALA, state chapters, and local library associations. These venues can serve as places where staff can work on committees, and they can in turn bring back knowledge to the library by leading in-service training and by using the skills they have learned by being active in library association work on the job.
Lastly, recognizing staff members’ outstanding work and achievements will help encourage others to aspire to greater heights, and let them see that excellence is attainable.
Practice Leadership Development
Once employers and library associations have formed an outline of how and what strategies they want to use to develop their leaders, they must start implementing structured leadership programs. Starting small, with either employee department heads or library association council members, can be the cornerstone of an effective library or association-wide leadership training program.
Successful library leadership programs need to have two components: specific leadership training paired with coaching and mentoring. Training can touch upon effective communication, conflict resolution skills, team building, recognizing and dealing with different personality styles, time and stress management, delegating skills, goal setting, critical coaching skills, and whatever other topics are specific to the individual library or library association.
Coaching And Mentoring
Mentoring remains an elusive phenomenon in our field. There have been several efforts to set up both informal and formal mentoring programs within libraries and library associations, which have met with varied degrees of success. Inconsistency leaves much professional development such as mentoring to chance. We need to recognize that a mentor/coach is an essential tool that helps library leaders reach peak performance by providing them with the one-on-one attention that ensures nurturing and growth.
Developing a Leadership Strategy
When you are in a library management position or part of your library association’s leadership, you need to help your organization identify a leadership development strategy. You need to be able to set out how the organization supports its leaders, making sure that learning styles, positive role models and realistic expectations are all considered. Successful leaders help and influence others. Leaders have a passion for what they do. If we do not attract potential leaders into our profession and nurture them, then we will find ourselves lacking in library leadership.
Zahra M. Baird is a Children's Librarian at the Chappaqua Library in Chappaqua New York, and can be reached at zjanmo@hotmail.com.