Infectious Leadership - Begins with YOU!

Good Managers Don't Just Happen: They are Built

There are three central values in life: the experiential, or that which happens to us; the creative, or that which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, which is our response to circumstances. What matters most is how we respond to what we experience and what we do with that experience. For the Solo or rural librarian, management is realized through effective relationships. As a manager - whether lone or with a staff - certain principles encourage the establishment of standards. These can be used as an ethical criterion to establish some sort of code of ethics – or Credo.

To manage well, you need a Management Credo to guide yourself personally, your actions, and your decisions. Here are the basics:

• Understand the individual.
An individual's values determine what actions will result.
• Build relationships.
What is important to another person should be important to you as manager.
• Attend to the little things.
These are actually the big things in relationships.
• Keep your commitments.
Breaking a promise is a major contributor to lack of trust.
• Clarify expectations.
The cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in ambiguous, conflicting expectations around roles and goals. Making an investment of time and effort up front saves time and avoids major problems later.
• Show personal integrity.
A lack of integrity can undermine almost any effort you attempt.
• Integrity requires conforming reality to your words.
Keeping promises will fulfill someone else's expectations.
• Apologize sincerely and don’t wait.

Although not necessarily in this order, these are personal and active professional values to attain to:

Value One: Manage Self

Managing ourselves focuses on preserving and enhancing relationships and accomplishing results, thereby maintaining balance. When communicating we often prescribe before making a proper diagnosis. We don’t listen to others because we don’t control ourselves. Whatever the orientation of the person we are dealing with, the relationship is key to turning the situation around and can be managed through our own self-control.

Value Two: Listen Emphatically

Emphatic listening is listening with the intent to understand another person's frame of reference and feelings. Emphatic listening is accomplished using the ears, eyes, and heart. Skills of empathic listening are built on personal character which inspires openness and trust. Emphatic listening takes time; but not as much time as correcting misunderstandings.

Value Three: Diagnose Before You Prescribe

An effective manager seeks to understand the needs, concerns and situations of staff and customers: “An amateur sells products, the professional sells solutions”. As we appreciate people, they will appreciate us. Patience in all things preserves all things.

Value Four: Synergize

Synergy is all about valuing differences; respecting them; building on strengths; and compensating for weaknesses. High trust leads to high cooperation and communication. A manager who is truly effective possesses the humility to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through communication with others.

Value Five: Be Proactive

Pro-activity means that we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. What makes pro-activity indispensable is the fact that pro-activity is grounded in facing reality while also understanding we have the power to choose a positive response to our circumstances. The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct it, and learn from it.

Value Six: Be Accountable

In organizations, and in our personal lives, lack of accountability is a highly contagious disease. The willingness to be accountable for what we do, and what we fail or refuse to do, is a crucial sign of character. Being accountable is one of the fastest ways to earn respect and trust, and it puts an individual in control of his/her life. Responding accountably to life's challenges gives us the power to change things.

Value Seven: Be a Steward Delegator

Effective managers use Stewardship Delegation which focuses on results as well as methods. People are able to choose a method to achieve specific results. Stewardship Delegation requires a clear, upfront mutual understanding of and commitment to expectations. It offers a real opportunity for real progress and can help establish healthy team connections.

Value Eight: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Civility doesn't apply to only words. Being civil requires paying attention, listening, showing respect for people's time and space, and speaking kindly. Those we work with and work for have worth and value and deserve to be treated as we would like to be treated in turn: with consideration, patience and respect. Because what goes around comes around, responding to others as we desire to be responded to is good medicine and good management. Allowing for the benefit of the doubt gives time for investigation, contemplation, and a carefully thought out response.

To work well with others, you need a Management Credo. Become a living and breathing one yourself!

Image: http://www.employee-performance.com/blog/?p=2482
References: Seven Habits, n.d., Schilling, The Power, 2009.

The Marketing Manifesto

Make it Your Public Declaration

Part of creating an image for any library includes defining the library’s belief system.

Marketing

• Marketing provides for research-based planning
• Marketing involves action: telling customers about available services and providing the expertise and support to make those services work
• Marketing allows choice
• Marketing focuses on the customer’s wants and needs

Public Relations

• Public relations views the library in terms of the community
• Public relations is part of every contact between library staff and customers
• Public relations is only one part of the “selling” process
• Public relations identifies library resources and makes them known to the public

Customer Service

• Customer service focuses on the “ultimate customer experience” possible in a library environment
• Customer service reinforces and improves existing services
• Customer service promotes an understanding and identification with library users
• Customer service responds to customer needs appropriately and conveniently

Staff Focus

• Staff focus is on the customer and the information needs of the customer
• Staff focus is active and proactive when responding to customer requests
• Staff focus is to be helpful, attentive, and accommodating at all times
• Staff focus is to create a safe and pleasant environment for all

“Customers are not captives. They will go elsewhere if not satisfied.” H. Baird Tenney

Image: guides.library.cornell.edu/HADM2243

The Critical Link

Library Staff as Added Value

A director of a library possesses great opportunities and inventive options when managing or organizing library staff and creating a positive working organizational culture. The wonderful future of it all, when structuring the elements of a library, is in choice and pliability offering specialization, coordination, and the cooperation of everyone involved unique to their own talents and personalities.

In thinking outside the “traditional” business managerial stereotypes, options of openness and flexibility could easily be implemented and made available in the library setting for staff members who are parents, seniors, disabled, students or otherwise. It could mean an alternate work schedule arranged by collaboration with other staff members to benefit working parents and any other employee demographic with special needs. If a library is a haven for diversity, why not implement an organizational structure which offers incentive for staff to function and serve each other, as well as the community, proactively?

To easily accomplish this, focus on the needs of all using simple and clear boundaries and accountabilities. To manage work schedules and coverage for sick days, special event days, doctor appointments, etc., subdividing into smaller work groups, under a departmental director, could stabilize the library environment and create a cohesiveness and camaraderie between workers which may easily spill over into customer service dynamics. Alternative work schedules, compressed work weeks, telecommuting, even job sharing are all potential problem solvers in an employees’ life which could add to the creation of a dedicated staff.

Some staff members may even be willing to take less of a salary for the working convenience of specific nonmonetary benefits such as that of a day care center within the library setting. Aren’t children a main targeted segment of a library? Aren’t there reading programs, puppet shows and special engagements going on weekly? Why would a few children of library staff organized and overseen in one of the community access rooms or an underutilized office space be so unthinkable? The parent’s themselves, who are employed by the library, could even cooperate in choosing and employing their own day care worker on sight.

It is probable that the future may entail the complete lack of retirement and medical benefits from an employee package. Offering convenience and flexibility in the social network of the decision-making structure could easily be injected into a compensation packet - especially during cut-backs - as part of a tailored program to meet an employee’s individual needs. When structuring a work setting conducive to creativity and solidarity, this simple option might very easily alter a staff member’s stress level leading to a team culture of loyalty and achievement; fostering opportunities for individuals and the community served.

When creating a library culture enabling the interaction of individual talents, individual interests, individual abilities and personal skills - with human consideration toward diverse individual situations – positive feelings will enhance positive relationships and naturally foster opportunities for greatness; for lending a helping hand; and for making staff members as successful as the library unit itself. Non-monetary employee benefits are one way to accomplish an organizational structure promoting relationships benefiting all, and a library culture reflecting the library’s role and goals within the community.

It is this critical link - a dynamic staff working together toward a primary mission – which will secure and cement the library experience of the future.

Image: themadprofessorandhismonkey.blogspot.com/2009..

No Librarian Left Behind (4)

This series is created to provide quick and easy promotional suggestions and ideas to establish individual Unique Selling Points (USP) which will differentiate the New Librarian in the world of information professionals.

Professional Development for the New Librarian: Simple Wins in Small Doses

Installment Four:

"Managing Yourself While Managing Change"



How do you manage change?

Click on comments below and share your simple wins.

Music: "Appalachian Rain v7" performed by Dave2
http://banjohangout.ws/banjohangout.org/storage/audio/appalachia-2999-0391325122006.mp3
Image: Welcome Home
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