Category Archives: Training

Training

Training Tips: The Vision Thing

(First of all: gold stars to all of us old enough to remember when the title phrase bounced all over the 1988 presidential campaign. No worries kids: your present will eventually be dimly-remembered history too!)

 

Vision is one of the things that separates leaders from everyone else.

That seems like a bold statement, and like anything else so broad and deep – we could unpack it philosophically for hours.

But I’m not really interested in that kind of thinking. (Please carry on with it, if that’s for you!) Instead, I like to get right to the heart of things.

Anyone can be a leader.

You don’t need a fancy job title. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need experience. You don’t need to be wonderful, perfect, and a delight to everyone who meets you.

You can still be a leader.

And if you are working in a library, you should strive to be a leader!

Why? Why should you bother? You aren’t in charge anyway. You are only part-time. It’s somebody else’s responsibility. Your colleagues are jerks who wouldn’t listen to anyone anyway.

Well. That’s quite a list. I’ve heard all of these, and more when I talk to people about leadership.

And – not to sound too uncaring here – but I don’t care.

It’s easy to make excuses why you can’t help. It’s much easier to complain when you don’t like things than it is to help build something better.

But we all know, deep down, that’s just wussy.

Vision does not have to mean “changing the world and everything in it!!” Probably, in fact, it’s better not to do that.

Vision in library work can mean all kinds of things.

  • Making your job, and/or department, more efficient
  • Trying new things, taking on new tasks
  • Reaching out to a new person, or new people
  • Thinking about different ways to do programs
  • Setting up a social media account, or revamping the current one
  • Learning some words in a language new to you, so you are ready to provide service
  • Doing some evaluation of your current materials/programs/services to find out what you can do better
  • Stopping some stuff you have done, but probably doesn’t need to happen
  • Work out a new scheduling process
  • Reading about new ideas, and trying them out
  • Doing some purposeful continuing education so you can reshape your job to be something more interesting

Just this week I’ve listened to a podcast about a small company in Alaska working on building streets and sidewalks that are heated – so we can cut out a lot of the danger of slippery icy streets, and the environmental hazards of salt everywhere. I heard an architect talk about building skyscrapers with wood instead of concrete, to make them more environmentally friendly and also sturdier. And I just read this article about a city in China that wants to put up “moons” (satellites) in space to help them light their city at night. This is estimated to save them nearly $250 million in electricity costs each year!

You don’t have to think on that kind of grand scale.

But…you could if you wanted to! You could try new things, experiment a little bit. Learn a skill you don’t have right now – even if you aren’t great at it.

Vision.

It’s trying out things, and continuing to improve.

It’s for you!

(Check out our Linking Our Libraries podcast episode on Vision, with Guest Host Valerie Horton from Minitex!)

 

Training

Episode 407 Credibility

This week we are going to talk about building and having credibility as one of the most important skills leaders need to be successful in their workplaces.

This is another one of the key competencies leaders need to be successful. Take a moment now and think about leaders, managers, and directors you know who lack credibility. They lie, the cheat, the shade the truth. You never know that what they are saying to you in the moment is what they will say tomorrow – or an hour from now. You just know that this is someone you cannot rely on to lead your work successfully.

So, what is credibility? For us, it means building trust in others; doing what you say you will do; being consistent in speech and actions. It’s easy to define, and really easy to lose.

Join Angie, Lydia, and Mary as we talk about credibility ideas!

Check out our full show notes page here!

Check out this episode!

Training

Training Tips: Leadership – it’s for YOU!

We just went to the Minnesota Library Association annual conference, here in St. Cloud. It was great!! Thanks so much to everyone involved in all the work to set up this conference – it was fun and educational for everyone!

As a shameless plug, we gave a presentation about our podcast: Linking Our Libraries, and leadership training. It also was great! We had a good group of people who participated in our discussion – thanks to everyone who was there.

But it was the discussion I had with people outside of this session that made me pause to ponder a little more. Several people said they didn’t need leadership skills, or that their colleagues/staff would not be interested in learning about leadership skills.

I wanted to wave my hands enthusiastically (as is my way), and say “EVERYONE needs more leadership skills! EVERYONE can improve their skills! It DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL what job people have in a library – developing leadership skills will help them to connect to the mission of the library and to deliver better services!”

(Yeah, I get all excited when I talk about libraries!)

But I didn’t do this. I didn’t wave with enthusiasm. I didn’t happily exclaim over the joys of improving skills.

Partly: it wasn’t the right venue. We were having short conversations, and it’s important to listen and to take in what people have to say.

Partly: I don’t want to seem bratty – like I’m insisting on my view of libraries, and how wonderful we can be.

And partly: I’m kind of flabbergasted at the need to say any of this.

 

So now I’m back in the office (yay!), typing away, and ready to say the good stuff I was thinking about the last few days.

You need good leadership skills.

Your job title may, or may not, have the words manager, director, head, or executive. That’s almost completely irrelevant.

Sure, those people definitely need to spend time honing their leadership skills – it’s a requirement to be good at what they are doing.

But a lot of our members – and most people who work in all types of libraries, everywhere – are not in charge. They don’t have library degrees. They don’t have a ton of experience with the professional culture of libraries.

And all of that is completely okay! We could not care less about any of that.

“Leading From Any Position” is a nearly-clichéd thing to say when you talk about leadership. But it’s absolutely true. You can lead from any position. You can lead being part-time, being untrained in library ethics and skills, being on the lowest level of your library’s organization chart.

Leadership does not (necessarily) mean being in charge and taking your library in new directions. Sometimes it does. But sometimes it means understanding how the strategic plan works because you are part of the team. Sometimes it means understanding the value of vision because you want to be part of improving the library. It means understanding good decision making because you are on the front lines of dealing with your patrons and that requires a lot of quick-but-good decisions to make them happy.

Many of our members are solo library people or working only with a couple of others. It can be lonely. And it means you really need to be a leader, to be sure your library gets the resources and recognition it needs to be successful!

 

In Seasons Three and Four (that one is going on right now) of Linking Our Libraries, we talk about a new leadership skill each week. This is available to anyone in a library, at no cost. We share ideas and talk with Guest Hosts. You won’t get overwhelmed, because it’s only about 20 minutes long – and we keep it all pretty light and fun!

Leadership is not a mysterious topic. It’s not reserved for only SOME people out there.

It’s for everyone! It’s definitely for you!!

Join us! You know that we would love to have you as part of the learning team!!

 

You can check out our episode line up for Season Four right here. We will drop a new episode every Thursday, so you can subscribe on your podcast app – or just go to our website and listen there.

Take these skills – and many others – and lead your library in a great direction!!

 

Training

Episode 406 Vision

Joining us this week is Valerie Horton, director of Minitex!

Check out our full show notes page here!

Vision can mean different things to different people. But nearly every study of leadership skills and competencies agree that this is one of the most important leaders can develop. For our purposes, vision means looking at the future and see where the library can go; articulating directions to others.

Of course, if we all had crystal balls and perfect views of the future, this would be so easy! “Let’s do this! Let’s try that! Oops! Money will be short next year; let’s start on some grants now!”

Sadly, few of us will have those skills. We have never yet met a leader who always knew what was going to happen in the future, and could also make perfect predictions. (Check out our episode on planning for other ideas!)

But vision is bigger than that. Vision means that you look at the present, you understand the past, and you think about where you want to go in the future. It is a deceptively complex skill, because you cannot ever know you are doing exactly the right thing –but if you do not have vision, you and your library go nowhere.

Check out this episode!

Training

Training Tips: Attending Conferences!

We have talked about our love for attending conferences in the past. You get to see new things, meet interesting people, and learn cool stuff to take back to your library!

This week the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) is holding their annual conference in St Cloud – and we are excited!

So we are going to re-run our podcast episode from last year on attending and presenting at conferences. It’s always good to have some tips on going – whether you have been a hundred times, or if this is your first one.

If you are subscribed to Linking Our Libraries, you will automatically get it on Monday this week, along with our regularly scheduled episode on Thursday.

And if you would rather just stream episodes than subscribe, no problem! Just click here to listen to it right now, and browse all the show notes!

If you are going to MLA, we would love to chat with you!!! We will be presenting on community engagement Thursday at 8am, and about leadership learning and podcasting on Friday at 10:30. Come visit us!!