Introduction

Welcome back to Linking Our Libraries! This week we are going to talk about communication as a tool that leaders use to get things done.

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we are here to chat with you this season about building your leadership skills. We provide support and training for all types of libraries, and our work can be used by anyone who wants to build skills, and to become a better leader in your own organization.

Do you want to talk with us further about leadership skills? Do you need some training organized for your organization? We are here for you! Check out our website: cmle.org and let’s get this started!

And while you are here, we would love for you to join our community of leaders! Check out our Patreon, help support the show, and get some fun rewards. Official Office Dog, Lady Grey, thanks you for your support of good leadership!

And now, on with the show!

The Basics

Being an effective communicator is one of the very best ways to demonstrate your leadership strength. What do we mean by communication? This week we mean speaking, writing, listening; understanding your message and conveying it to others.

We have talked about good communication skills in a prior episode, so check out that episode together with this one. In that episode, we talk about the process of communication. In this one, we are going to focus in on some specifics of different communication strategies to help you build up your skills.

Good Communicators

Take a moment here to think about some of the best communicators you have heard. You do not have to like the people, or agree with their views, to know that there are some valuable communication lessons you can learn from these people who excel at the skill:

• Cory Booker: a new US Senator, he not only sounds polished and prepared when he speaks on TV interviews – that is a basic requirement for any politician; but he also reaches out in other ways. He uses social media effectively, and recently started a podcast called Lift Every Voice, “dedicated to shining a light on overlooked issues of injustice and inequality and sharing inspiring stories of change.”
• Winston Churchill: famous for his speeches that helped to keep Britain motivated to fight World War II, you can find any number of quotes from him that are inspiring to this day. Plus, he wrote many books that manage to not only convey information, but also to be interesting reads.
• Michelle Obama: when you listen to her talk, you know she is saying things she believes in and that she has thought about the topic. You believe she cares about the things she is sharing. That connection is a great tool to emulate.
• Vince Lombardi: as the former coach of the Green Bay Packers, Lombardi is remembered for his winning ways, but they started with his communication and focus on the basic ideas he wanted to convey: skill building, discipline, teamwork. Google him for a wide assortment of inspirational quotes.
• Oprah Winfrey: as a talk show host, Oprah became an international sensation because of her ability to connect with audiences, so that they felt like she was talking directly to them. She shared information people wanted to know, even when it was hard to say. Her magazine, O, has been published since 2000.

Who do you know in your life with good communication skills? Who makes you want to listen? Who can share good messages – even when they are not saying things you necessarily want to hear? Who inspires you to want to try harder?

Think carefully about what makes this person a good communicator. Identify one or two things they are doing that you can emulate. You can be deliberate in adding those skills, practicing them until they feel natural.

Listening

The first skill we are going to talk about today is listening. This may be surprising at first: why are we focused on the passive side of communication, instead of crafting the perfect message? The answer is simple. As a leader, it is your responsibility to gather and share information from everywhere, and to find out what people are thinking and sharing. And it is also your responsibility to make the people around you feel valued.

You can accomplish both of these goals with good listening skills.

How do you improve your listening skills? It is not enough to merely sit there and hear someone talking; listening is an active skill. Think about an artist, and the way she looks at a room. When I walk into a room, I may glance around – and I will always notice if someone has books, but otherwise I just see “room” and move on from there. An artist, in contrast, will look at a room and really see the details there. She may notice the accent colors on the sofa cushions, or the way the light hits the wall to form very small rainbows.  She may notice that the furniture could be rearranged for a better flow, that the plants are watered, and that the rug perfectly matches the pattern on the chairs.

Think about becoming an artist at listening. Be active in hearing and taking in what people are saying – both verbally and nonverbally. Here are some suggestions to help you:

• Face the person, and make eye contact – but not too much. You want to show you are paying attention, and that the person is the most important thing to you in that moment. You do not want to come across as a weirdo who stares. It’s a balancing act, but eventually it will feel natural as you visually express interest in the speaker.
• We have talked here before about how emotions are contagious. If you are actively listening, but are panicked or furious or overly exuberant, you cannot take in what is being said – and those emotions are going to warp what the speaker is saying and feeling. Take a moment to take a breath and focus on the speaker.
• Use body language to show you are listening. We talked about making eye contact and facing the person. You can also express your listening skills by nodding at appropriate times, smiling or frowning to fit what is being said, or other motions. You do not need to get so caught up in trying to show reactions that you are listening – just behave as you generally would, but without talking.
• Don’t help. In general, helping is wonderful. As an active listener, you don’t need to offer suggestions or ideas. Just sit there and listen. (When you are sure the speaker has said everything, and you have confirmed the issue with them, THEN you can offer some ideas if you need to.)
• Stay on topic. If Edward is coming to you to talk about YA statistics, and you actively listen to it, but respond with information about the budget – the communication is a failure. Respond to the YA stats first, and get that cleared up; then you can segue the conversation over to the budget.
• Reflect back what is said. Summing up what the speaker said and repeating it can show that you are listening, and can be an opportunity to ask questions or to express your response – excitement, sadness, sympathy. It also gives the speaker a chance to clarify what she meant, so that communication is clear for everyone.

Writing

So much of what library people do involves writing, that we want to take some time now to talk about developing this skill. We did look at this a little bit in our episode last season on Research and Writing, but that focused on some more specific skills. Today, let’s just talk about building your skills as a writer.

• Relax! We write a lot of things here at CMLE, and we love it when people contribute guest columns to us. But do you know what happens when we ask people to share a few paragraphs about something interesting they have done? They panic. They are worried they don’t have anything to say – though everyone has something to contribute. They are worried it won’t sound right – though we just want them to sound like themselves. They worry it won’t be perfectly done – though just putting down a few paragraphs is enough, and we can always team up with them for any necessary polishing. Just relax and write – and things will be fine.
• Write! Just because you write things, they do not have to be perfect, or achieve some unattainable level of fanciness. In fact, just the opposite is true! You want your writing to sound like you – not some imaginary perfect person. If you are writing academic journal articles, they may sound like a slightly fancier version of yourself; but I promise everyone will be so happy if you just write clearly without including lots of extra words and flourishes. Just keep writing.
• See what other people have shared about writing. There are a lot of great websites out there that will give you the basics of good writing – no matter what kind of style you are trying to use. The OWL site from Purdue (Online Writing Lab) is a great one that people use all the time. You can also find tons of well-written books by famous authors about their writing process. Listening to Stephen King or Anne Lamott talking about the struggles they have to make their prose sound so clear gives everyone hope that we can do better!
• Say something interesting. This is probably not too hard in a library! We do interesting things every day. Remember that things you think are just every day may be really valuable to someone who has not heard of your procedure for checking in books, or who is doing their first program, or wants to improve their reader’s advisory skills.
• No one sounds good in a first draft. It is the job of a first drat to be awful – it only serves as a place to dump a bunch of words out of your brain. It is the next trip (or two, or three) over the words, tidying them up and getting them in order, that makes your work readable.

The main thing to remember about improving your writing skills is just to do it! Writing is not for special people – it is for everyone. No matter what you have to share, there is someone else out there who wants to hear from you. (And if you want to share some information about libraries and library work – CMLE may want to share it with our subscribers. Email us and let’s talk!)

Quiz Time!

We are here to learn some useful new skills to help you build your leadership skills, so we want to see how well you have learned this week’s lessons!

This week we want you to focus on the skill of listening. Leaders are people with good ideas, who tend to have a lot to say and to share. But listening to what other people have to contribute is not only polite, it can be very helpful in keeping your organization moving in a good direction. Take time to listen to at least three different people this week. Bonus points if these are people you might generally overlook, or might not take the time to ask for their opinion or advice. Be very deliberate in your listening, and really take in what they are saying – not just waiting for a chance to dive in yourself.

Then send us an email at admin@cmle.org, or comment on our show notes page for this episode, and tell us how it went! Your results can be good, bad, or just thoughtful. We will pick out the best response and send you a special reward from Official Office Dog, Lady Grey. (She’s good at communicating!) We will report the results on next week’s show information page. We are looking forward to hearing from you about your experiences!

Books We Read

The Coroner’s Lunch (A Dr. Siri Paiboun Mystery), by Colin Cotterill  “Laos, 1978: Dr. Siri Paiboun, a 72-year-old medical doctor, has unwillingly been appointed the national coroner of the new socialist Laos. His lab is underfunded, his boss is incompetent, and his support staff is quirky, to say the least. But Siri’s sense of humor gets him through his often frustrating days. When the body of the wife of a prominent politician comes through his morgue, Siri has reason to suspect the woman has been murdered. To get to the truth, Siri and his team face government secrets, spying neighbors, victim hauntings, Hmong shamans, botched romances, and other deadly dangers. Somehow, Siri must figure out a way to balance the will of the party and the will of the dead.”

Pardonable Lies: A Maisie Dobbs Novel, by Jacqueline Winspear “In the third novel of this bestselling series, London investigator Maisie Dobbs faces grave danger as she returns to the site of her most painful WWI memories to resolve the mystery of a pilot’s death.

A deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led her not only to the edge of madness but to the doors of those who practice the dark arts and commune with the spirit world. In accepting the assignment, Maisie finds her spiritual strength tested, as well as her regard for her mentor, Maurice Blanche. The mission also brings her together once again with her college friend Priscilla Evernden, who served in France and who lost three brothers to the war―one of whom, it turns out, had an intriguing connection to the missing Ralph Lawton.”

If you want to get some more book ideas, we would love you to join our podcast book group! Check out our podcast Reading With Libraries, and join us for a new genre each week. We drink beverages matching up with the genre, talk about places to find more info on the genre, and have Guest Hosts who help us to excitedly share all kinds of books we have loved! Join us!

Conclusion

Thanks so much for joining us today! Being a good communicator, in all areas of this skill, will definitely set you apart as a good leader.  Adding this skill to your leadership toolbox will make you better able to get great things accomplished for your organization.

Join us on Patreon! We would love to have you as part of our leadership community. And we really appreciate your support of the show. (Official Office Dog Lady Grey needs treats, after all! She communicates that very clearly, along with her appreciation of your support. Check out her photos on our Patreon page to admire the cuteness she shares with us all!)

Tune in next Thursday for another important leadership skill! We are looking forward to chatting with you then.