Welcome to Season Nine of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you join us again! We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.

This season we are going to focus on topics that are important to library support staff. We will be discussing each of the ten competency sets in the American Library Association’s Library Support Staff Certification program. Some of these may overlap with our Library Basics series from Season Seven, but this season we will be looking specifically at the material the ALA has identified as important n. We will link to the ALA’s program, if you want more information or want to sign up for one of their classes.

This week we are talking about another one of the competencies that is required in the LSSC program: Communication and Teamwork. “Library Support Staff need to communicate effectively with library users, library staff, and others in a variety of situations to offer high-quality customer service.” Being able to communicate and to work together as part of a team is critical for good library service. Even when you are the only person working in your library, there are people across your parent organization you need to work in harmony with every day. Communication and teamwork will help you to get there effectively.

Let’s take a look at each of the nine different components the ALA has identified as important here, and talk about a little information on each one.

1. Library Support Staff (LSS) know the basic concepts of interpersonal relations, customer service, teamwork, and communication. Knowing some of the basics of these different areas will not only help you to be better at serving your patrons, it will also help you to be more successful with your colleagues. We have talked about each of these topics in separate podcast episodes, so we have those for you to browse. It is not enough to just be a nice person, there is a system to doing good customer service, to working as part of a team, and to having good communication. Once you crack these systems, it is a lot easier to be successful!

2. You want to select the most appropriate medium for communicating based on the language, communication styles, and needs of library users and colleagues. Back in the olden days of 15 or 20 years ago, the main ways we communicated with our community and with our colleagues were verbally, hanging up posters, and mailing out newsletters. These are still useful strategies, and libraries use them – though now we send electronic versions of the newsletters instead of printing paper and mailing them, and it’s so much easier! And in addition to these methods, there are so many other ways we can reach out and connect with everyone! Your library should be on social media, and we have an entire podcast episode about social media tips. Which one is right for you? It depends on what your patrons are using. And how do you know what they are using? You ask them, and use your verbal skills! Think about how you speak to people. It goes without saying, or it should, that we are respectful to our patrons. Yes, even the ones who are driving us nuts some days. And that respect can come in different strategies for communicating with them; what is appropriate for talking with an older white woman would probably not be appropriate for talking with a group of story time preschoolers. Think about your message, and convey it in a way that makes sense to your audience. And if you get stuck, be a little more polite and respectful in the way you frame your message – just to be sure you are getting across well, whether that is in person, in a Zoom call, in email, in a Tik Tok video, or in a paper newsletter that you mailed out to everyone.

3. It is so important in a library to have the basics of how to resolve conflict in a positive and productive manner and judge when to refer situations to a supervisor. We have talked about conflict management skills, in Episode 206, so go back to that one for a more complete picture of this topic. We talked about managing conflict between employees and patrons, and also between colleagues. Our basic skill suggestions were: Don’t ignore the problem and hope it will just get better: It doesn’t. Stay calm. Take a deep breath. Resist any urge to snap back. Try to remove your emotions from the situation: Reflexive anger is not helpful; moving past it will be more useful. And finally:  Fake this until you really do feel comfortable staying calm in the face of conflict and upset. And knowing when to refer a patron to a supervisor is a good skill to add in there. It can often be the thing that helps patrons to see you are taking their issues seriously. Taking this step to move their problem to someone higher up the organization chart can be helpful in itself, even if the problem isn’t solved.

4. All library staff should understand and use effective communication skills to enhance approachability and to transmit information. Look around your library. You see it every day, but if someone walked in for the first time, what would they see? How easy it is to figure out where to find a person to ask questions of? Where would I check out books? Where would I return them? Then think about how friendly the place is. Are the signs all saying “Don’t do this! No! Forbidden!” or do you have posters about information literacy and authors? If you are having trouble putting yourself in the place of a newbie to your building, actually go get some people who do not know much about your library, and give them a few tasks. See how long it takes them to figure out a few basic library tasks, or to locate a few different books and other types of materials. All of that counts in thinking about the communication skills you would want to use in a library. Keep being active in figuring out more ways to look like a place that is welcoming and friendly – and in actually being that kind of place!

5. Staff need to know how to practice proactive customer service by anticipating and maintaining awareness of users’ needs. This is the skill that really helps to set a library apart from other types of organizations. We are there to say yes to people, to help them solve problems or to find things they will enjoy. We provide an amazing array of services and materials to people, for no direct payments. (And even our payment made through taxes or tuition is shockingly small for all the return people get.) Just keep doing that! Be active in reaching out to your patrons, to see what else they need. Last week we talked about libraries being on the cutting edge of knowledge, and that means we need to keep looking around and doing our part to get ahead of those needs. So, keep asking, keep looking around, keep listening to trends in your community. And then reach out beyond your users. There are a lot of other people in the community, and it would be great if we could all start serving other needs of people to encourage them to come to the library. We will never be able to be all things to all people, but always striving to do more and to meet new and different needs in the community will always be the right answer.

6. It is important to use effective verbal and non-verbal skills that provide the library user with a positive interaction. We have all seen customer service people who do everything they can to show how unhappy they are to have to talk with people. They sigh, they roll their eyes, they shout at patrons. You can see it in their body language: they cross their legs, they fold their arms across their chests, they turn themselves away from the person they are talking to. It’s obvious, and it’s unpleasant to watch or to be on the receiving end of this. Instead, be deliberate in modeling yourself on the communication skills you see in the people who make other people happy. Let people know you are happy they are in the library. Say hello and ask if you can help with something. Thank them for coming when they are leaving, and invite them to return. When people ask for help with those difficult or personal issues, be welcoming and open to that. Always look for a way to say yes to people, whenever possible. And use those skills with your coworkers. It can be challenging to work with the same small group of people for ten or 20 years; at that point you all know exactly how to get on each other’s nerves, and it’s sometimes so easy to do that. As you are communicating, focus on positive messages. Workplace harmony is so hard to regain once it’s been lost; it’s important that everyone focuses on doing their part to keep it going.

7. Good staffers know and use the tools of delivering difficult or sensitive information. Library work can involve a surprising amount of work that is challenging, beyond an expected challenge of standard customer service work. When you spend time helping people find information that can be very personal to them, some of that is going to involve helping them to find information about sad or upsetting events.Thinking about your strategies you are going to use to make this work – for yourself and for your patrons – will help you to be more effective. It’s good to know the lines you do not want to cross; library people are not psychologists or doctors, so we cannot always help patrons in severe distress. But we can help them to find the best information for their situations, and to find the resources that can be helpful to them.

8. Library staffers need to be able to participate effectively on teams, commit to meeting agreed-upon goals and objectives, communicate respectfully and professionally, and support team decisions. Everyone who has worked anywhere knows people who cannot be counted on to get things done, or who attend meetings only to cause trouble and drama. These are terrible employees. Working as part of a team is integral to making a library function. No library has a surplus of extra people, so every person is important and needs to do their part. Being part of a work group is not always fun or enjoyable; but being an active drag on the work of a committee is unacceptable. Knowing to take a step back, and to focus on the task at hand instead of being sad about that task, is the skill to develop here. It also makes you look like a good worker when people know you are the one who can be counted on to just get the job done when it counts – and that is very impressive.

9. It is important to seek, give, and accept constructive feedback from co-workers, supervisors, and users. Sometimes this is tough. It can be hard to tell people uncomfortable things, but when you are working in a group it is important to trust that everyone will tell the truth – and that means telling people when things are not great. Framing it as constructive feedback, instead of complaints, is definitely the way to go with this. It is really destructive to good teamwork to have people complaining about the performance of other team members who are not present. It’s okay to be direct and identify problems – just be thoughtful about it.
   
   And when it’s your turn to get the feedback, be thoughtful in receiving it. Nobody likes to be told their ideas are not working out, or that they did something wrong. But we all need it, and we all make mistakes at work. Be open to receiving feedback that will help you to not only correct mistakes, but also to avoid that mistake in the future! It’s all part of being a good team member.

Do you feel like you have a quick understanding of all nine of these components of communication and teamwork? There is, of course, a lot more to learn. We can all spend our careers working on enhancing these skills! Use the CMLE podcast resources as a place to start, and if you want to sign up for the ALA/APA classes to get more information, we link to them in our show notes. 

Books Read

Now, let’s get to the part of every episode that we love: sharing a book we are reading. We will link to these books on our shownotes pages, and the link will take you to Amazon. You probably know this, but when you click one of our links and then buy anything at all from Amazon, they give us a small percentage of their profits. That support really helps us, and although it’s anonymous so we won’t know it was you – we appreciate you taking the time to help us!

• How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, by Steven Johnson 
• The Prince and the Dressmaker, by Jen Wang

Conclusion

This was a quick overview of the skills of communication and teamwork. Stay with us all season to get an overview of all ten of the ALA/APA’s certification topics for library staffers. And if you want to find out more about getting certified yourself, check the website (linked in our show notes), or just email us at admin@cmle.org.

Thanks for spending time with us today. It is always great to have this time to chat with you about libraries and the skills we need to be successful. Come back next week, because we have more information to share about libraries! This is just the beginning, and there are so many other great things to share!