Episode 909: Supervision and Management

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 focusing 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 prior episodes, but this season we will be looking specifically at the material the ALA has identified as important. We will link to the ALA’s program, if you want more information or want to sign up for one of their classes.

Earlier this season we talked about the three required courses in this certification program. This week we are talking about one of the competencies that is optional: Supervision and Management. We have two entire seasons, from Seasons Three and Four, talking about different management competencies that might be useful to you. So check those out for more information!

“Library Support Staff often hold positions that involve supervision and management. These staff members may also need to demonstrate the competencies specific to a department in which they work.”

Let’s take a look at a few of the fourteen different components the ALA has identified as important here, and talk about a little information on each one. You can get more information about the full list on their website.

1. Library Support Staff know basic regulations and laws that govern employment, library policies, and procedures; and how policies are influenced by local, state, and federal laws and regulations. You do not need a detailed understanding of all HR law. But you do want to know things like the amount of break time you need to give staff, whether they can be asked to work extra hours, and how to handle it when employees have an emergency and need to be off work for a while. When you are dealing with laws, it’s not enough to try to be a good person – you have to be correct. So be sure you feel comfortable with the rules and regulations in place for your library.

2. Staff need to know basic principles of staff management, supervision, and discipline. There are a lot of different ways to manage staff effectively, and everyone needs to develop their own strategies. It is possible to be the kind of boss who yells and screams, or the kind of boss who extensively micromanages every single thing people do at work. But really, those are pretty ineffective methods in the long run. Like everything else, management is a skill that people can learn – it’s not something you are born knowing. So spend some time looking at the archives of this podcast, or browsing our website, or looking at other material that will make you feel more comfortable with your skills as a supervisor. 

3. Supervising library staffers will participate in recruiting, hiring, training, evaluating, and promoting library staff. Some of this is, again, covered by HR laws and regulations; so you want to know how to correctly do things like post a job ad with equitable language, and how to interview people without violating their privacy. Once staff get to the library, it can be tempting to just let them go and do whatever they want as long as the work gets done. That’s not a terrible strategy, but you need to be ready to provide regular evaluations that will help staff to improve performance when needed and to help them to achieve their goals.

4. Staff who are managing other staffers should set clear performance expectations for staff linked to the library’s strategies and priorities. Your library should have a strategic plan, and a mission and vision statement. These are your guiding documents, and they will be the foundation of everyone’s work. When supervising people, it can be easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of work – and that is important too. But all the small pieces of work need to link back to the overall goals of the organization. If the tasks staffers are doing on a daily basis do not build the mission of the library, they need to be adjusted.

5. Library staff know basic principles of leadership. These can vary, but some common skills good leaders need to develop are good communication, developing and maintaining a good working environment, promoting diversity and inclusion, being positive about the mission of the library and of the department, and knowing how to develop a teamwork environment. Some of these will be relatively easy; some will be pretty complex depending on the people involved and the skill of the manager. But all of this can be learned, all of it can improve with training. There are too many bad managers and leaders in the library world, and there is no excuse for that. Keep leading and focusing on a better library future!

6. Staff should know how to plan, implement, and encourage participation in staff development activities. What’s the first thing people say when you tell them there is an in-service day? Or that we are having mandatory training? Ugh, yuck, noooooo! But of course, the library field is a fast-moving profession; and that means we all need to keep building our skills. If staff really hate one type of training, then get them into another type. But allowing people to just wallow in outdated methods of work is not acceptable.

7. All library staff, not just supervisors, should know the value of written, approved policies and procedures and the difference between policies and procedures and are able to develop policies and procedures for review. We have talked about the importance of having written policies and procedures many times. They give guidance in tough situations, and they can give you protection against complaints. Developing new procedures could be something anyone does, as staff innovate new strategies for work. Then getting that written down and approved by your governing body can be handled by supervisors. 

8. Staffers know the basic purposes and concepts of budgeting and are able to request, defend, and follow a budget for library activities. This is an area where people get unnecessarily nervous. Budgets are not about complicated math; they are planning documents. You put dollar amounts to those plans so you can make them a reality. From there, it’s addition and subtraction – or, more likely, letting the program you are using do the math while you do the thinking. Keep up with budgets so you know where you are; and you avoid problems like overspending budget lines or running out of money halfway through the fiscal year.

9. Library staff supervisors should know the basics of fundraising and grant writing and are able to prepare a proposal to raise funds to support library programs. We talk about grants pretty frequently on this podcast, so browse through the archives for episodes on writing grants for your library. There are two secrets. First: it’s probably a lot easier than you think to write good grants. Second: think about what the funder wants as you fill out the paperwork. Answer the questions that are asked, and don’t worry about being creative there. Give them all the information they need to make a good decision, and will put you way ahead of the pack. 

10. And finally, library staff managers should be able to apply concepts of user-oriented customer service to build positive relationships between staff and users. You know that not everyday in a library is sunshine and happiness. No customer service job is always going to be fun, and that includes libraries. But an effective manager will be working to build and to maintain a positive environment in the library. It should be a happy place for patrons to visit. It should be an overall positive place for staff to work. There should not be huge disputes that drag on between staff, or between patrons and staff. Once an organizational culture goes bad, it’s very difficult to bring it back. Managers need to keep inspiring people to work toward a positive present and future in the library.

Do you feel like you have a quick understanding of these components? There is, of course, a lot more to learn. And there are more pieces to this specific competency from the ALA. 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!

Conclusion

This was a quick overview. 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!