Tag Archives: training tips

Training

Training Tips: Take a moment. Breathe.

Election season is beating in on all of us. People in schools are hitting that mid-semester deluge. And then things are always just…exciting and interesting.

If you join me in feeling kind of overwhelmed by all of this, then join me in working past it.

We have talked about stress management in our podcast episodes, and in some of our other material. And it’s always worth talking about again.

Stress is an ongoing issue in our profession. When your job is helping people, solving their problems, and fixing things for them – it drains you. It’s important to take time to refresh and recharge – not just as a nice idea, but as a fundamental thing you need to do to keep doing your best work.

Let’s walk through some ideas for reducing your stress levels, and increasing your happiness levels.

  • Stop. Take a deep breath. Breathe out. Do it again. This sounds simplistic, but ceasing movement and bringing in extra oxygen will help to give your brain a quick boost.
  • Smile. I’m usually annoyed by this as advice; but if you are in a momentary situation, a quick smile will tell your brain to change directions at least for a minute or so.
  • Walk. Or run, jump, skip, hurdle, row, cycle – whatever movement you enjoy.  Movement will get blood flowing around your brain, bringing it more oxygen and other good stuff. Exercise over time will help your brain to keep its chemicals balanced, which will let you feel happier and less stressed and anxious. You don’t have to be a great athlete – just move around until you are a little breathless.  Do that each day. It will help.
  • Watch some calming videos. I definitely enjoy Kitten Academy – tiny kittens playing together until they are adopted to their fur-ever homes to be spoiled and happy.  I also like to watch relaxation videos on YouTube. Just type that into the search, and you will be presented with tons of choices.
  • Close your eyes. Meditation or prayer can help you to get hold of your racing emotions, thoughts, and wild ideas. Doing this regularly can cause structural changes to your brain that will help you to be calmer, more balanced, and more centered. It’s not a trick – it’s science. Go with it.
    • You can freestyle this, doing what makes you feel good here, or there are a ton of apps that are helpful. I’m using Headspace right now, and it has absolutely helped me to be calmer and more balanced. (I get nothing at all if you download, or if you pay them – you don’t have to; so enjoy if you wish, or find another app that helps you!)

You might be drawn toward less-helpful strategies to temporarily help you to feel better. Binging on Ben and Jerry’s, alcohol, or other drugs may be relaxing in the moment.  It may not be a good long-term solution for you, so give some thought to strategies for stress management that don’t have negative side effects.

We like you, and we need you to be here and wonderful for libraries. The fewer negative side effects we can all have, the better off we are all likely to feel.

Hang in there. Breathe. Do it again. Don’t forget that part.

We are a big community of library people, all working toward a wonderful library world. You are part of it.

Relax. Breathe. Feel good.

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

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

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!!

Training

Training Tips: Using CMLE Podcasts for Fun and Profit

Okay, that title may be overselling it just a tad.

For sure, we promise fun! Libraries are ALWAYS fun topics to discuss!! Plus, we have so many interesting Guest Hosts, we talk about cool stuff – it would be pretty impossible to not have fun!

And we haven’t even mentioned the wonderful assistance Official Office Dog Lady Grey provides. She’s usually a quiet presence in the studio as we record – but her influence is real.

And you need to keep building skills to continue to be successful in your job. Plus, (see below) we will be offering Continuing Education Clock Hours/CE credits for working your way through the education bonuses in each episode.

We talk about our podcast a lot – and there is much to discuss!

Yes we are doing these partly because we are having fun. I’d challenge you to talk about books you read with interesting people, or ways to think about library success, without having fun.

But our mission as a multitype library system is twofold: Advocacy and Education.

We hope our podcasts achieve both of these goals!

Right now our podcast Linking Our Libraries is up. (Each of our two main podcast run 15 episode seasons, while the other one is on hiatus.)

We are into Season Four. And again this season we are working our way through a collection of leadership/management competencies. These are knowledge, skills, and abilities that anyone working in a library can use.

Each week we talk about a different competency. We provide information you can use to learn more about it, and our Guest Hosts come talk about using the competency in practice.

How can you use this in your own training? How can your library share this information across the staff, or across others in your school or organization?

SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

  • Subscribe to Linking Our Libraries in your favorite podcast app
    • If you see an icon with Official Office Bear Orville – that’s our old link. Unsubscribe to that; we’ve moved up in the world and are all kinds of nifty now!
    • Type or copy this RSS feed into any podcast app: http://linkingourlibraries.libsyn.com/rss
    • You should see the blue, graphic icon that you also see a couple of paragraphs above this very sentence.
  • Stream it on our website
    • Just click here
    • You can see all the episodes on this page
    • Each individual episode has a show notes page. You can stream it right there, and read all the show information
  • Read useful information
    • On each show notes page we have the basics of the material we discussed, so you can find it all in one place
    • This is especially helpful when we talk about content in big lists, or have a lot of topics to share

 

We want this podcast to be a true learning experience for you, and for your colleagues. We will provide a quiz after each episode, to give you a chance to demonstrate and apply the knowledge you learned on the topic. This will help you to cement your understanding of the competency, and give you some ways to apply it in your work life.

School library people, teachers, and anyone else who needs to accumulate continuing education credits: We will provide you with a certificate attesting to your meeting Minnesota state standards for your continuing education requirements. We anticipate working through each podcast episode, and the accompanying material will provide .5 hour of credit.

If you are licensed outside Minnesota, talk to us! We will work to create a system that will work for your state’s requirements.

Stay tuned for this new program!

If you would like to be contacted when we begin this program, add your name and email below. We will have this information in our weekly newsletter, and we will send you a special invitation!