Tag: leadership

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Library Leadership

Library Schedules

library-leadership
Customers inside a busy library with engaged employees

If you are new to managing employees or unsure how to handle your team’s schedules with pandemic restrictions, read on for some tips to help navigate library scheduling.

Plan Holidays and Vacations

Most organizations will need some notice if extended time away from work is requested by an employee. Some workplaces even have minimum timelines for these requests to be approved.  The farther out schedules are, the easier unexpected situations are to address.   Using a spreadsheet or scheduling software, develop a template. Figure the minimum staff needed to work at customer service positions at the library.

With your minimum staff number in mind, map out six to eight weeks of schedules inputting vacations, programs, and time off. Use remaining staff available to develop your desk schedule to serve the public. Keep in mind your customer foot traffic will be less due to Covid closures.

Rotating Staff

If your library is small or has only one service desk, scheduling can be simpler. If your library has multiple floors or has a spacious floor plan, then two or even more service points are the norm. Does your library have a dedicated phone line or does the entire staff answer the phone as needed? Another service point, in the call center, requires scheduling attention.

The recommendation is to rotate professional librarians and paraprofessionals between all service points for seamless customer experiences. Leadership roles should also consider covering public service points, to promote cross training opportunities. In addition, this increases empathy for your team’s interactions with the public too.

Resolving Concerns

Any manager has fielded complaints about the schedule “not being fair.”  This is the time to pull out your negotiating skills and leave policy to provide the best answers for scheduling decisions. Employees may not understand about staffing levels, unexpected sick time or prep for programs. Furthermore, being as consistent as possible with every employee is the best method to address conflicts and accusations of favoritism.

Finally, employees love time off the service desk, and managers need to provide a fair and equitable schedule to assist customers and staff.

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Library Jobs

Career Development

Have an agenda and your goals will be accomplished
Have a plan and keep refining for success.

Organizations will have you train or take self-paced learning courses when starting a new job. When you are a tenured worker or better yet a knowledgeable librarian, what professional development should you focus on? What are the next steps in your career development of librarianship?  Read on for advice to broaden your skillsets. Professional development allows you to excel to the next level in your library career.

Volunteer to Lead

When you are offered an opportunity to lead or be a part of a committee, take it!  For example, leading the annual staff training day or planning for the summer reading program should be on your radar. Plan to participate and provide your valuable input  and leadership.

If you work in an academic library, consider volunteering to work on a grant application to benefit your institution and library. Taking the initiative to lead will show others you have the leadership qualities to move forward.

Develop a Plan

As a professional your own development is up to you. Come up with other methods to excel and stand out in your organization in the specialty you’re pursuing. For example, if you are a youth services librarian, then branch out into another areas. Gain a mentor in a technical area to broaden your skills. However, be of  value to the organization in any area and find your niche.

Looking for opportunities and asking to help in other areas is always appreciated by leadership. You will get you noticed for other openings as they become available. Have a plan or goal in mind and ask the appropriate manager if you can shadow to learn new tasks. Furthermore, take on extra responsibilities to learn a brand new skill. You will thank yourself down the road for taking the leap.

Be Flexible

Keep in mind opportunities will present themselves when you least except them. So, be flexible and take them when they’re offered. Be ready to jump at a chance if a position aligns with your goals and career options.

Finally, timelines and career focus are great, but life is unpredictable. You need to remain open to unique opportunities.  If you’ve worked hard and provide value to an organization, they will snap you up. You both win.  Good Luck and Happy Learning!

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career Library Jobs Library Leadership

Career Mentoring for Success

Leadership written in blue and hand writing the word visible.

Being a mentor or getting mentoring advice will help your career success in many ways you might not realize. Here are a few reasons  why putting yourself out there to provide advice to a colleague helps you and your mentee. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a mentee is “one who is being mentored a protégé.”

Job Satisfaction

Studies have shown that sharing your job knowledge and leadership experiences gives you a more satisfied feeling in your  role. Furthermore, we feel good when we have mastered a skill. We feel even better when we can share that with others. Mentors show commitment to their profession and their teams. Sharing  a bit of ourselves and our experience broadens our relationships. A trusting mentor/mentee relationship is invaluable for job satisfaction.

Succession Planning

When you receive mentoring from a leader or another colleague you are learning valuable lessons from a seasoned employee. Someone who has already been through an experience or solved a particular issue. This creates a great learning opportunity to gain knowledge and have exposure to real-world examples. These topics you might never even know existed, if not for your mentor. Like the old saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Hearing and learning firsthand from a mentor are valuable ways to expand your toolkit for heading up the career ladder and in turn assisting your organization’s leadership.

Additional Exposure

For men and women mentoring gives an opportunity to show your company what you’ve got to offer and can open additional opportunities for your career growth.  Professional conferences, industry memberships and networking events can all be a form of mentoring or passing on valuable experience to help others in your industry. With travel opening more, considering a more formal platform to share your skills and experience with others.

Not able to travel? How about a more organic platform to mentor colleagues and share your experiences openly. I remember a roundtable of community stakeholders that would assemble once a quarter to discuss current business trends. This group discussed challenges and upcoming concerns others might not be aware of. This was a group method of passing on important information while keeping our networks active. While not as personal as one on one mentoring, connections were made and relationships were forged during our gatherings four times each year and continue today.

If you have an idea on a mentoring strategy let me know. We all should be sharing and learning!

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Librarian & Entrepreneurship Library Leadership

Digital Marketing in Libraries

The internet and digital marketing have advantages for libraries. Read on for a couple of tricks to increase your library’s exposure and customer base. Libraries are here to stay, and social media will help bring customers back into the building.

Social Media

It’s a Facebook/Twitter/Instagram driven world. This means that marketing your library on these social media platforms is essential. That’s true for any business. Post pictures of programs, customers, and be sure to use hashtags every post. Post photos of the building, bookstore, and community events at your library. Keep up with various literary events such as Banned Books Week or National Library Week.

Email Marketing

Set up a mailing list and then blast out newsletters and other information to teachers, legislators, and other local officials. Customers need to be reminded the library is in the community.  Furthermore, reach out to new customers interested in various events at your library. Grow those customers and sign them up for a library card!

Use Videos

A picture is worth a thousand words, and photos sell. We live in a video-saturated world.  Make short videos about the programs at your library.  Storytimes and children’s programs have the biggest audiences at libraries, so publicize the most popular.

When doing this or taking pictures, it is important to use a proper high-quality HD-capable camera. With all the images we encounter in our daily lives now, we are quite good at telling HD from non-HD photos. The latter are now judged as inferior by default. Go for the quality and make an impression.

Event Marketing

What’s the next big event that you’re hosting at your library? Whatever it is, you want to use that to market your library big time. What’s more, you need to make sure that as many people know about it as possible. Use the tools above, employ flyers and banners, advertise to schools, and use other traditional event planning measures to get as much exposure as possible.

All this and more can help you get your library the publicity it needs and deserves

 

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career Library Leadership

Productive Meetings

Have an agenda and your goals will be accomplished
Have a plan and keep refining for success.

During this time of hybrid and remote work, meetings whether virtual or in person, are vital for healthy team morale. Productive communication from you and senior leadership is so important to share information and gather employee feedback. Keep the following tips in mind when holding your next staff meeting.

Agendas

 Host meetings if there is important information to be distributed that cannot be shared via email or phone. To hold a meeting just because, really is not a sufficient reason. So, be sure employees are aware of the agenda, and send it out 24 hours ahead of your meeting. 

Furthermore, if you’re hosting a guest speaker also include their contact on the email reminder and an agenda. If the meeting is a brainstorming session, be specific of the intended outcomes. Before the meeting begins, provide employees context. Enable the team to prepare their thoughts beforehand. No one likes to waste time. Set the stage for expectations with a meeting agenda for the best results.

Online meetings

While easy to attend, virtual meetings lack the social interaction and networking that in person gatherings provide. If your organization’s meetings are mostly virtual, establish parameters for video and audio use.

For example, will all attendees be expected to have cameras ON but muted audio unless speaking? Be sure staff are aware of the expectations. How should attendees dress? Should audio be muted? It’s difficult to gauge an audience virtually, so ask your questions multiple times for various responses. Be sure to monitor the chat function to ensure no question is unanswered. Also check throughout the meeting for raised hands. 

Note Taking

A short review of what was shared via email is important after the meeting. Some employees might not have attended, or contacts and links were shared that staff need to complete a task. Having information written down is important for effective communication and accuracy. Rotating the note taking responsibility among your team or designating one person each quarter is a solid strategy. It’s also an excellent professional development tool for your team.

Virtual meetings have the option to be recorded, which makes note taking even easier. Whatever method used, be consistent and your communications and meetings will run smoothly every time.

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Library Leadership

Libraries and Programming

Shelves of books to promote reading and self-care.
Books make me happy!

We have lived through the last two years in pandemic mode with many changes including library services. We have seen service models change and new programs emerge. The needs of communities are at the forefront of these changes, along with health and safety. So, what do programs look like now, with COVID-19 and health risks still in the foreground for many libraries? Let’s look at some successes.

Programs Outdoors

If you are lucky to live in a climate where in-person library programs can be held outside, patrons can have a new service model outdoors. Customers enjoy storytimes, school-age crafts, or book clubs social distanced for safety. However, programs are very engaging. If your climate is too warm or snowy, then an alternative has been a hybrid format. Producing online programs streamed via Zoom or prerecorded. This has become popular with many libraries.

Prerecorded Library Programs

Other libraries have great success and attendance with recording programs and posting the links. Posting within a Facebook post is also a great way to host a pre-recorded program. The advantage of prerecorded story times is easy editing and a way for the librarian to overcome nerves. Having your program recorded allows the flexibility to fix mistakes before posting. The link is available to update easily as your library changes. Plus the needs of your audience will change too.

Online Library Gatherings

Finally, many public libraries have adapted to all online programs due to funding constraints or public health concerns. Whether prerecorded or live every week at a predetermined time, virtual programs are the safest way to provide literacy and learning to a community. However, the downside is the staff’s reliance of a live audience for immediate feedback.

You also must have a team that has the skills and technology available to produce engaging library programs. Your library staff will need to have a solid handle on the audience they’re serving and the devices available. Have a reliable solution available if technology fails. Furthermore, bandwidth might be an issue and  would be a burden for your library users during online programs. Be sure to have solid solutions in place for every hiccup that could happen.

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Library Leadership

Plan A Training Day

Single hand holding a small book in a library.
Read up and start opening up your mind.

Organizations especially libraries have long held day long or half day training days. Closing for one day provides a much-needed break for employees to learn and network. Here are a few simple ideas to get your staff training day off the ground.

Have A Plan

If your library will be closing for the day, or celebrating National Library Week, the learning objectives need to be spelled out. Will you be teaching safety polices, new technology or providing an opportunity to hear a  speaker ? Planning a training day, your organization will guide the learning outcomes. Some constants will always remain the same. Food and staff participation are two of the most important that need to be considered when planning your day together.

Staff Involvement

The best method is to include the entire team to set up committees at least six months in advance of your training day. Subcommittees allow all employees to be included in the decisions of the entire day and plays to the strengths of everyone involved with the planning. Spreading the planning among many of your team, also allows professional development for every level of employee.  Allowing all staff to participate in planning also provides valuable buy-in to the day’s activities and successful outcomes.

Food and Fun

Providing meals or even snacks is totally up to you and the budget. Would the Library Friends group be willing to donate food for staff day? Could every staff member bring something for a continental breakfast or easy lunch? Having food and beverages available for your team makes a huge difference, so get creative if your organization will not allow you to purchase food items.

Also include a fun activity that builds your team morale. Are you creating art together, making a bridge from marshmallows, or playing 20 questions while roaming the room? Plan something enjoyable to do as a team to bring everyone together even for 30 minutes. Planning a staff day will be beneficial for your work group in many ways and taking the first few steps is very easy!

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career Librarian & Entrepreneurship Library Leadership

Libraries and Entrepreneurs

library-leadership

Many people dream of becoming entrepreneurs. They look forward to being in control of their own destiny and love building a career. Entrepreneurs are motivated and driven, and they aren’t afraid of hard work. The question is, where can you find resources to help get started? The answer is your local library!

Libraries Provide Access 

There are many research and reference tools for entrepreneurs at public libraries. Online tools that would cost a fortune if you had to purchase them yourself are free. Libraries have resources such as Reference USA, Regional Business News, and Business Source Premier for free.  These databases normally would cost thousands of dollars to access. Public libraries allow free access anytime with a library card and computer. Check to see if your city has multiple library systems, to access different subscriptions from each library. 

Free Patent Information

Checking out a patent or idea before moving forward is an entrepreneur’s first step. It is important to make sure that someone else doesn’t hold a trademark or patent on your idea. Libraries provide patent check resources and trademark information for free. This way, an idea is vetted before investing heavily.  Avoid legal problems down the road by checking out your idea. 

Check Out the Competition

Researching your competition before you start your business is also important. Entrepreneurs want know everything about potential competitors.  Furthermore, the library offers free information on marketing, demographics, and sales volume for the competition. Information that is invaluable for your idea to be successful.  The Reference USA database is the best source to help you gain an edge with your own company.

Raising Capital

Finally, raising capital in any business is essential. You will need to find investors or angel funders.  Libraries have all the information you need to begin the search. You will find resources and people to help you create a pitch, a logo, and more. You can find ideas on how to name your product, and you can learn how to speak in public. Finally, you can learn how to approach investors and sell them on your idea. The public library should be the first stop for any start up, and all the information is free!  Best of luck on your new venture.

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Librarian & Entrepreneurship

Leadership at Work

Gaining trust and building influence at work are important leadership skills and for the success of your library team. You will manage conflict better and be respected when hard decisions come down. During meetings, you are more likely to be heard and acknowledged when you’ve established a solid reputation with results based on integrity. Gaining influence is a skill and it takes experience. Continue reading to set the foundation for being an effective leader and influencer in your organization.

Start by Building Trust

Trust is a critical component of influence within your team and organization. When trust is the standard in the work culture, employees will listen to you and respect your opinion. Staff will know that changes or tasks are necessary without pushing back when trust exists. You cultivate trust by having open and honest conversations with your co-workers and leaders. Asking questions of your team and walking the library floor are good ways to connect. Honesty and open communication is the cornerstone to a healthy work team.

Be Consistent

You will build influence when you are consistent. People want their leaders to be predictable and follow through with tasks. You should be consistent with staff meetings, team feedback, and act upon the feedback provided. You should also be consistent in what you expect from others at work. This builds trust within the team, which helps build your reputation as a leader. Consistency in communication displays your work ethic, integrity, and the value of the library’s organization. It also shows commitment to your team and their personal and professional goals.

Be Flexible

It is important to be flexible on so many levels as an effective leader. During the day with regular tasks priorities will change, even major projects might morph into something different.  Things happen, and you need to be able to switch directions, when necessary, in a positive manner. Listening to constructive feedback from your supervisor or following recommendations from other departments, is vital to collaboration and building flexibility. When you are flexible and solution-oriented, it builds your leadership skills and influence within the organization.

Be a Good Listener

Finally, it’s important to listen to employees, your supervisor, and mentors. Consider your library partners and their goals, your organization’s goals and the new ideas that come from listening. When you are presented with the facts in a truthful manner, anything can be accomplished with listening and feedback.  Active listening enables people to feel valued and respected. Encourage people to speak their minds and take the time to make sure they feel heard. This creates an environment of trust and respect that is mutual and leads to an improved teamwork.

Categories
Librarian & Entrepreneurship

How to Lead During an Organizational Change

library-leadership

Change is inevitable, and it has an impact on any organization. Many different factors can cause it. It is important to be able to lead effectively during an organizational change so that you can remain competitive. In fact, organizations that are able to lead during change are more likely to outperform their competition. Continue reading to learn how to lead during an organizational change.

Communicate a Well-Defined Plan

A leader needs to have a plan before the change occurs. The key is to have a vision that makes clear why there is a change, how it affects the employees, and how it will turn out. When you understand all aspects of the change, it helps employees see what changes are happening and how it will benefit the company. Make sure that you share the plan in different forums, such as in meetings, emails, and discussions with individuals. This will help people become more comfortable before the change occurs, and it gives them a chance to support it.

Enlist Change Agents to Help

Another way to lead during a change is to enlist change agents to help with the process. These are informal leaders who support the change and lead others by example. They will teach them how to approach change and change their mindset so that they aren’t uncomfortable with it. They can lead a task force that helps explain the changes to employees, and they can organize a time for them to ask questions. The employees will be more likely to support the change when they see others participating in the process.

Offer Training to Facilitate the Change

If you offer training to facilitate the change, employees will feel better about it. As a leader, you need to guide them through it and benefit from change management training or coaching. This will help you lead through the change. You will want to learn how to set expectations to help the employees understand the desired outcomes. In addition, you need to communicate effectively with employees about the change. Make sure that you give feedback throughout the training and motivate your employees to embrace it.