Library Buzz

Note: by far this was the best presentation I attended. I didn’t capture everything Dr. Haycock said but I have tried to give a summary.

If you don’t promote yourself, you are doomed to defend yourself.

When we are looking at our partners in the community (agency), we need to focus on how we can assist them in advancing their agenda. We don’t merely tell them how wonderful we are – we need to tell them how we can help them do what they want to do.

The curse of high public satisfaction is that no one complains about us. For public libraries – no one complains when library budgets get cut – everyone is happy with the performance level of libraries so they don’t demand more from the libraries.

There is also the curse of low expectations. When libraries failed to deliver books or other services, people in the community were generally satisfied so long as the staff smiled and were pleasant when they said they couldn’t help.

Death by opportunity! Librarians are flexible and we can be pulled in many directions. We need to be selective and leverage this ability to find projects that will give the best return to the library. There are lots of programs that we’d like to run, but what can we do to satisfy the greatest number of our users?

We are all leaders.

Definitions

• Leadership – a process of social influence through which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of other in the accomplishment of a single task. (Chemers, M. (1997). An integrative theory of leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. p. 1.)
• Power – possession of control, authority or influence over others.
• Influence – act of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.

Successful people are influential.

Informal mentoring is best – select 8 people who can serve on your personal board of directors and run your ideas and plans by them. You don’t need to tell these people that they are on your board of directors – just call on their expertise.

Leaders are trustworthy.

Trust

• Character – good character – has the good of the organization at heart
• Competence – capable of doing the task assigned or accepted
• Confidence – that the person will do what is expected. The reality is that we have to show value.
• Credibility
• Congruence

Advocacy

PR – is all about us – that really isn’t advocacy.

Marketing – is closer to advocacy because it considers who our customers are and what their needs are.

We need to stop talking about libraries and start talking about the actual issues in our communities–all the places that we have evidence to show that we make a difference in our communities.

Advocacy is planned, deliberate, sustained effort to develop understanding and support incrementally over time.

Rules of Advocacy:

Respect for the people you are working with
Connect with the agenda of people in power – people do things for their own reasons, not our reasons

A former lobbyist for the US Postal Service once said that advocacy is like banking – you cannot make a withdrawal without first making a deposit.

Universal Principles that increase our persuasiveness :

• Reciprocation – do something for others as part of your advocacy – people feel obliged to return favors
• Authority – look to the experts, see what they are doing and talking about
• Commitment/Consistency – with the commitments and values of the people we are trying to link with
• Scarcity – when something is less available we want more
• Liking – be likable, the more people like you, the more likely they are to say yes to your appeal
• Social Proof – look at what others are doing – are we a part of the community or are we an outsider?

Also – admit errors if you have made a mistake. Demonstrating honesty increases your influence.

Pillars of Influence

• The relationship with the other person
• Intended approach – what will work and how do we proceed
• Desired result
• Context – is this the right time to be suggesting x

Collaboration is an unnatural act between two consenting adults.

ROTI – Return on Time Invested

We want to be perfectionists, but we don’t have enough time. An imperfect solution today is better than a perfect solution tomorrow.

Time is our most precious resource

We need to FOCUS – Flexible, Observable, Courageous, Useful, Supportive

Making the case – advocacy in action

Our intuition is often wrong – we need to collect data to make our point, especially since our anecdotal evidence can be misleading.

When making our presentation, make it one page SOPPADA

• Subject – Focus – What is to be done?
• Objective – Goal – What is to be gained?
• Present – Situation – What is happening now?
• Proposed – Solution – How can it be different?
• Advantages – Benefits – What are the benefits?
• Disadvantages – Hassles – What are the hurdles?
• Action - Next Steps – How can we help the situation?

Lack of faith in ourselves is our greatest impediment. Building relationship and influence are generally not considered part of someone’s job. Talking is not influencing. You have to understand the client well, connect with her/him. We cannot influence everyone so we need to focus on the groups that we can make a difference with.

Concentrate resources on a few key areas. Know that what you do is about relationships, approaches, contexts, and framing issues appropriately. We need to assess time and costs, leverage resources, measure results, build influence, use evidence, and connect our agendas to library missions.

We need to be at the table when the problem is defined – that means attending those meetings that may not be about the library – but that is where we learn what others are doing.

No whining!

Our two biggest professional faults are we claim to be a victim and we avoid conflict. We need to be assertive about how we can help in a situation and we need to be assertive about how important our programs and services are. Again – here is where statistics helps us!

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Greetings all - it has been a long time and there are many reasons for that.

It has been a challenging summer - busy and frustrating. Thank goodness for friends and other supporters.

To begin with - Cheers to a friend and former colleague at the FDIC Library who retired in June. Noreen Lewis was always friendly and helpful when I first started there 26 years ago. She trained me on many duties and alerted me to any problems. She was always at work early in the morning when things were quiet. Noreen is a somewhat typical librarian in that she is quiet and a little shy. But there was never any doubt that she knew her job!

When I returned to the FDIC Library as a Cataloger she reviewed my work until she was satisfied that I knew what I was doing and that the integrity of the collection was not going to suffer because of my carelessness or lack of diligence. I sort of enjoyed cataloging - though it is a bit mind-numbing. My congrats to all those Catalogers who do their jobs well.

At one point in her career Noreen was diagnosed with cancer and had to suffer through surgery and chemo and radiation. She was able to work from home and she was every bit as productive then as the days she came in to work. Noreen has a quiet sense of humor and is able to laugh - and that is a good quality in everyone. Noreen didn’t play the tragic victim of cancer, but she didn’t laugh that ordeal off. Once I asked if there was anything I could do. She asked if I could get the radiation for her - because it hurts - like a sunburn and then you have to go back again, and again, again. “ouch,” I said.

I wish Noreen a long, happy and healthy retirement! Thank you for being so patient with me all those years ago.

Confluence and Serendipity

In the past month or so I have been getting signals - subtle and direct - that have encouraged me to focus more positively on my life and work goals.

My sister, Teresa, has talked about a book titled The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. It is a new age, self-help book and it has some pretty good, common sense ideas about life in general.

My partner was talking about positive and negative energies and I asked him about that. He said you always want to focus on positive energies. If someone doesn’t have anything positive to come out - that’s not your problem - but you don’t want to focus on negative energies.

And I take all that and look it in terms of my own set of beliefs and call on the power of prayer. I focus my energies and say a prayer to my guardian angel as well as to those of others and call on good things for them and me and good things from this encounter.

This is great - and I’m feeling better and things are going better professionally. Yea! I was looking through the latest Information Outlook from SLA and there’s a really good article by Marshall Brown titled - Getting What You Want to Come to You. (You may need to be a member of SLA in order to read the article.)

In the article Mr. Brown talks about much of the same thing - keep a positive perspective. He talks about two workers - one who works with ease and is successful, the other who labors hard with barely adequate results. The first is floating on the river, the second is slogging through the mud. What’s the difference?

Hint: It”s in the river image. When Paul works hard, it doesn”t feel like a struggle–he”s “in the flow.” He”s in tune with his life purpose, his passions, and his vision for himself and the work he does in the world. As a consequence, he”s just naturally able to attract what he wants, with enviable ease.

Read the article - it is good. I will continue to approach my life and my career in a positive manner. It is always a shame that we have to struggle sometimes in order to appreciate things. The important thing is to learn the lesson and keep thinking positive. Interesting how all this came about at once - and I started re-reading some Joseph Campbell too.

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