Hosts:Facilitators: Penelope Klein and Melissa McElroy-Elve
Scribe: Maureen Southorn

As an icebreaker, we started by playing the "slip game," which included quotes from the book Leading with Soul. Melissa brought this game over from a recent class she'd attended onleadership. The game translated nicely into a lively discussion on the many aspects of leadership... and beyond.

Response to the game: Leading from the heart, following passions, and inspiring others
- Science librarian on leading from the heart: science students really need to learn how to find info. SInce no one else was ensureingensuring this, I recently joined an organization to learn about information fluency. In Jan there was a follow-up for physics field... I am making progress.
- Recent library director turned college librarian: I recently made a career change. It was a tough decision, but I felt so strongly about providing service. This dedication to service is why I took the position. It is deep in my heart... transcends outreach, scholarship.... encompasses whole person.
- University professor in librarianship:professor: I was trying to figure out what makes an effective leader in librarianship. There is this tension between leading from the heart (an active process - you're the leader, go lead) versus the servant-king (get out of the way, let others lead where they have strengths). I ended up looking at the obligation of leadership as a career move... a desire for personal advancement. I think the truly effective leaders are the ones who realize that they must step up, have a vision and direction. Ultimately your true success is to invest others with that power.
- Penelope: How can you maintain this? What do you do to keep the vision alive?
Answer from crowd: Keep communication open, fresh, respecting input and welcoming it.
-
The Teacher-librarian:worrying Youstatistics mustabout alwaysthe seekfuture change,of progressiveness, neverleadership becomein stagnantour andfield
complacent.- WeWe're mustnot continuegraduating toenough learn,people to progress, notsupport staythe wherefield... how can we are.survive? Sometimes2/3 lifeof becomesthe lonely/emptylibrary when wedirectors losein thisacademia meaning,will thisretire thingin thatnext gives8 usyears! passion60% andare inspiresover us. I50! tryThere toarenot takeenough courses,people classes,on workshops,the eventslower likerungs who can move upward smoothly when this loss occurs. People are going to keep fromend fallingup jumping into thisthe struggle.positions without the experience and knowledge that will make them good mentors. We must be flexible, commit to ongoing development, or it'll be very scary for us in 8 years!

Innovation: is hiring new staff the answer?
- Public library director: Just recently I was able to hire two staff memebrsmembers with no library experience. It didn't matter because they have enormous people skills. You can learn your job, but not how to communicate. Having the degree and computer skills isn't always the answer.
- University professor: There is the idea that libraries use the hiring process as the innovation process; to learn new things we hire new people into our institution. That's great, but are we hiring people so we don't have to learn? We talk about the "young" person (which is not necessarily related the age itself, but the the order of hire/status in organization). This can be a problem. Often, this new person burns out because we look to them, and only them,as the key to innovation.
- University librarian: I've done a lot of hiring recently. This is definitely a problem. If you wait to innovate until you have a new staff memebr to do this for you.you... Yikes.Yikes! The average staff longevity is 20 years.... should I wait 20 years to devlopdevelop a new idea? We need to avoid recruiting "innovators" only and look for people with a committment to knowing that tomorrow's job is not the same as today's. This is where we make hiring mistakes. This is tough... you'd better do the recruitment right, since these people will be with us for the long haul!
-Univ prof: I've seen leaders who pay for staff to pursue profprofessional development.
- ILeading seean thisorganization asis gardening.likegardening. Not just new growth, but pruning and transplanting. People can grow and be happy in many different places within an organization. It's not something to do needlessly, but you really need to deicde where staff will grow, flourish, even if the move is difficult.

Continuing education as a means to change
- High school teacher-librarian: You must always seek change, progressiveness, never become stagnant and complacent. We must continue to learn, to progress, not stay where we are. Sometimes life becomes lonely/empty when we lose this meaning, this thing that gives us passion and inspires us. I try to take courses, classes, workshops, events like this to keep from falling into this struggle.
- Public librarian on NYLA continuing ed: We've been building a leadership institute for people who have been in the profession for some time, but need to learn and grow. We want to encourgaeencourage this growth everywhere we can. We had a reporter come to our library for an anniversary recently... the reporter akedasked us where we would see ththe elibrarylibrary in 50 years. I had no idea. I started with a typewroiter,typewriter, old card catalog, and no media inthein the collection. I never saw myself running a network and moving int ointo a newly deisgneddesigned building. We have to be willing to take chances, do it now, and encourage others to do the same. Often our new efforts are hapenstance.happenstance. I go to a conference, see something that might point otpointto the future, and decide that we have to act NOW to incorporate these forward-thinking ideas. Keeping up is key to supporting our community.
- We're not graduating enough people to support the field... how can we survive. 2/3 library directors in academic world will retire in next 8 years! 60% are over 50! there's not enough on the lwer rungs who can move upward. People are going to end up jumping into teh positions without the
Flexibility, expereinceadaptability, and knowledge that will make them good mentiors. Wea mustforward-thinking beoutlook flexible,is commitkey to ongoing developmetn, or it'll be very scary for usleading inothers 8through years!change
- Adapting to change, looking at things in a different way are critical. We must take risks despite not knowing how things will turn out.
- We must anticipate change.
- ChaneChange may be incremental, but it is constant throughout a library career... system migrations, service-orientations, catalog formats... This has changed tremendously. Libraries as netwrokingnetworking hubs, no longer as warehouses. encouraging coffee inside, not quiet. Funding shrinkage. 20 years ago, what librarian had to learn about economies of scale? - thereThere was little change in tehthe 70s.1970s, but the rate of change now is phenomonal.
- staffStaff members are, many times, happy to stay as things are. dealingDealing with this is difficult..difficult. doDo you just sit, and wait frofor this person to retire? doDo you prune? shouldShould you be spending your time trying to get this person on board? atAt some point you may have to let go of this idea.idea, cut your losses.

Change: is it always good?
- The twin power to momentum is inertia. asAs things require your attention,. youattention,you can't pursue new interests. changeChange is not always great... sometimes we're changing for change's sake. thereThere are many failures, dead ends.. howends... How do you mitigate this?
- I came from a organiztionorganization that rewarded you for risk-taking. the orgThe wasorgwas built on "the next big thing". however,However, focusing on being first, on change, you may forget your core ideas, what really works traditionally. This is dangerous... what do you do when your risks don't pan out? youYou have nothing left to stand on. weWe must continue to find what works best traditionally b/cbecause users demand and expect this. weWe must be mindful of this, create a balance of tradition and innovation to best serve our user base. Director, leader stands at the fiulcrumfulcrum of the teeter-totter. onOn one side, we have the community; on the other, we have our staff and facility. whenWhen the community moves toward change, so must our organization. but,But, we can't move too far out of whack or we'll lose our balance. whenWhen we try and lose, that's okay... but we can't have too many of these at once or we'll be hurt.
- aA year ago my library had a lot of change, but also a lot of stagnation. Individuals stayed inside their offices only, in their silos. heavenHeaven forebid if you had to move people out of their silos! weWe worked to fix this by cross-training everyone. allAll staff memebrsmembers can pursue something else, outside of their functions, that interstinterest them. thisThis is imperative, and has really grown us as an institution. crosstrianingCrosstraining is great b/cbecause staff member A gains perspective by training them on staff member C's job. After this, staff member A does not assume that C is doing less work... just different work!
P:
How did you overcome resistance to change?
- We worked in small groups where we bonded as a unit and attended traiingtraining together as one - a workshop on assessment. We were all able to see that some of our old-fashioned methods were slowing us down, and all ended up on board.
- theThe one criticism of our institution is lack of follow-through and sharing. Our different units have developed clusters - working across different libraries in different campus locations - to fight this problem and promote sharing between subject areas and physical locations.
- technologyTechnology is a great lever for promoting "cross fertilization" like this. anAn undercurrent to many service-oriented technology projects, found beneath the basic customer service, has ended up becoming a way to give staff members who missed that stage in their education (technology advancements) to learn and grow. For instance, starting to offer virtual reference and staffing this with current reference librarians allowed the library to help great librarians who were leery of chat and email to learn this technology and become comfortable with it. Amy favefavorite example of this was an institution where engineering librarians ended up answering music questions. At first, the music librarians were appalled! But, it all worked out; the different subject librarians were able to learn so much about new areas.
- How do you leverage expertise in one area, outside of your silo, to other areas? We're duplicating efforts, reinventing the wheel in many organizations b/c we haven't learned to appreciate the commonalities across very different subject and area fields.
- Institutional divides are very hard to overcome. But, if, as a public librarian, I want to move into an academic environment.... well, that's tough! Of course, the differences between our customer service functions are not very different even of our customers may have very different backgrounds!

A leader should be aware of institutional culture and jargon as an obstacle to growth
- Fear is a problem here. If you lack thatthe title,correcttitle, there is this idea that you aren't "qualified" to work together.
- Our future is in reaching out to other organizations. Joining groups outside the field is great for doing this.
- I'd like to bury this conversation about whether we'll be relevant to the future.
revenge of the librarian problem: librarians think IT talk "techy". MARC iosn'tisn't a techy term? C'mon! We must work through the tools and vocabulary and see where we're working toward the same goal.
- I see the librarian as a translator, a bridge. I can get people where they want to go by speaking their language. It's our responsibility to lose the jargon.
- We most work more to keep up in communities that are not librarian oriented.
- Customers don't care about your technology, your jargon. they just want the information you can give them.
- Librarian culture - our own construction?
-
Conclusion: we must use the "old stuff'stuff" to support the "new stuff".stuff." Perhaps we should be "quietly subversive" in our fields.