Definition of Competency or Understanding of Competency
A leader is someone who has the ability to get people to consciously work together towards common aims, or who is “highly effective in conducting ongoing, systematic, and future-driven strategic planning” (Albright, 2018, pp 467-472). Albright argues that being a leader must be distinguished from leadership, as the former is individual in focus, while the latter is organizational in nature (2018, p 467), but her definitions only seem to confuse matters. For instance, leadership is “the ability to draw people together to set and accomplish goals that are intentionally directed toward positive outcomes,” and is focused on managing change, whereas leaders “guide change” through how skilled and competent they are at leading (Albright, 2018, pp 467-467). Regardless of how one defines leadership or leader, it is clear that leadership skills and competencies are valued by both information professionals and organizations (Albright, 2018, 467).
According to the Library Leadership Administration and Management Association (LLAMA), the 14 leadership competencies for the information professional include:
Albright also considers the ability to communicate to be a subset of the leadership competency (2018, p 468), as does Moran, who goes on to opine that the important “sub-functions” of leading are “human elements” of an organization, that is, relatable “attitudes, personal attributes, and perceptions” (Moran, 2008, pp 70-71), traits which seem remarkably similar to LLAMA’s leadership competency, emotional intelligence. Moran indicates that persuading or motivating employees to accept organizational changes or to further integrate themselves within an organization are examples of skill in leading, which has a managerial function (Moran, 2008, pp 70-71). Here if we were to apply Albright’s distinction, it is unclear whether the skill in leading could apply to leaders in the same way it might apply to leadership.
According to Albright, the difference between leadership and management is that management “tends to be operational, to focus on stability, and to provide strategies on how to cope with complexity,” whereas leadership “focuses on how to cope with change” (2018, p 467). Complicating the distinction between leading and managing, is the observation that librarians and managers share cross-over in terms of their professional competencies. Jacoby for instance, holds that the skills and competencies of those in reference services, “the ability to gather, organize, and analyze information; to develop a clear understanding of other’s information needs; and to connect people to appropriate resources and tools,” provide a foundation for what it takes to be a manager (2016, p 182), or leader (2016, p 179). Furthermore, effective managers seem to share the same communication skills as librarians (Alman, 2016, p 333), including traits like active listening, understanding nonverbal cues, approachability (Alman, 2016, pp 334-335; Tyckoson, 2012, pp 139-140), and managing conflict (Alman, 2016, p 336; Jacoby & Kern, 2016, pp 197-199).
Whether or not there is, or should be, a distinction between leadership and management roles is an area of contestation among management theorists, but distinctions often come down to differences in organizational culture (Jacoby, 2016, p 183). Within librarianship as a whole, service is the “great animating quotidian principle” (Gorman, 2012, p 116; Foster & McMenemy, 2012, p 259; Rubin, 2008, pp 11-12), yet service itself is based upon connections between people, and between people and knowledge (Gorman, 2012, p 116), e.g., our skill at communicating. For information professionals, the American Library Association considers the skill of communicating to be a core competency (ALA, 2017; ALA, 2013; ALA, 2009). The quality of interpersonal communication also seems to be a prime concern of managers (Jacoby, 2016, p 183). If this is so, and we seek to understand how communication is conceived of as a competency required of the modern information professional, then it behooves us to understand how information organizations currently define “service.”
For libraries, service models seem to ping-pong historically, between a reference services model, and a teaching model (Tyckoson, 2012, pp 582-590; Deng, 2014, pp 258-260; Rubin, 2008, pp 5-12), with both model-types presently moving more towards a more learner, rather than teacher-centered approach (Kaplowitz, 2014, p 19). Emerging out of the 1990s, information literacy (IL) has become the “dominant education paradigm,” in libraries, and information literacy instruction (ILI) has eclipsed other library instructional models, including the reference services model (Holliday, 2016, pp 101-108). It could therefore be argued that this, “interactive and participatory learner-centered approach” to teaching (Kaplowitz, 2014, p 19), might well be the dominant service model within information organizations, and therefore, the way that we value and measure our professional communication skills, will be in relation to this service model. Whether or not professional leadership skills could or should be valued and measured in the same manner, may depend on what we theorize their intrinsic relationship to be, vis-à-vis communication skills.
It seems to me therefore, that it seems less important how an information professional defines leadership or communication, or how these competencies relate to one another, and more important that one be able to identify how a particular information organization defines and/or values leadership and communication as skills or competencies. Identifying differences in organizational culture, for instance, whether decisions tend to be made in a top-down or collaborative manner, or how the service model functions in actual practice, enables the information professional to understand how leaders are expected to behave (Jacoby, 2016, p 185).
Information organizations stands upon a foundation of service, which in turn rests upon how we communicate with one another. Leadership skills are many and varied, and it could be argued that information professionals, by the very fact that they provide service, demonstrate this core competency. But the truth of the matter is that information organizations differ in their service needs and service models, and leadership and communication competencies will look different depending on the organization. Leadership and communication competencies are important for these organizations because it gives them a metric for assessing employees, and finding the right fit for their mission, vision, and values. For myself, understanding this competency helps me understand how I can find the right fit for my own leadership and communication skills, and it gives me a way to assess myself, wherever I might work.
Preparation to Understand Competency M: Coursework and Work Experience
In the XX library system there I are a number of professional competencies on which I am assessed on a yearly basis, and on which I strive to improve during this same time period. I know that in part, I was hired for my strong written and verbal skills and ability to coherently communicate my strengths in an interview. Since then, as a public service assistant, I have repeatedly proved my worth in providing reference services to the public, in adeptly interacting with myriad and varied patrons, and in being seen as a person staff look to for leadership, especially in a crisis.
My Information Communities class (INFO 200) showed me the value of communications that are face-to-face (F2F) or collaborative, and a paper I wrote on stewardship convinced me that stewards are leaders. The SJSU courses I completed that involved large group projects, such as INFO 204, 250, and 266, impressed upon me the importance of both leadership and communication, but especially the former, as leadership was a skill that felt particularly humbling, as it could only be bestowed by garnering the respect of the individuals within the group. Finally, for my internship (INFO 294) in XXXX’s Eastern Region, I witnessed librarians leading through creative and collaborative programming, providing service to diverse individuals and communities.
I chose to first present some of the committee work I performed for XXXX, because it shows I can plan and work with others to achieve organizational outcomes. I follow this with three evidentiary items, ordered chronologically, that demonstrate my ability to work on and play a leadership role in, large projects relevant to an information organization.
Evidence
XXXX Committee Work
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2a9dbe83-b25f-44bc-bca3-ed01b8856744
This evidentiary item consists of ten scanned pages chronicling my application for, and acceptance in, three different XXXX committees— the Staff Recognition Committee, the Innovation and Continuous Improvement Committee, and the Catalyst Awards Committee.
The first committee I volunteered for was initiated by then director Tony Woolrich, as a way to begin boosting morale after a system-wide survey indicated broad dissatisfaction among staff. The first page here actually shows the email our group sent out at the conclusion of our work, calling for a new group to convene and move our work forward— this committee is still active today. The following few pages show my inquiry to Tony, and his reply inviting me into the working group. My inquiry references my communication and leadership abilities. Our group spent several weeks coming up with data from another survey and I worked on the list we provided to our director describing a) several concrete steps that the administration could take to begin rectifying the situation, and b) suggestions for continuing this work in the future.
The second committee I worked on, the XXXX Awards Committee, involved a commitment of only a single day, but required me to review the various presentations that had been submitted. The XXXX Award is given out once a year by XXXX to honor innovation and excellence in library services. My contribution here was to properly weigh the contributions of the programs under consideration and articulate their relative merit to the committee. I listened to and factored in other committee members’ thoughts on the matter. My role here was to communicate informed opinion to the group, but also to persuade through eloquent argumentation.
The final committee I worked on I was asked to join, which felt like an honor, especially as they had already received strong applications from others. The Innovation and Continuous Improvement Committee was one of a half-dozen major Project Teams that were launched in 2018 to provide research findings for the administration, regarding issues that had been brought up by the system-wide surveys in service to our Strategic Plan. I only include 2 pages of this 42- page document because this is essentially an internal XXXX document. Much of the work in this document involved asking management and leaders to reimagine how XXXX innovates, to re-envision how we measure competency, and to choose a new innovation model. Most of my work on this committee was minor compared with other’s contributions, but I did provide some research on models and, along with one or two others, prevented us from at times, losing our moral compass. I was also one of three people who gave an oral presentation before the library system’s director and administrators.
My XXXX committee work shows that I am proactive about collaborating with others, and that I can plan and work with others to achieve organizational outcomes. My eagerness to bolster the morale of my co-workers provides evidence that I am a team player and that I understand the importance of leading by example. My work with the awards committee shows that I am capable of persuading through eloquent argumentation, based on an informed opinion, which itself is built upon communication skills such as listening and careful observation. Finally, my work with the Innovation committee demonstrates that I can work with others on a large research project for a large public library system, and present that information verbally, before leaders of the information profession.
Organizational Analyses for The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Part 2
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:0850c756-ca04-4fce-aa49-2da10cd708da
The major group project I worked on in my Information Professions class (INFO 204) was a two-part organizational analysis of an information organization. My group chose to analyze the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), a research library. In the first part of our analysis we were to conduct a literature review, a SWOT analysis, and draw understanding from HSP’s mission, vision, and values statements. For that half of the project my primary contribution was to conduct a thorough literature review. For Competency M I focus on my contribution to the second part of the HSP project where we presented a 5-year strategic plan constituting a foray into digital archiving, and consisting of 7 strategic goals, each containing several objectives each with their own action plan and detailed assessment.
For the second part of the HSP project my main role was four-fold. First, I was instrumental in using the collection of data from Part 1, as a means of bringing our strategic plan together. For instance, the data in Part 1 indicated that HSP needed to move towards digitizing its archive, but it also showed that this was likely to be a monumental task. Based on this analysis, I began researching ways in which information organizations had overcome this hurdle and found several relevant and current peer-reviewed professional articles that ultimately ended up in our bibliography. More importantly, my research came to the conclusion that partnering with consortiums, or other large institutions interested in digital archiving, should be a major component of our plan. This research and analysis make up the second part of my efforts.
My third contribution was to facilitate interactive group work with the aim of hammering out goals, objectives, action plans, and assessments. As a writer and editor, I have an intuitive understanding of how group documents come together, and with the HSP strategic plan I knew it was necessary to encourage participation and draw upon our mutual strengths. For instance, one group member was particularly knowledgeable about how technical systems work, and I made sure that their input was seriously incorporated into our decisions and plans. Another group member worked at HSP, and I often asked them for their opinion when it came to make crucial choices. I often delegated number-crunching tasks to group members with those capabilities. In this way, I played a role in shepherding the group through a thicket of decision-making and got our ideas down on the page. My final contribution was to make sure our document was well-written, well thought out, coherently organized without redundancies, and properly formatted.
This project provides further evidence that I can leverage my communication and leadership skills in a group project, planning and working with others to accomplish institutional-level objectives. The work I did here shows that I understand and value communicating in a deeply collaborative manner. I demonstrate leadership here by bringing out the strengths of others, and by facilitating a project that encourages participation and the sharing of ideas.
Haunted Hollows Spectral Library, Collection Development Policy
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:9143f1dd-c83d-406e-b039-16010ec75925
I worked on almost every aspect of this collection development (CD) policy manual, which was a group project for my Collection Management (CD) class (INFO 266). Our task was to create a CD policy manual based on a particular theme, and we chose to have our library be situated in a graveyard among the dead, thus the title of the manual. Over 11 chapters I envisioned, planned, organized, researched, and constructed the manual, sentence by sentence, and section by section, in league with three other students. Elsewhere in my e-portfolio I went into detail about my specific contributions to this policy manual, but here I will describe the communication and leadership skills I brought to bear in its construction.
One of my biggest contributions for this project was simply the force with which I approached the task. I was the person in our group who first made the call to get started, and I reached out to fellow classmates to join me. I specifically recruited one classmate who seemed to possess exemplary organizing abilities, and immediately began collaborating and brainstorming with this individual—this classmate ended up being our defacto leader throughout the project. This, however, does not mean that I provided no leadership; on the contrary, my working relationship with our team leader brought out and clarified my own leadership abilities. For instance, I was the driving force behind our early brainstorming sessions and corralling our individual contributions, and while this was going on, I was not only assessing the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members, but I was also heavily involved in researching, outlining, and writing Chapters 2 and 3. These chapters, I knew, because they dealt with the philosophical (mission, vision, and values), as well as the practical (assessment and survey data) aspects of our imaginary library, were structured to be the backbone of a collection policy manual. For this reason, early on, I threw myself into getting these chapters committed to the page. Eventually, others in the group began to contribute and round out what I had begun. This would become a recurring effort on my part— grasping where the document was heading, anticipating what needed to be written, and then hammering out the beginnings of a chapter or section.
Once we were well on our way, and the outline of the document began to come into view, the arbitrary roles we had initially assigned ourselves, such as leader, editor, scribe, etcetera, fell away, and our roles began to orient around our skills, while who would lead rotated depending on the task at hand. I began the project as our leader but eventually stepped aside when it became apparent how capable my coworker was in keeping our project on course. I and another team member then began alternating as leaders on particular sub-projects. For instance, in Chapter 7, Acquisitions, I took the lead on writing and structuring the section ahead of time, juggling the component parts while encouraging and advising others on how they might fill in the gaps. In Chapter 5 I did a great deal of work making sure that the selection philosophy and objectives, and the selection procedures were clearly articulated, all the while working on Intellectual Freedom documents so that they could be connected to this chapter. However, my writing on these sections were continually informed by conversations I initiated with my teammates, who were busy outlining what library staffing would look like, and what the roles and responsibilities of those positions would entail. This kind of communication skill worked both ways. For example, in Chapter 8, I performed a lot of number crunching to arrive at our collections budget figure, as well as other collections numbers and percentages, after ongoing conversations revealed that my teammates needed assistance, and I was able to jump in and help.
In this document I demonstrate how to take the initiative on a large collaborative project, forge bonds of communication with teammates, and lead by example. I display emotional intelligence and confident leadership in understanding when it is prudent to follow others. I exhibit problem solving and critical thinking skills and show that I know how to guide a team project through to completion. Finally, I express my communication and leadership skills within the text and pages of the document itself, in the creation and manifestation of the policy manual as object and testament.
Instructional Design Plan Draft
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:33b2b7a1-71e8-44cb-8f6e-c6399063ce38
Just before writing our proposal for INFO 250, I came to an agreement with my partner that we would be using Kaplowitz’s Teaching Tripod ID model as our definitive framework for presenting our final instructional design plan. I agreed to this model because of its streamlined and flexible modern design, a feature that was to prove helpful when we began synthesizing 34 pages of analysis, design, and development into a rough draft. The aforementioned work was definitely a collaborative affair, but I did the bulk of the work in transforming this rough draft into a five-minute screencast introduction, as well as a six-page paper capable of being orally presented in a 15-minute timeframe. I accomplished this by removing the scaffolding from our rough draft and rewriting what remained.
One significant difference with this project was the team composition. The two big projects previously mentioned consisted of five students, whereas for this project I worked with only one other person. As with the other large group projects, I worked sifting through the document innumerable times, line editing the sections with the aim of reducing verbiage, increasing clarity, and keeping only what was essential. Unlike those other projects, the group dynamic for this project really tested my leadership and communication skills. Both I and my partner had very different ideas about the nature of the project, the trajectory the design should take, and the steps we should take to complete three drafts. What I learned from producing a major document with a partner with whom I had major differences, was that I had to lean more on leadership skills like problem solving, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution.
It is sometimes wise or prudent, as a leader, to step aside and let another take the reins. But I learned during this project, that simply relinquishing one’s role does not necessarily mean that the process will go more smoothly. In this situation my partner was very committed to pursuing a particular vision for our ID Plan, so much so that it made sense to step aside and work with them on this vision. Unfortunately, I found that my partner and I had different communication styles, and this began to have an effect on the quality of our work. Eventually I came to understand that my partner came from a background very different from my own, and therefore only felt comfortable giving or taking orders: collaboration was somewhat of a foreign concept to them. Once I realized this, I modified my approach to recognize that if I was not approaching the work as a clear leader or a clear follower, the interactions were likely to be muddy. In those instances where our communication became muddy, and we began to disagree or come to an impasse, I learned to wait a while before re-engaging.
I also began listening more attentively to my partner, identifying problems they were struggling with, and then trying to contribute by problem-solving. As with other projects, the pro-active writing I accomplished required communication with, and in this case, buy-in from my partner. For instance, my work on the assessment section was complicated by two factors: my partner’s a) last minute changes regarding exactly how assessment and evaluative data would be gathered and measured, especially with the pen-and-paper worksheet, and b) needing to describe how assessments would work with my partner’s (more ideal) Springshare’s Side by Side technology, rather than the (more practical) OER Guide-on-the-Side interface. I was able to navigate these complications through a redoubled effort at listening, and by being much more precise and demanding of my communications with my partner. Only by earning the respect of my partner through these exacting communications, was I able to provide any kind of meaningful guidance in completing our project.
The Instructional Design Plan provides yet another piece of evidence that I can plan and work with others to achieve organizational outcomes. This evidentiary item differs from the others in that it shows my flexibility and resiliency with regards to my communication and leadership abilities. I demonstrate several leadership attributes, including the ability to problem-solve on the fly, emotional intelligence, and being able to resolve conflicts with listening and resolve. Finally, I show that I can overcome personal differences in a collaborative environment by adjusting the competencies I do possess to meet the challenge at hand.
Conclusion
I value communicating in a deeply collaborative manner that emphasizes listening and careful observation. I am capable of persuading through eloquent argumentation, based on an informed opinion, which itself is built upon these communication skills. One example of this would be working with others on a large research project for a large public library system, and then presenting that information verbally, before leaders of the information profession. I am proactive about collaborating with others and have shown I can leverage my communication and leadership skills in group projects, planning and working with others to accomplish institutional-level objectives.
My eagerness to bolster the morale of my co-workers, provides evidence that I am a team player and that I understand the importance of leading by example. I demonstrate leadership by bringing out the strengths of others, and by facilitating projects that encourages participation and the sharing of ideas. I possess several leadership skills, including critical thinking, the ability to problem-solve on the fly, emotional intelligence, and a facility with conflict resolution, and have shown that I know how to guide a team project through to completion. The leadership skills I have evinced here, and arguably, the communication skills that undergird them, have broad applicability within the information profession, and I can easily adapt them for use in any organization for which I might be employed, or in any work situation therein.
References
Albright, K. (2018). Leadership skills for today’s global information landscape. In Hirsh, S. (Ed.). Information services today: An introduction. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Alman, S. W. (2018). Communication, marketing, and outreach strategies. In Hirsh, S. (Ed.). Information services today: An introduction. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
American Library Association (2009). ALA’s core competencies of librarianship. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/educationcareers/sites/ala.org.educationcareers/files/content/careers/corecomp/corecompetences/finalcorecompstat09.pdf
American Library Association. (2013). Guidelines for behavioral performance of reference and information service providers. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesbehavioral
American Library Association. (2016, October 3). LLAMA leadership and management competencies. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/llama/leadership-and-management-competencies
American Library Association. (2017). Professional competencies for reference and user services librarians. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/rusa/sites/ala.org.rusa/files/content/RUSA%20Professional%20Competencies%20Final%208-31-2017.pdf
Bradberry, T. (2015, July 25). What makes a leader? Leadership and Management. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-makes-leader-dr-travis-bradberry
Deng, L. (2014). The evolution of library reference services: From general to special, 1876-1920s. Libri: International Journal of Libraries & Information Services, 64(3), 254-262. doi:10.1515/libri-2014-0019.
Foster, C., & McMenemy, D. (2012). Do librarians have a shared set of values? A comparative study of 36 codes of ethics based on Gorman’s Enduring Values. Journal of librarianship and information science, 44(4), 249-262. Retrieved from https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/34315/1/proof_of_1st_draft_for_dept_website.pdf
Gorman, M. (2012). The prince’s dream. SCONUL Focus, 54, pp. 11-6. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Gorman5/publication/271605679_The_Prince's_Dream_A_Future_For_Academic_Libraries/links/5a9c01f6a6fdcc3cbacd3d91/The-Princes-Dream-A-Future-For-Academic-Libraries.pdf
Holliday, W. (2016). Instruction. In Smith, L.C. and Wong, M.A. (Eds.). Reference and information services: An Introduction. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited
Jacoby, J. and Kern, M.K. (2016). Management of reference services. In Smith, L.C. and Wong, M.A. (Eds.). Reference and information services: An introduction. Santa Barbara, California: Libraries Unlimited.
Kaplowitz, J.R. (2014). Designing information literacy instruction: The teaching tripod approach. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Moran, B.B. (2018). Management: An essential skill for today’s librarians. In Haycock, K. & Sheldon, B.E. (Eds.). The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. 15-22. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited.
Tyckoson, D. A. (2012). Issues and trends in the management of reference services: A historical perspective. Journal of Library Administration, 51(3), 259-278. Retrieved from https://content.ebscohost.com/ContentServer.aspT=P&P=AN&K=503012446&S=R&D=lls&EbscoContent=dGJyMNLr40Sep7U4y9fwOLCmsEiep7ZSsK64TbCWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGtsVCuprFLuePfgeyx4YXr2QAA
Tyckoson, D. A. (2008). Reference service: The personal side of librarianship. In Haycock, K. & Sheldon, B.E. (Eds.). The portable MLIS, 127-46. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited.
A leader is someone who has the ability to get people to consciously work together towards common aims, or who is “highly effective in conducting ongoing, systematic, and future-driven strategic planning” (Albright, 2018, pp 467-472). Albright argues that being a leader must be distinguished from leadership, as the former is individual in focus, while the latter is organizational in nature (2018, p 467), but her definitions only seem to confuse matters. For instance, leadership is “the ability to draw people together to set and accomplish goals that are intentionally directed toward positive outcomes,” and is focused on managing change, whereas leaders “guide change” through how skilled and competent they are at leading (Albright, 2018, pp 467-467). Regardless of how one defines leadership or leader, it is clear that leadership skills and competencies are valued by both information professionals and organizations (Albright, 2018, 467).
According to the Library Leadership Administration and Management Association (LLAMA), the 14 leadership competencies for the information professional include:
- Communication skills
- Change management
- Team building
- Collaboration and partnership
- Emotional intelligence
- Problem solving
- Evidence-based decision making
- Conflict resolution
- Budget creation and presentation
- Forward thinking
- Critical thinking
- Ethics
- Project management and
- Marketing and advocacy (ALA, 2016).
Albright also considers the ability to communicate to be a subset of the leadership competency (2018, p 468), as does Moran, who goes on to opine that the important “sub-functions” of leading are “human elements” of an organization, that is, relatable “attitudes, personal attributes, and perceptions” (Moran, 2008, pp 70-71), traits which seem remarkably similar to LLAMA’s leadership competency, emotional intelligence. Moran indicates that persuading or motivating employees to accept organizational changes or to further integrate themselves within an organization are examples of skill in leading, which has a managerial function (Moran, 2008, pp 70-71). Here if we were to apply Albright’s distinction, it is unclear whether the skill in leading could apply to leaders in the same way it might apply to leadership.
According to Albright, the difference between leadership and management is that management “tends to be operational, to focus on stability, and to provide strategies on how to cope with complexity,” whereas leadership “focuses on how to cope with change” (2018, p 467). Complicating the distinction between leading and managing, is the observation that librarians and managers share cross-over in terms of their professional competencies. Jacoby for instance, holds that the skills and competencies of those in reference services, “the ability to gather, organize, and analyze information; to develop a clear understanding of other’s information needs; and to connect people to appropriate resources and tools,” provide a foundation for what it takes to be a manager (2016, p 182), or leader (2016, p 179). Furthermore, effective managers seem to share the same communication skills as librarians (Alman, 2016, p 333), including traits like active listening, understanding nonverbal cues, approachability (Alman, 2016, pp 334-335; Tyckoson, 2012, pp 139-140), and managing conflict (Alman, 2016, p 336; Jacoby & Kern, 2016, pp 197-199).
Whether or not there is, or should be, a distinction between leadership and management roles is an area of contestation among management theorists, but distinctions often come down to differences in organizational culture (Jacoby, 2016, p 183). Within librarianship as a whole, service is the “great animating quotidian principle” (Gorman, 2012, p 116; Foster & McMenemy, 2012, p 259; Rubin, 2008, pp 11-12), yet service itself is based upon connections between people, and between people and knowledge (Gorman, 2012, p 116), e.g., our skill at communicating. For information professionals, the American Library Association considers the skill of communicating to be a core competency (ALA, 2017; ALA, 2013; ALA, 2009). The quality of interpersonal communication also seems to be a prime concern of managers (Jacoby, 2016, p 183). If this is so, and we seek to understand how communication is conceived of as a competency required of the modern information professional, then it behooves us to understand how information organizations currently define “service.”
For libraries, service models seem to ping-pong historically, between a reference services model, and a teaching model (Tyckoson, 2012, pp 582-590; Deng, 2014, pp 258-260; Rubin, 2008, pp 5-12), with both model-types presently moving more towards a more learner, rather than teacher-centered approach (Kaplowitz, 2014, p 19). Emerging out of the 1990s, information literacy (IL) has become the “dominant education paradigm,” in libraries, and information literacy instruction (ILI) has eclipsed other library instructional models, including the reference services model (Holliday, 2016, pp 101-108). It could therefore be argued that this, “interactive and participatory learner-centered approach” to teaching (Kaplowitz, 2014, p 19), might well be the dominant service model within information organizations, and therefore, the way that we value and measure our professional communication skills, will be in relation to this service model. Whether or not professional leadership skills could or should be valued and measured in the same manner, may depend on what we theorize their intrinsic relationship to be, vis-à-vis communication skills.
It seems to me therefore, that it seems less important how an information professional defines leadership or communication, or how these competencies relate to one another, and more important that one be able to identify how a particular information organization defines and/or values leadership and communication as skills or competencies. Identifying differences in organizational culture, for instance, whether decisions tend to be made in a top-down or collaborative manner, or how the service model functions in actual practice, enables the information professional to understand how leaders are expected to behave (Jacoby, 2016, p 185).
Information organizations stands upon a foundation of service, which in turn rests upon how we communicate with one another. Leadership skills are many and varied, and it could be argued that information professionals, by the very fact that they provide service, demonstrate this core competency. But the truth of the matter is that information organizations differ in their service needs and service models, and leadership and communication competencies will look different depending on the organization. Leadership and communication competencies are important for these organizations because it gives them a metric for assessing employees, and finding the right fit for their mission, vision, and values. For myself, understanding this competency helps me understand how I can find the right fit for my own leadership and communication skills, and it gives me a way to assess myself, wherever I might work.
Preparation to Understand Competency M: Coursework and Work Experience
In the XX library system there I are a number of professional competencies on which I am assessed on a yearly basis, and on which I strive to improve during this same time period. I know that in part, I was hired for my strong written and verbal skills and ability to coherently communicate my strengths in an interview. Since then, as a public service assistant, I have repeatedly proved my worth in providing reference services to the public, in adeptly interacting with myriad and varied patrons, and in being seen as a person staff look to for leadership, especially in a crisis.
My Information Communities class (INFO 200) showed me the value of communications that are face-to-face (F2F) or collaborative, and a paper I wrote on stewardship convinced me that stewards are leaders. The SJSU courses I completed that involved large group projects, such as INFO 204, 250, and 266, impressed upon me the importance of both leadership and communication, but especially the former, as leadership was a skill that felt particularly humbling, as it could only be bestowed by garnering the respect of the individuals within the group. Finally, for my internship (INFO 294) in XXXX’s Eastern Region, I witnessed librarians leading through creative and collaborative programming, providing service to diverse individuals and communities.
I chose to first present some of the committee work I performed for XXXX, because it shows I can plan and work with others to achieve organizational outcomes. I follow this with three evidentiary items, ordered chronologically, that demonstrate my ability to work on and play a leadership role in, large projects relevant to an information organization.
Evidence
XXXX Committee Work
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
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This evidentiary item consists of ten scanned pages chronicling my application for, and acceptance in, three different XXXX committees— the Staff Recognition Committee, the Innovation and Continuous Improvement Committee, and the Catalyst Awards Committee.
The first committee I volunteered for was initiated by then director Tony Woolrich, as a way to begin boosting morale after a system-wide survey indicated broad dissatisfaction among staff. The first page here actually shows the email our group sent out at the conclusion of our work, calling for a new group to convene and move our work forward— this committee is still active today. The following few pages show my inquiry to Tony, and his reply inviting me into the working group. My inquiry references my communication and leadership abilities. Our group spent several weeks coming up with data from another survey and I worked on the list we provided to our director describing a) several concrete steps that the administration could take to begin rectifying the situation, and b) suggestions for continuing this work in the future.
The second committee I worked on, the XXXX Awards Committee, involved a commitment of only a single day, but required me to review the various presentations that had been submitted. The XXXX Award is given out once a year by XXXX to honor innovation and excellence in library services. My contribution here was to properly weigh the contributions of the programs under consideration and articulate their relative merit to the committee. I listened to and factored in other committee members’ thoughts on the matter. My role here was to communicate informed opinion to the group, but also to persuade through eloquent argumentation.
The final committee I worked on I was asked to join, which felt like an honor, especially as they had already received strong applications from others. The Innovation and Continuous Improvement Committee was one of a half-dozen major Project Teams that were launched in 2018 to provide research findings for the administration, regarding issues that had been brought up by the system-wide surveys in service to our Strategic Plan. I only include 2 pages of this 42- page document because this is essentially an internal XXXX document. Much of the work in this document involved asking management and leaders to reimagine how XXXX innovates, to re-envision how we measure competency, and to choose a new innovation model. Most of my work on this committee was minor compared with other’s contributions, but I did provide some research on models and, along with one or two others, prevented us from at times, losing our moral compass. I was also one of three people who gave an oral presentation before the library system’s director and administrators.
My XXXX committee work shows that I am proactive about collaborating with others, and that I can plan and work with others to achieve organizational outcomes. My eagerness to bolster the morale of my co-workers provides evidence that I am a team player and that I understand the importance of leading by example. My work with the awards committee shows that I am capable of persuading through eloquent argumentation, based on an informed opinion, which itself is built upon communication skills such as listening and careful observation. Finally, my work with the Innovation committee demonstrates that I can work with others on a large research project for a large public library system, and present that information verbally, before leaders of the information profession.
Organizational Analyses for The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Part 2
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
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The major group project I worked on in my Information Professions class (INFO 204) was a two-part organizational analysis of an information organization. My group chose to analyze the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), a research library. In the first part of our analysis we were to conduct a literature review, a SWOT analysis, and draw understanding from HSP’s mission, vision, and values statements. For that half of the project my primary contribution was to conduct a thorough literature review. For Competency M I focus on my contribution to the second part of the HSP project where we presented a 5-year strategic plan constituting a foray into digital archiving, and consisting of 7 strategic goals, each containing several objectives each with their own action plan and detailed assessment.
For the second part of the HSP project my main role was four-fold. First, I was instrumental in using the collection of data from Part 1, as a means of bringing our strategic plan together. For instance, the data in Part 1 indicated that HSP needed to move towards digitizing its archive, but it also showed that this was likely to be a monumental task. Based on this analysis, I began researching ways in which information organizations had overcome this hurdle and found several relevant and current peer-reviewed professional articles that ultimately ended up in our bibliography. More importantly, my research came to the conclusion that partnering with consortiums, or other large institutions interested in digital archiving, should be a major component of our plan. This research and analysis make up the second part of my efforts.
My third contribution was to facilitate interactive group work with the aim of hammering out goals, objectives, action plans, and assessments. As a writer and editor, I have an intuitive understanding of how group documents come together, and with the HSP strategic plan I knew it was necessary to encourage participation and draw upon our mutual strengths. For instance, one group member was particularly knowledgeable about how technical systems work, and I made sure that their input was seriously incorporated into our decisions and plans. Another group member worked at HSP, and I often asked them for their opinion when it came to make crucial choices. I often delegated number-crunching tasks to group members with those capabilities. In this way, I played a role in shepherding the group through a thicket of decision-making and got our ideas down on the page. My final contribution was to make sure our document was well-written, well thought out, coherently organized without redundancies, and properly formatted.
This project provides further evidence that I can leverage my communication and leadership skills in a group project, planning and working with others to accomplish institutional-level objectives. The work I did here shows that I understand and value communicating in a deeply collaborative manner. I demonstrate leadership here by bringing out the strengths of others, and by facilitating a project that encourages participation and the sharing of ideas.
Haunted Hollows Spectral Library, Collection Development Policy
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:9143f1dd-c83d-406e-b039-16010ec75925
I worked on almost every aspect of this collection development (CD) policy manual, which was a group project for my Collection Management (CD) class (INFO 266). Our task was to create a CD policy manual based on a particular theme, and we chose to have our library be situated in a graveyard among the dead, thus the title of the manual. Over 11 chapters I envisioned, planned, organized, researched, and constructed the manual, sentence by sentence, and section by section, in league with three other students. Elsewhere in my e-portfolio I went into detail about my specific contributions to this policy manual, but here I will describe the communication and leadership skills I brought to bear in its construction.
One of my biggest contributions for this project was simply the force with which I approached the task. I was the person in our group who first made the call to get started, and I reached out to fellow classmates to join me. I specifically recruited one classmate who seemed to possess exemplary organizing abilities, and immediately began collaborating and brainstorming with this individual—this classmate ended up being our defacto leader throughout the project. This, however, does not mean that I provided no leadership; on the contrary, my working relationship with our team leader brought out and clarified my own leadership abilities. For instance, I was the driving force behind our early brainstorming sessions and corralling our individual contributions, and while this was going on, I was not only assessing the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members, but I was also heavily involved in researching, outlining, and writing Chapters 2 and 3. These chapters, I knew, because they dealt with the philosophical (mission, vision, and values), as well as the practical (assessment and survey data) aspects of our imaginary library, were structured to be the backbone of a collection policy manual. For this reason, early on, I threw myself into getting these chapters committed to the page. Eventually, others in the group began to contribute and round out what I had begun. This would become a recurring effort on my part— grasping where the document was heading, anticipating what needed to be written, and then hammering out the beginnings of a chapter or section.
Once we were well on our way, and the outline of the document began to come into view, the arbitrary roles we had initially assigned ourselves, such as leader, editor, scribe, etcetera, fell away, and our roles began to orient around our skills, while who would lead rotated depending on the task at hand. I began the project as our leader but eventually stepped aside when it became apparent how capable my coworker was in keeping our project on course. I and another team member then began alternating as leaders on particular sub-projects. For instance, in Chapter 7, Acquisitions, I took the lead on writing and structuring the section ahead of time, juggling the component parts while encouraging and advising others on how they might fill in the gaps. In Chapter 5 I did a great deal of work making sure that the selection philosophy and objectives, and the selection procedures were clearly articulated, all the while working on Intellectual Freedom documents so that they could be connected to this chapter. However, my writing on these sections were continually informed by conversations I initiated with my teammates, who were busy outlining what library staffing would look like, and what the roles and responsibilities of those positions would entail. This kind of communication skill worked both ways. For example, in Chapter 8, I performed a lot of number crunching to arrive at our collections budget figure, as well as other collections numbers and percentages, after ongoing conversations revealed that my teammates needed assistance, and I was able to jump in and help.
In this document I demonstrate how to take the initiative on a large collaborative project, forge bonds of communication with teammates, and lead by example. I display emotional intelligence and confident leadership in understanding when it is prudent to follow others. I exhibit problem solving and critical thinking skills and show that I know how to guide a team project through to completion. Finally, I express my communication and leadership skills within the text and pages of the document itself, in the creation and manifestation of the policy manual as object and testament.
Instructional Design Plan Draft
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
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Just before writing our proposal for INFO 250, I came to an agreement with my partner that we would be using Kaplowitz’s Teaching Tripod ID model as our definitive framework for presenting our final instructional design plan. I agreed to this model because of its streamlined and flexible modern design, a feature that was to prove helpful when we began synthesizing 34 pages of analysis, design, and development into a rough draft. The aforementioned work was definitely a collaborative affair, but I did the bulk of the work in transforming this rough draft into a five-minute screencast introduction, as well as a six-page paper capable of being orally presented in a 15-minute timeframe. I accomplished this by removing the scaffolding from our rough draft and rewriting what remained.
One significant difference with this project was the team composition. The two big projects previously mentioned consisted of five students, whereas for this project I worked with only one other person. As with the other large group projects, I worked sifting through the document innumerable times, line editing the sections with the aim of reducing verbiage, increasing clarity, and keeping only what was essential. Unlike those other projects, the group dynamic for this project really tested my leadership and communication skills. Both I and my partner had very different ideas about the nature of the project, the trajectory the design should take, and the steps we should take to complete three drafts. What I learned from producing a major document with a partner with whom I had major differences, was that I had to lean more on leadership skills like problem solving, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution.
It is sometimes wise or prudent, as a leader, to step aside and let another take the reins. But I learned during this project, that simply relinquishing one’s role does not necessarily mean that the process will go more smoothly. In this situation my partner was very committed to pursuing a particular vision for our ID Plan, so much so that it made sense to step aside and work with them on this vision. Unfortunately, I found that my partner and I had different communication styles, and this began to have an effect on the quality of our work. Eventually I came to understand that my partner came from a background very different from my own, and therefore only felt comfortable giving or taking orders: collaboration was somewhat of a foreign concept to them. Once I realized this, I modified my approach to recognize that if I was not approaching the work as a clear leader or a clear follower, the interactions were likely to be muddy. In those instances where our communication became muddy, and we began to disagree or come to an impasse, I learned to wait a while before re-engaging.
I also began listening more attentively to my partner, identifying problems they were struggling with, and then trying to contribute by problem-solving. As with other projects, the pro-active writing I accomplished required communication with, and in this case, buy-in from my partner. For instance, my work on the assessment section was complicated by two factors: my partner’s a) last minute changes regarding exactly how assessment and evaluative data would be gathered and measured, especially with the pen-and-paper worksheet, and b) needing to describe how assessments would work with my partner’s (more ideal) Springshare’s Side by Side technology, rather than the (more practical) OER Guide-on-the-Side interface. I was able to navigate these complications through a redoubled effort at listening, and by being much more precise and demanding of my communications with my partner. Only by earning the respect of my partner through these exacting communications, was I able to provide any kind of meaningful guidance in completing our project.
The Instructional Design Plan provides yet another piece of evidence that I can plan and work with others to achieve organizational outcomes. This evidentiary item differs from the others in that it shows my flexibility and resiliency with regards to my communication and leadership abilities. I demonstrate several leadership attributes, including the ability to problem-solve on the fly, emotional intelligence, and being able to resolve conflicts with listening and resolve. Finally, I show that I can overcome personal differences in a collaborative environment by adjusting the competencies I do possess to meet the challenge at hand.
Conclusion
I value communicating in a deeply collaborative manner that emphasizes listening and careful observation. I am capable of persuading through eloquent argumentation, based on an informed opinion, which itself is built upon these communication skills. One example of this would be working with others on a large research project for a large public library system, and then presenting that information verbally, before leaders of the information profession. I am proactive about collaborating with others and have shown I can leverage my communication and leadership skills in group projects, planning and working with others to accomplish institutional-level objectives.
My eagerness to bolster the morale of my co-workers, provides evidence that I am a team player and that I understand the importance of leading by example. I demonstrate leadership by bringing out the strengths of others, and by facilitating projects that encourages participation and the sharing of ideas. I possess several leadership skills, including critical thinking, the ability to problem-solve on the fly, emotional intelligence, and a facility with conflict resolution, and have shown that I know how to guide a team project through to completion. The leadership skills I have evinced here, and arguably, the communication skills that undergird them, have broad applicability within the information profession, and I can easily adapt them for use in any organization for which I might be employed, or in any work situation therein.
References
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