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Demonstrate professional leadership and communication skills.
Introduction
To effectively serve their communities and navigate change and interact with stakeholders, information professionals must demonstrate effective communication and leadership skills.
Leadership
Leadership is the“ability to draw people together to set and accomplish goals that are intentionally directed toward positive outcomes” (Alibright, 2018). There is a difference between leadership and management. Managers are in charge of the daily operations and maintain the status quo. Leaders on the other hand, “inspire, innovate, collaborate, and challenge traditional practices, resulting in creating high expectations. Leadership and management are not always mutually exclusive.
Librarianship is a collaborative profession. So within the profession, leadership isn’t just about the individual, it also extends to the profession or the collective of many information organizations. Leadership therefore is “a process whereby an individual motivates a group of people or an entire organization to achieve shared goals” (Romaniuk & Sheldon, 2018).
While there are many ways to define and distinguish leadership, it’s important to understand what good leadership is for information professionals. No matter the definition, there are four key elements to good leadership. Leadership:
- Stems from social influence, not authority or power
- Requires others, and that implies they do not need to be direct reports
- Is more than personality traits, attributes, or even a title as there are many effective leadership styles and paths
- Includes a greater good and isn’t about influence with no intended outcome (Alibright, 2018).
Unlike management, leadership is focused on managing change. Therefore, the skills and competencies of leaders depend on the ability of a leader to guide change. Leadership competencies refer to “skills and behaviors that contribute to exceptional workplace performance”. These competencies and strategies are driven by industry trends and each organization has their own definitions for what leadership attributes are needed to create competitive advantage and vary by institution.
For leadership in librarianship, the Library Leadership Administration and Management Association (LLAMA) has created fourteen competencies that a leader must possess. These include:
- Communication Skills
- Emotional Intelligence
- Forward Thinking
- Critical Thinking
- Collaboration and Partnerships
- Team Building
- Conflict Resolution (ALA, 2016)
Communication Skills
Communication skills are imperative for effective leadership and management. To be an effective communicator, one must understand the factors that impact communication and
“possess the strategies to deal effectively with many situations”. These strategies include marketing, outreach, and interpersonal communication with colleagues, the community, and stakeholders (Alman, 2018).
Communication comes in verbal, nonverbal, and written forms and is successful when the receive the exact message intended by the sender. Effective communication requires having soft skills which are critical to forming interpersonal relationships. These skills include effective speaking and writing, active listening, understanding nonverbal cues, and the ability to work independently and in groups. Information professionals need to communicate effectively using these soft skills depending on their message and the intended audience. They must learn these effective communication techniques by studying, taking courses, and the continuous reviewing of interpersonal communication resources (Alman, 2018). Lacking these skills can have a negative impact on the success of the organization due to miscommunication and will also reflect badly on the information professional.
Reference
Albright, K. (2018). Leadership skills for today’s global information landscape. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
American Library Association. (2016, October 3). Leadership and management competencies. LLAMA. https://www.ala.org/llama/leadership-and-management-competencies
Hicks,D. & Given, L.M. (2013). Principled, Transformational Leadership: Analyzing the Discourse of Leadership in the Development of Librarianship’s Core Competences. The Library Quarterly (Chicago), 83(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1086/668678
Kumaran, M. (2012). Leadership in Libraries: A Focus on Ethnic-Minority Librarians. Elsevier Science. https://doi.org/10.1533/9781780633084
Romaniuk, M.-J., & Sheldon, B. E. (2018). A conversation on leadership: Taking another look. In K. Haycock & M.-J. Romaniuk (Eds.), The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts (2nd ed., pp. 85-102). Libraries Unlimited.
Evidence
Evidence #1: 2nd Assistant Membership Director for SLA SJSU Student Chapter (2022)
I’m submitting my position as 2nd Assistant Membership Director for the SJSU Student Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. In this role, I had the following duties that I was in charge of:
- Monitor the SLASC email inbox:
○ Forward relevant emails to Assistant Director and Membership Director.
○ Send welcome emails to new members.
- Help create at least one newsletter per semester, based on availability.
- Work with Communications Committee on alumni relations.
- Depending on the graduation dates of the Membership Director and Assistant
- Director and available of Second Assistant Director, receive training on:
○ Sending special emails.
○ Mentorship Program.
○ Recruiting, voting, and onboarding new EC members
I also created a new updated version of the SLASC EC Membership Newsletter Manual and created and sent out two of the monthly newsletters. I also responded to and sent out emails. This position fulfills this competency because in this leadership role, I had to work and communicate effectively with both the Assistant Membership Director and the Membership Director in addition to communicating and collaborating with other departments of the SLASC Executive Committee.
Evidence #2: Chapter Submission to the upcoming The Handbook of Black Librarianship Third Edition
For this next piece of evidence, I submit my chapter submission to the upcoming Third Edition of The Handbook of Black Librarianship. As a student member of the BCALA, I’m subscribed to their listserv and I saw an email regarding chapter submissions for this book. I took initiative and submitted my paper and it got accepted.
This evidence fulfills the requirements of this competency because it involves effective communication. I followed the directions for how to submit my paper in addition to adhering to the criteria for the paper. I then submitted my paper to the corresponding email and then followed directions for filling out the Consent To Publish Agreement For Contributor form. I now await the publication of the book!
Evidence #3: INFO 204 Information Professions Group 4 Co-Leader
For my final piece of evidence, I submit my INFO 204 Information Professions course. In this class we were assigned to groups to work on a big project. For my group I volunteered to be one of the co/leaders. And this is some of the duties that I was responsible for:
- Created a shared drive for the group and added all the members.
- Created a document titled Organization Picks and Votes so group members could suggest organizations and then vote for one of them to be the one for our project
- Created a document titled initial email to organizations so group members could provide input as to what to write in our emails to our suggested picks
- Reached out to one of the potential organizations via email-The Grammy Museum and also initiated environmental scan/drafts once organization is confirmed in the second Zoom meeting
- Located/Posted/Created questions that are listed in our interview questions document
Being a co-leader for my group project demonstrates effective leadership and communication skills. I reached out to my classmates regularly and provided guidance while also taking time to listen to their opinions, ideas, and concerns for the project. I was able to connect and relate to my team members and was open and flexible to any issues or changes that came up.
Conclusion
Leadership is a quality that all librarians need to possess to move the profession forward and to meet patron demands (Hicks & Given, 2013). Management and leadership are two different concepts and while they are sometimes used interchangeably, not all managers are leaders and not all leaders have management skills (Kumaran, 2012). Management is related to the “negative and non-people-oriented qualities of day-to-day organizational tasks, controls, and systems”, while leadership is “people-focused, motivating, and future-directed” (Hicks & Given, 2013). Within leadership, communication skills are key. Learning and honing these skills will help information professionals to effectively serve their communities while navigating change.
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