The guest editor for our next topic -- "Producing Leaders" -- will be Peter G. Underwood (not to be confused with Peter Underwood of Haunted Houses fame!) who is professor of librarianship at the University of Cape Town, having occupied this position since 1992. Formerly he was at the College of Librarianship Wales (CLW), living through its growth and eventual amalgamation with the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Professor Underwood started work in libraries, whilst still at school, serving as a "Saturday and holiday assistant" for the London Borough of Havering; he was fortunate to be mentored during this time by a person who, whilst not a great leader, could recognize interest and potential. So successful was this that Peter decided to pursue a career in library and information work after he left school. He joined Havering full-time as a trainee, and after one year as a junior assistant, went to library school at the College of Librarianship Wales, Aberystwyth, taking the two-year professional course. He graduated at the end of 1969 and went back to Havering as a senior assistant. He succumbed to the temptation of returning to CLW in 1972 and then spent 20 happy years there.
Our guest editor has an MBA degree from Cranfield (UK), is a fellow of the Library Association, member of the Institute of Information Scientists, a professional member of the South African Institute of Librarianship and Information Science (SAILIS), and a member of the Library and Information Workers Organization (LIWO). He is author of Managing Change in Libraries and Information Services: A Systems Approach (Library Association, 1990) and, with R. J. Hartley, of Basics of Data Management for Information Services (Library Association, 1993). He has extensive experience of teaching and consultancy in South Africa and elsewhere.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Underwood who will serve as guest editor for our discussion on "Producing Leaders."
I believe these questions to be important and to have a strong bearing on our particular focus of education of information workers.
I've used this term "information workers" as a means of being inclusive: It is neither gender specific nor associated with one particular aspect of our professional domain, as terms such as "librarian" or "information scientist" might be so interpreted.
Most importantly, it lays no emphasis on the particular training or educational experiences which an individual has undergone: My point is that it is perfectly possible for an individual who has not undergone a period of "professional training at a library school" to offer service of a professional quality.
In particular, there seem to be many people out there who are "leaders" without having professional or other qualifications. Somehow they have the ability to influence behavior and the thoughts of others in a way which is not necessarily related to formal positions in an organization. Social recognition is much more subtle that the framework of an organizational chart and "leadership" is different from "management" as an activity.
If "leadership" is a role it cannot, presumably, be taught: In other words there is not a package of information which I can deliver to a student and then call that person a "leader." Is it possible, however, for leadership skills to be acquired? If so, what are they and how can they be cultivated? What circumstances in information work will foster them to the extent that a person can feel comfortable in the occasional role of "leader"?
Do we necessarily want everyone to be able to exercise this role? Faced with someone whose avowed intent is to "work in the back room," how should we respond?
Leaders are clearly of importance in building teams: They have a role to play in moving a group in directions considered productive by an organization, but what of leaders who do not conform to that model? What of those that appear to challenge orthodoxy or, even, the plans agreed by other work groups? Should we encourage this, seek strategies for "dealing" with it or ignore it?
If the "virtual library" leads to less reliance on staff and users travelling to a central point to find information what might the shape of the emerging organization mean for management? Would leadership still be a necessary, and practicable role?
Why am I interested in this topic?
A fascination of information work is that it offers the opportunity to work directly with those who have needs and where what you can offer will make a difference to their lives.
It also means working with a group of colleagues who have a varied range of skills and temperaments. Trying to do the best with often quite limited resources, caring for quality, and responding to change in the information infrastructure calls for considerable skill.
Managing change and managing quality seem to me both to be about encouraging many people in an organization to exercise the leadership role when they have appropriate skills for the contingent circumstances.
LIS educators are having to provide a learning environment which will support the development of management skills appropriate to a very wide variety of circumstances, technological adaptations and information needs. Much of my professional life has been spent in struggling to discover how this can be accomplished.
Feel free to address the general theme, the topic of team building, or both in your discussions. Kathryn and I will try to draw the threads together as the discussion develops.
After working nearly two years of in Los Alamos National Laboratory's MAIN library with approximately 40 coworkers, she has recently received the position of Legal Counsel/General Law Librarian. Currently all the law library work is her sole responsibility.
Her plans to pursue a Ph.D. are prioritized behind the raising of three children.
Kath's leadership experiences began early. Attending a "lay ministry" church gave everyone an opportunity to lead. College classes added more focus on leadership and some understanding of why some activities prove more successful. A favorite undergraduate professor was Steven Covey, author of Spiritual Roots of Human Relationships, Principle Centered Leadership, and First Things First.
ESU's management class questioned the difference between management and leadership versus management. Dr. David Carr of Rutgers University, a guest professor stressed the importance of good questions. Situations may change, so firm answers or formulas seldom serve us best. But good questions, which help define the situation and prompt unique responses foster success.
Teams are the new building blocks of organizations. A group of workers bound together by a unified goal offers unique experiences. The Goal by Elijah Goldratt offers an excellent example of management's role in supporting a team's success. Goldratt also seemlessly demonstrates the value of family and experiences outside of work to best successfully accomplish work requirements. It is on a scout hike, with one overladen boy, that the manager realizes if everyone keeps pace with the slowest worker, the team is successful. This example also demonstrates: if the principles are true, it matters little who the current leader is. Working together means those with speed need to relax to allow the slower paced ones to join them.
Tim Bell, a Los Alamos accountant, uses a military example of the boot camp group learning to run in unison. For days the faster group grumbled about the others sloughing off. Finally, one said, "Maybe we should slow down!" It seldom occurs to use to alter our own behavior when things are not going smoothly. We see others as the impediments to progress, but seldom ourselves.
LeeAnn Rodman, my daughter's first music teacher said: "When you play in time, you have time to play." She'd noticed a natural tendency for easy tasks to be done quickly, making the more difficult parts nearly impossible. Perhaps leadership training should first cause one to examine personal strengths and weaknesses. Those with a strong personal commitment, an understanding of self, as a foundation seem best able to cope with crisis. They have energy to focus outward to others because their own feelings and needs have previously been anticipated and taken care of. So the important questions leading to good team building should be answered first by each individual.
While many people find that this style of work is very effective, what about those who find this type of work restrictive? While I can see teams being an effective approach to library science, especially moving rapidly toward the concept of virtual libraries, I have to wonder how much damage could be caused by improper training or even a few librarians who work best outside of a team. Is there a place in a team environment for those people?
Is there any merit in selection procedures for the profession? If so, for what characteristics are we looking? What constitutes a "good team member"; what constitutes "leadership potential"?
Bethany Thompson raises the question of team rewards. At the University of Cape Town we also have group projects and now allow the participants to allocate the 'basket' of marks amongst themselves. They are often much sterner critics of the performance of each other than the tutors. The responsibility for group and individual performance is thus shared and enforced through the group norms.
For me the question is: What can we do to create more of the kind of leaders that the profession needs? Since so many groups are looking at doing this, what should we tell them to do?
One other thing: this thing called TQM/TQT -- total quality management or total quality teamwork. Within my District of the Corps, these philosophies seem to be working well. They work because, as stated in a previous post, teams have a common goal they are working toward. Employees are EMPOWERED!
But there are the few, the proud, etc., that seem to think all they need to do is pay lip service to the philosophy and it will automatically work for them.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with working alone. Far from it! Sometimes the team effort isn't needed and it is OK as long as all the team members realize it. But I think that in libraries, especially smaller ones where the tasks aren't so segregated, it's hard NOT to become a team.
I must, however, take a wee exception to the use of "produce." The term hints of the industrial production line "students." Leaders, can be empowered, as mentioned in Carmichael's comments. Those of us who have the privilege to be in the classroom with aspiring LIS professionals can provide pedagogical opportunities for leadership and team empowerment. For example, to complete a semester project students in the Internet class I teach must work in groups to plan and implement their final project. During the group project they discover how to use the various strengths of fellow team members. They must learn to plan; an exercise that inevitably leads to consensus building and decision making. The students may also resort to "boundary spanning" -- crossing over to other groups or to experts or resources out of the class. Within their groups the students must discover how to plan for and manage change: changed plans, changed Internet resources, etc. Every semester in every class leaders emerge. As part of their final evaluation, students must reflect on and evaluate their group's efforts at project planning and completion. Hopefully, students learn from both the negative experiences and the positive experiences.
Optimist that I am, I am convinced that each of us is in some way a leader. As educators we have the opportunity to help students build the conceptual and practical tools of:
Now that I am aware of this trend, I am wondering if the communications, business, and other fields that currently offer leadership training courses along with the LIS professors can't work out some type of joint effort to create and implement courses in the area of leadership training geared toward librarians. As we are going to be doing more and more reference researching, and dealing with the leaders in other areas of the work force, wouldn't a librarian gain much from being exposed to the best training offered in any area and applied to library science? I agree with Christine Carmichael that book training is not as valid as interactive training. We are looking at such tremendous changes in the field of Library and Information Science and in such a relatively short period of time, that to debate for too long over this issue instead of looking to available sources that have proven effective and putting an LIS slant on them, seems foolhardy.
Of course, having been exposed to Daniel Bell and F.W. Lancaster only last summer, perhaps the sense of urgency I feel is not so necessary?
This is the basis for the problem in the issue of producing leaders. So often an individual may be in a professional setting where the scope of action is set by an administration which does want to control the results far more than is good for the library setting. Then, qualities of leadership are not positive but are negative in nature. A prior discussion posting referred to a practicum situation in Seattle in which students were able to examine cases involving possible misconduct by attorneys and the valuable experience that they were getting. There the lesson being learned was what not to do. Isn't leadership as much an issue of knowing what not to do as it is doing specific things in specific situation? We may be talking about a subject which is as much a matter of teaching people how to address and solve problems given specific environments as developing specific qualities in individuals.
Leadership is often judged against clearly stated objectives/goals and the criteria for estimating the attainment of such objectives. Based on these dimensions, the abstraction "leadership" can be understood.
What constitutes a good team member depends upon:
As for leadership, that's an even bigger can of worms and the danger is that "leadership programmes" will be based on models of the business leader under whatever guru's fashion is flavour of the month (if you don't mind me mixing my metaphors). Today's Independent on Sunday newspaper carries a front-page story in the business section on the failure of the "downsizing" movement to bring about real growth in companies - but the business schools are still turning out people whose main claim to fame is the ability to sack workers. It notes that the Midland Bank, having pulled its branch managers into head office, has realized its mistake and is putting them back again.
Leadership on the kind of "macho male" model that pervades business is not leadership at all, it's simply the model of the school-yard bully. Again, the research suggests that there isn't a single model -- the character of the leader depends upon the character of those who are led, and one of the main problems in modern organizations, in my experience, is that of uncertain individuals who find themselves in leadership positions who proceed to act on the macho model and are then surprised when the "led" veer off in a totally different direction.
Leadership in professional organizations ought to be about encouraging, motivating, mentoring, helping, as well as about careful financial management and the development of strategic vision. Whether anyone knows enough about it all to teach all of that is a moot point. :-)
Listening to Stephen R. Covey's audio tapes (1-800-553-8889): "Principle-Centered Leadership"
I learned there are three functions of a leader:
He quotes Mahatma Gandhi: "A person cannot do right in one department of life whilst attempting to do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole."
Covey continues, "Each organization represents an ecosystem. ... An imbalance of attention to all four leadership levels can adversely affect the entire organization... working at organization level may yield better systems... managerial level, training people to empower others and to delegate more completely... requires trust... interpersonal level may focus on team-building or communication skills, but people who care only about their hidden agendas will only go through the motions and never truly cooperate. ... Those who work only on the personal level may be attempting to further their own goals, self-esteem, and causes without an awareness of organization systems. ... The foundation is TRUST... MANAGE THINGS, LEAD PEOPLE."
Here is a satellite conference which may be of interest.
Note there is a lecture:
"Successful Team Building: Managing to Survive the Challenging 90's"
with Arlene Farber Sirkin.
"Most library staff recognize that they need to work smarter, not harder. But how do you do it? By using team building you can maximize your efforts. This practical session will include: What helps/hinders teams, how to select team members, what are the key functions to help the team fulfill its task, and what are five common stumbling blocks to maximizing your success?" (from conference description)
Also:
"Coping at the Workplace"
with Debra Wilcox Johnson
"The pace in the library is a hectic one, and sometimes we feel out of control of work and environment. This session explores two areas that can influence this feeling: time management and stress. What is time management and how can an individual begin to "control" time? How does stress relate to our ability to do good work? Practical suggestions for managing time and stress will be given, and self-assessment exercises will be provided." (from conference description)
This seems to me to be part of the debate we haven't yet explored: the demands of teamwork and leadership need to be balanced if stress and the dangers of "burnout" are not to become dominant features of working life.
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