LIS 580 Personal Leadership Plan Sue Wozniak Suzzallo Library I interviewed my boss, Deb Raftus, as head of graduate

student reference and instruction at Suzzallo Library for this assignment. The reference section at Suzzallo is the main service point for reference and research across all disciplines for the university, containing the largest and most comprehensive reference sources for humanities, sciences and social sciences within the UW libraries. The biggest challenges I see for this department are the skills and expertise required to provide in-depth reference and research help to students across such a wide range of disciplines. The library draws students, faculty, researchers, and members of the general public coming to address a range of research questions, from basic to complex, that they have not been able to answer from their own research skills. Both reference and instruction are provided with a combination of permanent staff (subject and reference librarians) and graduate library students. Students receive robust focused training in reference and instruction at the beginning of their tenure, and continue getting weekly subject training through the year. They serve 2 years on average, although some stay for only 1 year. Providing professional training is part of the mission of Suzzallo Library. Devoting resources of money and staff time to provide this training illustrates the importance of this mission to the library.

Planning Planning is an essential part of directing the goals of an organization and helps account for the three big variables managers must face of risk, uncertainty and doubt (Evans, 2013). Evans and Alire define planning in three categories: strategic (long-term, 3-5 years), tactical (mid-length, 2-6 months), and operational (one day to one year). Strategic planning seeks to orient the overall direction of the organization with mission and value statements, establishing an action plan and setting goals and objectives. At Suzzallo Library Deb plans mostly in long-term and mid-length cycles, while she tends to respond to tasks as they come at her in the short-term. She works closely with the two instructional librarians from Odegaard Library where they manage the reference and instructional team of graduate students together. They meet once per quarter to plan for 3-month cycles, with some overall planning for the year. The midlength planning includes ideas they come up with together and reflections on quarters past. Annual planning aligns with direction from the Dean of the Library and greater library system. Success of the training program for the graduate students is assessed and plans adjusted for the following year, accordingly. In years past, training for subject specialties were offered weekly and those available were welcome to attend. This year the trainings are carefully scheduled at times that all of the reference and instruction graduate assistants from can attend and they are a required part of the job. I am thrilled about this change since I value the subject training highly and would be disappointed if unable to attend. Other types of planning for reference and instruction include the

staffing ratios of permanent staff versus students, as well as the design, training, and assessment of the instruction sessions. Organization The word organization is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary with 3 main definitions: 1) The development or coordination or parts in order to carry out vital functions, 2) the condition of being organized; the way in which individual activities or institutions are organized, and 3) an organized body of people with a particular purpose. (Oxford English Dictionary, 2013). Taken together organization can be thought of as a system bringing together parts to be organized and accomplish a purpose. All three aspects may be important enough to the definition and success of an entity that the word organization has become synonymous with the business itself. The culture of how a business is organized and run is a key component of an internal environment (Evans, 2013) and may be one of the defining characteristics of what distinguishes like businesses from each other. Suzzallo is a large library with 125 librarians. The large size can make Deb feel lost. She has certain go-to people who feel approachable and she consults with for specific goals. She also confers with people located physically close to her and feels proximity has an impact on collaboration. She thinks a more clustered organization would be helpful to gain more from each other. She does feel like she can influence the organization of her department. Her group made changes in the past year to the way the reference desk is staffed, increasing the student/staff ratio and giving the students higher responsibilities and more in the line of fire experience. She perceives a tight,

collegial organizational culture among the subject librarians in her department where everyone treats each other with respect. She has less contact and feels more disconnection with librarians from other departments. The larger library feels more like a large research institution with littler connection between the parts, and she doesnt feel empowered to make those connections. A library, like any other type of business, has an organizational culture that every staff member must learn to fit in (Evans, 2013). People make the culture and environment what it is, in the activities they undertake, in the quality of the work, and in the interpersonal interactions. Managers are expected to scan and assess the work environment in order to maintain a healthy and well-functioning system (Evans, 2013). The interpersonal interactions affect the internal workings of the library, which in turn affects the external library environment; employee relations are a palpable commodity and translate directly to the external user environment. Human Resources Human resources are a key part of the way an organizational culture comes together. People must be hired, oriented to the work, space and co-workers, trained and evaluated. The manager has the responsibility to see that all of these things happen. The human resources tasks that Deb is responsible for include hiring, initial orientation, ongoing training throughout the year, scheduling training events, and employee evaluation. She takes part in all of these tasks as part of a group, other than evaluations, which she does one-on-one. Deb is not responsible for the paperwork side

of things such as scheduling the reference desk and instruction or timesheets, and is quite pleased not to have these responsibilities. Her least favorite human resources task is providing feedback or constructive criticism. She has not been aware of conflict among employees in the time she has worked as manager at Suzzallo. Training is a never-ending process that employees need not only at the beginning of a job but also throughout the course of employment ((Stueart, 2007)). Deb focuses on training in both her mid-length and long-term planning. She plans a bootcamp training for the first week of the year that consists of group training over all major areas of reference and instruction. She also develops weekly training sessions with subject librarians for graduate student employees, although other staff members are also welcome to join. The ongoing training has a strong human resources impact in providing engaging content and making employees feel valued by receiving this training. Leading An important part of leadership is making employees feel valued. Many times companies use the excuse of difficult financial times and competition to put off salary raises while de-emphasizing a human-centered workplace (Porath C., 2013). This tends to be a shortsighted approach, however, since a business needs to keep their employees to remain viable. Good leaders need to do the following things to maintain employees: instill a sense of trust, give praise, keep employees informed of things happening at the business, entrust them with responsibility, and celebrate individual approaches. People want to feel valued in who they are and what they do. Good leaders will continually strive to demonstrate recognition of their value.

Deb motivates her employees by creating opportunities to take on projects of interest and providing rigorous challenge to gain robust skills. She is always working on ways to create more engaging training in support of her employees. One example of her efforts is that she continually changes the practice questions for the training sessions to be more fruitful as learning experiences. She also sends emails of opportunities for training on a regular basis. She communicates what she is trying to get across to her employees with repetition and by not being judgey. She likes to communicate directly rather than going through other people to get messages across. Coordinating Coordinating includes the integration of all the parts of leading that make up the whole of the organization. The internal organizational culture of the employees needs to be defined, as does the external user environment. People need to be hired, trained, and evaluated. Above all people need to feel valued and be given continuous challenge to meet our complex and highly capable human nature. Coordinating is pulling all of these things together to create a place that people really want to work. Coordinating can also take place between departments to coordinate the activities and goals. Deb finds coordination at Suzzallo to be tough and confusing due to the size of the library. The Reference and Research Services department is made up of many smaller departments. It can be hard to work with the smaller divisions and with other library departments on campus due to the size and physical separation. She does coordinate with the Center for Teaching and Learning. They have a strong partnership

and share some cross members. One thing she has learned is to not try to do things in a vacuum but to reach out and share ideas. Personal Leadership Plan Reflecting on leadership in so many regards has more than anything made me believe I would be a good leader and to want to do so one day. My strongest asset is that I connect really well with people. Certainly I find my like-minded comrades in any crowd. But in addition to that I also find a way to get to know something about everyone, even the grumpy people. I believe strongly in giving everyone a voice, encouraging people to find their personal expression in how they accomplish tasks, and feeling valued in being themselves. I would spend a lot of time interacting with people on both work and non-work related topics, developing a good rapport with each person. I would also spend time developing group activities, both work and non-work related to instill a very happy work environment. Another strength I would bring to leadership is looking for and orienting to what really works. I would listen attentively to others ways of doing things, tools and resources other people use, and see what others value in work. I would also actively research and try to stay up on the latest tips and tools out there to enact the organizational mission well. I would try hard to create value in what we do and how we do it, to be appealing to those working within the organization and be a place people want to work. I think my people, listening and research skills would help create a sustainable place of value.

The managerial roles of budget and bureaucracy I think I would do just fine with, although I would not categorize as either a strength or weakness. I have always been really good with money. I make a lot happen on limited resources, and I have successfully run a small business to practice my financial skills outside of my home. I have never run a large budget on anything complex, so certainly I would need some training and experience, but it is not a role that scares me. Similarly I think I would do okay with bureaucracy. It certainly isnt my favorite topic; I prefer thin gs to happen organically with less process, but I have worked for the federal and local governments and know that I can follow procedure to make certain things happen. My weakness lies in the real kind of organization of making multiple tasks happen in a timeframe. I run into this conflict often in trying to manage school and work tasks. I manage to get things done on time, but my process of planning and organizing looks a little more like an explosion than any kind of order. I hope to have training in the path to becoming a manager and be able to take organizational cues from those before me to develop these skills. I would walk into a leadership position cognizant of these limitations and work hard not to negatively impact others with my shortcomings. Overall I would feel excited to be able to create a positive workplace with the potential to share and enact common goals and visions.

Works Cited Evans, G. E., , Alire, Camila A.,. (2013). Management basics for information professionals. Oxford English Dictionary. (2013). Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/ Porath C., P. C. (2013). The price of incivility. Harv. Bus. Rev. Harvard Business Review, 91(1-2), 12. Stueart, R. D., Moran, Barbara B.,. (2007). Library and information center management. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited.