How do you "manage up" to get the support you need?The main topic for this week is managing up, but first, I want to acknowledge a huge elephant in the room. It has been a pretty somber week here in Lisbon, Portugal. Every person I’ve talked with has asked how on earth Americans could re-elect that fascist.* They’re scared about how US policies are going to affect the whole world for the next however many years. And that’s just the sentiment from a distance. I know it's much scarier for those who live in the US and who will be among the first…Read more
How can you use coaching to help your team avoid burnout?Burnout is on my mind this week. I tuned into the latest episode of the Surviving the Stacks podcast, and a lot of the conversation connected with the reasons I'm so invested in helping library leaders develop coaching skills. They discussed three key issues that influence workplace burnout, based on the scholarly literature: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. You can help your team with all three of these by developing a coaching approach. The way they use competence is more complex than…Read more
How do you show up with a coaching mindset even when you're frustrated?Maintaining a coaching mindset – being open, curious, and flexible – is the foundation for using a coaching approach to leadership. To be able to effectively help your team members find the useful lessons they can take away from a mistake or figure out some productive next steps in a tricky situation, you need to be able to tap into your curiosity and keep a focus on moving forward. This topic is fresh on my mind because of a recent discussion in a group that I participate in. A library…Read more
Exploring the problemI talk a lot about the benefits of using a coaching approach, but I also hear a lot about employees who are resistant to the idea of coaching because of how that label has been used in the past. Coaching is a skill that you need to develop through a combination of passive learning, active practice, and constructive feedback, just like teaching or doing effective reference interviews. You can learn a lot about any of those skills from reading on your own, but to really get good at using these…Read more
How do you handle really difficult conversations with members of your team?I have two news items to share before jumping into the newsletter for this week: Registration is still open for my free workshop on Using a Coaching Approach to Leadership on June 25. And registration is officially now open for the next cohort of Developing a Coaching Approach to Leadership this August through December! This is an opportunity to join a small group of library leaders meeting every other week for 5 months to practice building your coaching skills and building lasting habits. We…Read more
What is your "why"?Why do you do what you do? If you’re already in a leadership position, why do you lead the way you do? If you’re not already in a leadership position, why do you want to develop your leadership skills? I recently started working with a new business coach, and one of the first questions she asked me was why I do what I do. It's important to be really clear on that "why", because that's going to guide all of our work together. I need to be clear on why I'm doing this in order to make decisions…Read more
Inclusivity and CoachingInclusivity and coaching is a heavy topic. On one hand, I see a lot of potential for a coaching mindset and a coaching approach to working with your team to contribute to making your workplace more inclusive. This comes to mind pretty frequently on LinkedIn, where I follow several people who talk about making workplaces more inclusive with regard to neurodiversity and disabilities, parts of DEIA work that I was less informed on until the past couple of years. Last week, I engaged with a post…Read more
Burnout is on my mind this week. I tuned into the latest episode of the Surviving the Stacks podcast, and a lot of the conversation connected with the reasons I'm so invested in helping library leaders develop coaching skills. They discussed three key issues that influence workplace burnout, based on the scholarly literature: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. You can help your team with all three of these by developing a coaching approach. The way they use competence is more complex than…Read more