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You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Great Leader

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If you can influence and have an impact on others, you’re a leader.

 President and CEO, Lead From Within
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CREDIT: Getty Images

Many people believe leadership is something that’s conferred along with a title or attained when you direct a a team of people, but true leadership is never about authority or power. It’s about helping others grow, and that’s something anyone can do.

If it’s your desire to influence and have an impact on others, you have leadership qualities. And if you can inspire people to do something they thought they couldn’t do, demonstrate how the impossible is possible, believe in someone when they didn’t believe in themselves, you’re already a leader.

People don’t set out to be great leaders, they set out to make a difference. It’s never about the role or the title, but about influencing others, helping and supporting them.

Here are seven questions to help you gauge your own leadership:

1. Do you act with integrity? Leaders allow their good character to speak for them. If you are the type of person who is consistent in your actions, values, methods, and principles–regardless of who’s watching–and if people know what say you do you will do, and do it to the highest standard, you’re a leader.

2. Are you a great communicator? Great leaders are great communicators. Are you the type of person who likes to share information? To keep people informed and make sure they have all the guidance they need? Do you communicate with openness, candor, and honesty, and without drama or wordiness? You’re a leader.

Read more…

Preserving Our Values Libraries as social change agents

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By | May 31, 2016

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In 1999, the American Library Association (ALA) Council adopted the statement “Libraries: An American Value.” The principles in that document, in the Library Bill of Rights, and in our mission all speak to the importance of libraries as agents of change and protectors of our heritage. These books speak to those principles.

The Intellectual Freedom Manual is a guide to providing library service in support of First Amendment rights. For the manual’s 9th edition, the background information on its policies has been pulled into a separate volume, A History of ALA Policy on Intellectual Freedom: A Supplement to the Intellectual Freedom Manual, compiled by editor Trina Magi and assistant editor Martin Garnar for ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The essays on these core intellectual freedom documents and their interpretations provide insights on why they were developed, as well as narratives on events that precipitated discussions that led to agreed-upon practices for dealing with issues. Two of the three core documents, the Library Bill of Rights and the Code of Ethics, both adopted by ALA Council in 1939, informed the third, the Freedom to Read Statement, which was adopted in 1953. These were documents of their time, and the histories of their evolution are important reading. ALA Editions, 2015. 172 P. $85. PBK. 978-0-8389-1325-3. (Also available as an ebook.)

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Emerging Trends in Libraries for 2016 Stephen Abram, MLS

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The 15 worst mistakes interns have made, according to my coworkers

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by Rachel Gillett

June 14, 2016

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Summer internships aren’t a vacation; they’re a professional opportunity that should be treated as such. REUTERS/Chris Helgren

Those who work in media cross paths with a lot of interns.

Business Insider, for example, has an extensive internship program, which not only gives burgeoning reporters job experience and guidance but also provides editors and reporters with the experience of managing people.

To help readers glean lessons on what not to do as they begin their own internships this summer, I asked my colleagues who have managed or worked with (or as) interns about the worst mistakes they have seen interns make (or made themselves) at Business Insider and beyond. Read more…

How to be a Good (Library) Boss

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by Bahark Yousefi picture-579

Thursday, May 19, 2016

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I am in the business of encouraging librarians to apply for library management jobs. When I come across smart, awesome, politically progressive librarians (which happens with delightful frequency), I try to convince them to consider management. This is not because I think management is the only path forward for these wonderful humans, but because I want more smart, awesome, and politically progressive folks at those tables. I want them there because libraries need to be changing in big, fundamental ways, and right now, as things stand, that’s where the power to push for those changes resides. Often, the librarian (aka my target) will ask me what I think it takes to be a good library manager and my answer, without fail, is “be a decent human being.” Now, as true as that may be, I appreciate that it is not very specific. What follows is an attempt to expand the list, in no particular order:

  1. Be a decent human being (still #1).
  2. Be the kind of boss that tells employees about their rights and then helps them claim and exercise those rights.
  3. Be absolutely committed to transparency. Do not assume that you know what others need/don’t need to know (of course, be mindful of all the legal and ethical stuff).
  4. Have a vision. Care very, very passionately about something and make sure everyone knows what that is.
  5. Make absolutely sure that people who work for you have the resources to do their work. If resources are scarce, then change their work. Do less with less and more with more. Read more…