Just Someone Out For A Walk

While in my MLIS program, I was required to take a library leadership class taught by Dr. Anthony Chow at UNCG. It was the lowest grade I got in grad school, and maybe even in my graduate school career. Despite my poor performance, I was in fact leading a library as a branch manager, so I did not sweat too much. From the course, and in my reading since, I have studied leadership within the library community intensely. Still, having worked for a number of librarians, and read more than several articles about library leadership, it seems to be a difficult subject for many in leadership positions to fully grasp. This is a terrible problem to have, but there are factors I think that play into poor library leadership. After all, a leader with no followers is just someone out for a walk

There is no question, librarians love order and structure. At its core that distain for chaos and messiness is, in my opinion, what causes so many in library leadership to just manage rather than be the leader their employees crave.  From Dr. Chow, I learned that leaders in the library field concern themselves with the macro. Book purchases, inclusive library programs, and engaging outreach opportunities are for real leaders. System wide vision is their goal. Managers on the other hand are deep into the the details and implementation. Set the policy and procedures, and adhere to them til death do you part. The devil is in the details, and librarians are detailed as hell. And here lies the rub. With too many managers in the leadership chain, details are what take priority.  Let's face it, after a day of grinding away at copies, and stupid questions, we really don't need a fifteen minute debate about how to mark damaged books. Be the leader, make a decision and move on. We're not storming Utah Beach on D-Day....though that would in some ways been easier since there was one one direction to go and still live. 

As I have written, library leaders tend to fall into at least two categories that can frustrate the hell out of their employees. Window watchers and mirror gazers. Particularly with window watchers, there is a serious problem with leadership from behind, and that spills out, though not in all cases, to leadership in libraries. Because librarian tend, notice my choice of words here, to be laid back individuals that boarder on the shy and reserve, they do not always jump right in with their staffs. For many librarians, its much easier to sit in their office carefully crafting emails about customer service and shelving mistakes, than getting out to actually face the music. And shying away from the front facing aspect is easily interrupted as leading from behind. BECAUSE IT IS. Telling someone to go wake up a homeless person sleeping in the library is much different than actually doing it. Reminding shelvers proper shelf reading, is much easier than getting out of the office and reading some shelves. 

So leadership from behind, and the attention to detail are real issues. Libraries are not immune to them. But those really are not excuses for poor leadership. Library leadership, AND management need people to get from behind the words and do.  Making detailed decisions a lower priority and actually leading would help so many librarians in leadership positions get back to their real passions. To refocus their vision and embrace their inner Degen Librarian would do the library some good because at the end of the day, librarying is not so as hard as so many librarians make it. Like I said, we're not storming Utah Beach on D-Day