WEEK 4 OF APLL FUNDAMENTALS - OK, NOW I KNOW I'M A TAD BEHIND...

Got back from my training in Kempenfelt, a beautiful setting, met some great people, had a blast and got back to collide with reality. I know there's that great adage: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." and someone at the training mentioned something about failing to distinguish between what's important and what's urgent (must get more on what that means...) 

Tried valiantly to hold the faith but let's just say the end of the digestive process repeatedly kept hitting the ventilation system. Or, in leadership parlance, challenging growth opportunity. Timely, yes, but did it have to happen all at once? Sheesh!

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to assess myself using the handy-dandy tool. I also took the opportunity during a staff training day in November to have the staff assess me. Yes, I hear you: "Are you nuts?" 

But:
(a) I don't have a very large staff: you could put us in the meeting room in Kempenfelt, swing a long tailed cat (ok, stuffed toy cat for you cat lovers) and still not hit anyone: 5 branches and I have 10 staff members, only 2 who are full time. And this to serve a population of 23,000+. Sucks, but that is my reality. Challenge, ha! I speet at eet!
(b) We've been through a hell of a lot since I've arrived two years ago. I trust them. They have proven to be intelligent, resilient, open and caring.
(c) If I can't trust them with being honest about this exercise - I did explain why I was asking this - how can they trust me when I evaluate them? Just because I'm the Director? Check with Louis XVI and Nicholas II about that approach.

What came out was enlightening, frustrating, upsetting, rewarding, and, ok, there's that word again, challenging. Some things I thought I did well were average to them and some things I thought I did not as well as I would like, they felt I was doing a good job. Oh, there were a number of things we agreed upon when I put my assessment besides theirs. But some surprised me, some pleased me, some winded me. And you know, I enjoyed it.

I get so wrapped up in all the politics and the place is in such rough shape that stopping and having a look at myself and asking am I truly leading or am I only reacting is timely? This last one concept is critical to me as I feel I have a talent to assess situations and generate approaches and solutions. And it's shaking me that I am so focused on fixing what I see as wrong based on what I've learned as a librarian over the years that I am not being a good leader for this community. 

The gift I recently received was meeting so many people from different systems over a couple of days. Yes, many much better off yet dealing with critical issues, others closer to my situation and also facing challenges that I recognize as close to home. All God's chillin' got troubles what is so wrong with putting the brakes on and looking at what I've got to work with rather than what it should be.

My Leadership Strengths
- I inspire and motivate.
- I help people see how and where they fit in.
- I speak well and can sell my vision
- I assess, analyze, troubleshoot, resolve, find a way through a problem.
- I research, gather information, ask for help, seek counsel
- I support and encourage others to grow.
- I open to new ideas.
- I am forward thinking
- I involve people into the process.
- I am service oriented and challenge the status quo when I feel it should be changed.

Strengths Needing Development
- I am so overtaken with the day to day since arriving that I've not forged enough community involvement: I need to get out and meet other community leaders.
- I inherited a sour relationship with City Hall and it hasn't improved. Much of it has to do with education, i.e., that we are not a city department nor just a book depository but a partner in the well-being of this community. This will be a difficult growth.
- I lose myself in the perceived needs of the Library. I am too obsessed with getting to where this place should be. This is a such a great community and I value my staff so that it galls me that this Library is in such a state. But piling on hours and hours of overtime has taken its toll. I can't help anyone from the sidelines.

When I imagine myself as a confident, capable, effective leader, I see a Library valued by the community (and therefore by City Hall), an enabler to linking community needs with services, the go-to place, a partner in growth rather than perceived as a one-use tool.

WEEK 3 - CONTINUED - OH, THE PLACES WE COULD GO!

Well, it's been a bit of a merry-go-round for me these last couple of weeks, well, more like the merry-go-round at the end of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Could Farley Granger be any creepier? So, a whack load of interesting reading which I am to boil down to what vision I would have of my community and public library 10 years hence. This is more challenging than I think Anne Marie expected for me. 

Why? Because I've been through a library Master's programme with one professor shouting: "Books are doomed! Doomed! Why are you people even bothering with them! In 5 years, we'll all be using PCs to read what we need! It will all be on there!" That was in the 1983. I figure by now this same professor is in a white robe wearing a sandwich board, ringing a bell on the corner of Richmond and Dundas in London (Ontario) and still shouting the same. Go get 'em, Frank!

I also laughed hysterically when I watched Things to Come, the mid-30s film adaptation of H.G. Wells's novel, or basically any sci-fi flicks from the 50s. Even Star Wars is a hoot. Ah, Duck Dodgers in the 241/2 century!

No, no. The future takes so many twists as more and more, technological progress is telescoping the time to move from one platform to another. Look at the gaps between the 1940 station at Bletchey, England to the first IBM main frame business computer to the PC to the laptop to the portable phone to the tablet to the... clouds, I see clouds... or the Berliner phonograph to the 33 rpm to the, oops sidetrack to 8 track, to the cassette to the DVD to the mp3 player to the... clouds, I see clouds... So, many things could go either way. 

BUT, being optimistic, believing that by 2012 we haven't nuked each other into smithereens, wingnuts from any religious side haven't won out over any other, the archeologists have discovered that a set of hieroglyphs on the Mayan calendar actually reads as: "Need a refill for this calendar? Contact Xiochitottl today!" and the earth's poles haven't flipped, amongst oh, so many other delights, I was able to come up with something I was happy with (other than the fact that, oh, please God, I'll be retired!) for my community.

10 YEAR VISION

For the Community:

The community has lost its original francophone bias through increased relocation of commuters, predominantly anglophone. I gave it 5 years at my job interview but it's already happening: anglophone service reps in stores, gas stations who can't speak a word of French. And the Catholic school board has lost its grip on much of the community, freeing it up to expand in a more multicultural way. Heck, we might all simply be part of the mega-city OttaKings. 

The rate of unemployment is pretty much the same. There are far more nasty people but then again there are far more nicer people so crime rate is fairly the same except crimes are uglier because weapons as well have improved which is a boon for news sights clamouring for eyes to boost their statistics and bragging rights. 

writng hs evlvd cuz chat qukr, mre pplar bt f10 mzred, cozn cnfusn. Unfortunately, due to massive use of social media, predominantly text based, younger people have lost the ability to recognize or create many facial and body cues, seeing older people who actually smile and touch as being creepy because they do so rather than flash an emoticon or send a poke. Wait, that's happening now!

I could go on as I've been through the 70s (who could see that polyester nightmare coming!) and the selfish 80s (brought to you by the very flower children of the 1960s!) and the downsizing 90s not to mention 2001 living in a border town with the U.S.

So, mine is not so much a filmstrip, more a film festival with some stuff ranging from Disney-esque to Peckinpaw-Tarantino love child. And it's all just that, what a wise monk once replied when people asked him for his response to a horrible event: "We will see."

For the Library:

Print material is still abundant. Electronic access has expanded as it is practical and cheap.  But like fast food restaurants, people know it for what it is.

The Library exists as a community hub. City council understands that it is the distribution centre for information and has relocated many of its services as have the federal and provincial governments. But you don't want to know how bad it had to get before the bureaucrats finally admitted that, for information distribution, libraries do it best.

The Library is space, a physical space to allow the community a common place to share and be and an electronic space (think educational commons gone municipal meets community cloud) where as a portal, information is accessed and deposited.

Staff is occupied matching people to services and matching people to other people (reading clubs, teens teaching seniors / seniors teaching teens), observing, documenting and analyzing community needs to inform the various governments of rising trends and needs in that community (as oppose to whacked out attempts at the governments to bring in services that are "cool" but not currently needed or wanted or helpful). 

Staff coordinates and facilitates the venues for people to physically meet (storytimes, literacy, tutoring, group events) and the access to collected and pooled knowledge (indexing information stored in the community cloud and databases for better access). Yes, there are bibliometric tools, specialized software to crunch through the massive amounts of data but staff is still needed to, borrowing an old term from my grad studies, massage the data to maintain its usability.

Then again, by 2022, we could all be slaves to a more technologically advanced civilization from somewhere in the universe who came to us in peace and discovery. For further insights into this vision, see the history of Africa, Latin America, India, the Middle East, most of southern Asia...

WEEK 3 - NOTHING LIKE A BUG TO BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES...

That and two board meetings in less than a week because the &*^$# board members, especially the City counselors don't show up! We'll schmooze more in Barrie... which by the way, how will this come about? I still haven't received anything through SOLS and today was a delivery day.

Anyhow, still a bit under the weather but plowing through my readings and catching up. Still fighting the "WHAT SORT OF BLOODY STATEMENT IS THAT????!!!" reflex, especially with the Orpheus, which I do admire as musicians, some brilliant recordings.  But being a music grad (alas, piano and musicology but still...) and having friends who perform in various orchestras or freelance, I was sputtering by the end of the article at some of the broad, sweeping statements. Let's just say, I was glad to get through that one!

See, feeling better already! Trust me, I'll catch up as I'm taking some time off next week. So, the brilliant insights are coming, only a tad behind those of my colleagues.  So, hang in there, guys... I'm a comin'!

WEEK 2 - MENTOR / TORMENTOR

I am always amazed how my life shuffles to align things about for me. Last week, I stumbled across two articles on mentoring (or "life coaching") while attending to things completely unrelated to this course work. One in fact was while waiting for a haircut. Being the infomaniac that I am, I quickly buried myself in the article until the stylist stood in front of me and "Ahem-ed" me to attention, tired of calling out my name. Synchronicity - got to love it.

My mentor is someone who sees "me", to quote Oliver Cromwell, "warts and all". My mentor is not fooled by any smoke and mirrors I can and will likely try to use to curry favour nor fooled by their own concepts and prejudices as to what I should be.

My mentor is learned and wise. Learned in a variety of ways to get me from A to B and wise in applying these methods to my strengths and weaknesses, even with a swift kick in the backside to get me to C if need be.

My mentor is in sync with me. I know I have a lot of energy: it has to flow out and it has to return. I know my mentor should have a lot as well, which will flow to me, through me and return. Any resistance to the other's current will weaken us both.

My mentor respects me and wants the best for me for my sake alone. My mentor is not my friend, nor my "buddy" nor anything else but my mentor. Nor is my mentor focused on Henry Higginsing me into a show piece. My mentor is there for me. Any friendship that could evolve after the dust settles on our work together for this course is gravy, and lucky me.

My mentor will be someone who will mold me and, though eventually possibly long gone, be part of me for the rest of my life just as many in my past have touched me and are still at a thought's reach though I remain myself. 

My mentor and I will laugh, argue, debate, share, trust each other and both, in our own way, grow.

STILL IN WEEK 1 - LEARNING TO LEAD

Going through leadership coursework, shackles went up and I could sympathize with Sydnie at this point as far as group work is involved. My reaction was, great, yet another albatross opportunity. Past experience, from grade school through to, well, fairly recently, has tarred my view on group work. I can't recall how often during my school years, the teacher, usually well intended having just read the latest student motivational tract but not quite grasping all the ramifications, chirped at us to form project groups or, worse, assigned us to groups.

I inevitably would have a group comprised of one well-intended but with an excuse for absolutely everything that they didn't get done (which is everything they agreed to do) or one "why bother, I'm going to fail anyway..." or one with delusions of George Patton going into battle or, la crème de la crème, the "I know this is off topic..." In other words, an albatross.

I have had positive group experiences, especially when ground rules are set. And I appreciate the great contribution a good moderator can bring. It's the difference between witnessing an invigorating, creative afternoon and living through the last half of The Lord of the Flies.

The assigned reading was encouraging. I tend to be hypercritical at times of some of these, especially when I feel that [translating an old French Canadian expression] they're farting higher than the hole. I flinched when I read "...after all everyone knows what a dumb question is..." Ah, no, what may be dumb to you could be critical to me. I know what an annoying question is and a whole lot of other types of questions are, but for dumb, ehhhhhhh, that can be hard to define. But, Mr. Force, don't let me stop you from telling me several different ways what a dumb question is after you've just told me that everyone knows what a dumb question is.

Some other eye-rollers in other documents. Dialogue: please, a dialogue involves two people sharing, hopefully mutually, ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc. If only one person is speaking, it's a monologue or a lecture and definitely not a "partial dialogue". How many women are partially pregnant? If you are having the dialogue with the other person and yet it is happening in your head, that's the sound of one hand clapping. See, so easy for me to go  "AAAAAArgh!" Sigh, I know it, I know it! I realize I must work on this because there was some good information to be gleaned from these texts.

I appreciated Brian Wilson's article as it is a style I use with my staff. But I will not do the "kiss-of-death" survey. I've experienced such surveys, including the "lets put all your concerns on flipcharts and each group will have minutes to present and we prohhhhhhmis to work on these" at staff meetings and several other re-connectors. These were executed with the sincerity of waxed fruit then ignored. No one thought staff moral could get any lower until we were handed shovels and told to dig.

Overall, some good meat to chew on. Plus a reminder to myself to stay open. Shoot the messenger but at least first listen to the whole message.

WEEK 1 - LEARNING STYLES - OR ANNE ELK'S BRONTOSAURUS THEORY REDUX

How do I learn? The articles I read recently were good if not confusing: who knew "learning" as a concept could be theorized about so. I'm sure it helps some educators, even some individuals and makes for great debates in some academic circles.  

I saw myself in so many of the various proposed structures, chuckled a bit at one when a mental picture of all French speaking and Italian speaking people got clumped together as a bunch of right side thinkers (the Rose and Nicholl model) because, let's face it, if you want to silence one of them, the old joke is to tie their hands behind their back - and I know as I'm one of them. By the end of Rhonda Wynne's article, I was so hyphenated style-wise that the song "I'm My Own Grandpa" started to run through my head. 

I admit that my leaning style is chameleonesque at best. I'm the classic sponge: info comes by and -schloop- it's sucked in there. Ok, sometimes it's hard to squeeze it out, especially if I'm tired but it's in there. I take notes, I learn by observing, I learn by myself,  I learn with others, I do flashcards and rote, I learn by trial and error. And I hate surveys that ask me what is "best" for me because, so help me, it what happens to be handy at that time or for that "bit" of information. And, yes, somethings work better than others but I can't afford to stop and ask them to put it in a form that's more palatable to my "according to the latest" cognitive reasoning style.

I'm learning Norwegian (or trying to!) with rote, flashcards, the occasional "snakker med norseman" and the mind glazing read through of grammar rules. Mastering a Chopin nocturne, on my own, observations (aural through recordings and visual with the teacher) and lots and lots of repetition. Lectures, webinars, seminars are with pad and pen.

Certainly I'll play around, flipping one learning style over to another to try to make something sink in more. And in some cases, I just can't seem to get the knack no matter what or how hard I try. Thank God for loafers and no, I will not buy velcro tied shoes while I still have all my teeth, hair, sight and hearing: I'll curse and re-tie my shoes yet again if need be first.

So, my learning style? Depends.

OK - SO THE COURSE HASN'T STARTED YET

But if I don't take the time to work on this blog now, I'll likely keep putting it off to the very last for each assignment during the course. Or am I revealing too much to the prof... Well, I am trying to take a proactive stance so that should count for something. And the more I do it, the less "Oh, this will take for-e-ver!" the work will feel. Yeah, I know. Sounds if I'm about to do a Julie Andrews and chirp about being jolly in the face of, well, whatever - pick a movie, she's chirping about making things fun in it somewhere!

Thoughts on leadership. Being the lemming in the lead. There's the vision of Napoleon on his white horse in the Alps with his right hand either pointing the way forward or having just thrown a snowball at the head of one of his generals and acting as if he didn't. Noble, valiant, inspiring. So why is he off the road while the rest trudge in the background doing all the grunt work? It seems they're doing well enough without having to trudge in his horse's droppings. And there were those little snafus in Moscow and Waterloo. 

Then there's that image of what I like to think of as the angry leader, you know, all teeth, no hair like the stereotypical gym teacher, army sergeant, Susan Powter - now how frightening was she? Yeah, people were motivated alright but only in a Hollywood movie or an extremists camp could that sort lead and be admired. And I don't count Richard Simmons in this group: scary alright, make-up deprived circus clown channeling Shelley Winters scary, but not in a "do it or else" motivation.

Let's not forget the Moses style of leadership: wanders off, comes back with a set of rules, wanders off, comes back with a new set of rules, wanders off... well, you get the picture. Got the feeling that the ol' tribe would see him coming and collectively go: "Now what? Oy!" 

Or the Lord Kitchener approach, out of touch with the frontline reality being miles away with no clue as to the hardship, misery and sheer logistic stupidity of his latest directive on the lives of his troops. All looks fine on paper and what could go wrong with a bit of mud and a slight uphill incline to get to the enemy? And surely if we send a couple of a thousand over the trench tops at once, they can't all get shot. Oh, they can..., well, send over some more as the enemy can't possibly have that much ammunition. Oh, turns out they do..., well,...

Or the Monty Python King Arthur approach (divine right or "you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you"). 

Or the classic, all powerful "Because I'm Mom that's why!" Somehow, being dad just isn't as fear inspiring because a refusal is usually followed by a "Mommmmmmmmm!" followed soon after by a "Oh, honey..."

Alright, so enough for now of what I don't think is good leadership - didn't say they weren't effective leaderships: those pyramid and that big wall over in China didn't just build themselves you know.

OK - SO IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED...

Well, my first attempt at a blog for a SOLS course on Web 2.0, though not quite the love child of the Hindenburgh and the Titanic, failed to take off. Many reasons for which I won't go in here... would make the British Doomsday Book look like light reading.

But, with a new course and new goal, it rises again, ah, yes, well, maybe somewhat like one of those inflatable novelties you see on lawns during holidays, you know, the ones were Santa looks like he has dropsy or St Vitus Dance as he jiggles more then a jolly man really should, Frosty isn't quite the full three snowballs one on top of the other and would look at home in Pisa, despite the heat, or the Hallowe'en witch looks like she's just had one too many cup of the ol' brew. But, darn it, this time for sure.

Now this new course is on leadership, which is great as I haven't got a clue. Well, not quite true. Over the years, I have had many opportunity to observe, learn, grow yet just never had the chance to hone. Moan, yes, oh my, yes. Then, I came into a situation where though the previous leader worked hard, let's face it, the Donner Party had a better game plan. 

I am blessed with staff so amazingly gifted and hard working that I need to become the leader they deserve. The people who use the Library are also great people who deserve better than what they have had. I also need to develop the skills to look at City Council in the eye and say: "That's enough..." because, from what I've been able to piece together from office files, they gotten away with way too many things while patting the Library on the head with a "There, there,..." I don't necessarily wish to bite the hand that feeds but like the put-upon secretary whose had enough, I want that hand to keep to itself.

So, bring on the 24th, the wisdom from above, the enlightenment of the path, the sages and the pages (as in blog pages...), and to quote the great Groucho and many others: "Play, Don..."