This past semester, I participated in a professional development program at my institution targeting middle managers. My cohort included about a dozen such folks from across the university. While the size of our respective departments as well as the nature of our work varied, our shared experience as middle managers gave us a strong foundation of common responsibilities, opportunities, and challenges from which to work.
Each session seemed to highlight the balancing act that middle managers frequently have to strike. Like in our session about management and leadership skills, for instance. A typical framing presents the roles as distinct — are you a manager or a leader? the articles ask. Often, that framing elevates leadership as the more desirable role and positions management as inferior. Yet our discussion in this session positioned the skills as complementary. Instead of distinguishing management and leadership as separate roles, our facilitator acknowledged that department heads must lead and manage at the same time and that both are essential responsibilities.
We middle managers know this. Management is about planning, organizing, and coordinating. Management means attending to workflows, staffing, training, timeline, and resources. Leadership is about creating a sense of purpose and providing direction. Leadership means attending to vision and culture. Department heads use leadership skills to shape the environment for success and management skills to execute the work.
Yet managing the work can carry a particular sense of urgency. Without management, chaos can ensue. A staffing gap or a workflow problem requires attention now. Leadership is also essential, no doubt — developing culture, creating shared understanding, envisioning the future — but it’s quieter and slower. The busy-ness of management and its many demands can crowd out opportunities for leadership, continually pushing it to the back burner. The daily work of management can make it feel like there’s no time left for the big picture thinking of leadership. If you don’t create room for leadership, our facilitator said, you’re never going to get room for non-management work. So what’s a middle manager to do?
This next bit is where I really felt the light bulb turn on. What are the questions that management asks versus the questions that leadership asks?, our facilitator posed.
Framing management and leadership as questions to ask offered a simple yet significant shift for my thinking. It helped me see them as lenses to apply to any situation, habits of inquiry to bring to any opportunity or challenge. If my department is overwhelmed, a management lens could help me ask: What resources and support do we need? What processes or workflows might we improve? What timelines or expectations can we adjust? At the same time, a leadership lens could help me ask: What needs are most important? What work has the most impact on our mission? What assumptions are we making? What can we stop doing? How can we acclimate and support the team through changes we make?
Instead of being categories of work to carve out time for, this shift frames management and leadership as complementary ways of seeing my everyday work. This makes leadership feel less abstract and more actionable, positions them both as routine practice, and enhances their complementary nature, too. In fact, it’s helped me recognize the ways I already employ both regularly, and often in the same moments, with different lines of inquiry. This strikes me as an effective and sustainable way to carve out a bit more space for leadership practice, to strike a better balance between management and leadership.
What lenses do you apply to your everyday work? What questions do your lenses help you ask?
What happens when you inherit a world-renowned collection that needs fundamental reimagining? My time as Performing Arts Librarian at Arizona State University has taught me that transformational collection work requires both patience and urgency—and that the process itself is as important as the outcome.
From Child Drama to Theatre for Youth and Community
When I stepped into my role stewarding what was then called the Child Drama Collection—the world’s largest repository of materials documenting theatre for youth—I quickly realized that both the collection’s scope and its name needed evolution. The archive, established in 1980, had grown to over 3,600 linear feet of materials spanning centuries of performance history. But as I assessed the collection’s strengths and gaps, a troubling pattern emerged: in an estimated 5,000 linear feet of materials, only three people of color were significantly represented.
This discovery aligned with concerns that scholar-practitioners Shavonne Coleman and Meriah Sage have raised about the broader field of theatre. In their recent article, “The Opposite of Absence is to Occupy”1, the authors discuss their early research for the project, “Hidden and Erased Stories in Drama and Theatre for the Young: Exploring Untold Narratives“. Their work, alongside Kristala Smart and Josh Streeter, seeks to document how BIPOC/TYA artists, educators, facilitators, practitioners and audiences in theatre for youth have been systematically excluded from institutional memory. The goal of this national research project is to document unwritten and illuminate hidden history facts and experiences that have been pushed to the margins in order to maintain the status quo.
This work asks a crucial question: “What happens if we don’t uncover hidden histories?”
My collection assessment revealed exactly what happens—entire communities disappear from the historical record, not because they weren’t contributing to the field, but because collecting practices privileged certain voices while marginalizing others.
This discovery became a catalyst for change, but not the kind that happens overnight. Institutional transformation, I learned, operates on a different timeline than individual urgency—but Coleman and Sage’s work demonstrates that this effort extends far beyond any single collection or institution.
Nashville Children’s Theatre Records, Arizona State University.
Alt image description: A group of children and one adults sit in chairs and on the floor, facing the camera in what appears to be an indoor gathering or event, reimagining a storytelling.
Learning to Process—Collections and Change
I got my archival training through volunteer work and graduate school. But the real learning happened on the job. Thanks to mentorship from colleagues like Associate Archivist Elizabeth Dunham, I discovered that processing archival materials takes about eight hours for each linear foot. At that rate, and with current staffing, the processing of our physical collection would take decades.
But the mathematical reality became complicated by a more immediate challenge: my predecessor accepted the task of building the collection over nearly 40 years and agreed to fulfill every request. Her focus was on acquisition and supporting what was then a robust PhD program in Theatre for Youth (which has since changed to one faculty member and no longer offers doctoral degrees). As an MFA graduate rather than a trained librarian or archivist with an MLIS, she lacked formalized training in archival processing and librarianship. This situation unfortunately occurs too often in the field, particularly with specialized collections.
The result?
I’ve been working on decades of technical processing issues that I’m now resolving. Incorrect barcodes. Incomplete records. Materials that need rehousing. Collections that need fundamental reorganization. I love community-centered collecting and reaching more people. But a lot of my daily work is less exciting. I spend time fixing past mistakes: updating catalog records, standardizing folder labels, creating finding aids, and making materials accessible to researchers.
This mundane technical work doesn’t generate headlines or conference presentations, but it’s essential infrastructure for everything else. You can’t build authentic community partnerships when your collections lack organization. You can’t serve researchers well when your catalog records are incomplete. And you can’t advocate for resources when you can’t prove basic professional competency in collection management.
Collection management roles should require MLIS training or similar archival credentials. Making these qualifications optional isn’t enough. Technical skills go beyond just following procedures. They’re about grasping how information architecture impacts access. We must ensure that communities can find and use the materials they trust us with.
Navigating Legacy and Change
One of the most delicate aspects of reimagining an established collection involves stakeholders with deep emotional investments managing their relationships regarding past practices. My predecessor dedicated nearly 40 years to building this collection, and her relationships with donors, faculty, and students fostered a strong sense of institutional loyalty. When I arrived with plans to shift collecting priorities and rename the collection, some community members felt that the changes represented a rejection of that legacy.
I frequently heard the phrase “When Kathy was here…” Descriptions followed about the different ways people managed things. Some well-meaning colleagues called me “the new Kathy.” This left some donors confused or worried about the changes to established practices. Some faculty emeriti, who shaped the collection’s original direction, saw community-centered collecting as a departure from its “true purpose.”
These conversations required careful navigation. I have profound respect for the foundation established by previous stewards; without their decades of work, no collection would exist to reimagine. But I also had to establish that while I honor that legacy, I am not my predecessor.
#Loyalty
The challenge grew as performing arts communities built strong loyalties. They often protect their beloved mentors. Graduate students and alumni may feel that changes to the curriculum or collection focus criticize their education. Some long-time donors worry that others may not value their contributions anymore. This concern arises when collecting priorities change.
I needed to state clearly that when faculty or librarians retire, they no longer make decisions for the institution. Emeritus status brings honor and respect, but not ongoing operational control. Current staff should address current needs and priorities, not cling to past methods.
This doesn’t mean dismissing valuable input or ignoring institutional history. Instead, it means that we distinguish between honoring legacy and allowing it to constrain us. The collection’s strength comes from its evolution, not its stasis.
Learning from Hidden Histories
My work intersects with broader efforts to document marginalized voices in theatre for youth. Hidden and Erased BIPOC Stories in Drama and Theatre for the Young: Exploring Untold Narratives exemplifies the kind of collaborative research needed to address historical gaps. The team wants to uncover and record overlooked historical facts and experiences. Many of these have been pushed aside to keep things the same. This effort mirrors the challenges faced by academic collections.
A cross-sectional approach offers essential lessons for academic libraries. Rather than waiting for traditional donation processes, this project actively seeks out stories through community connections and alternative documentation methods. It acknowledges that significant contributors may not identify with conventional academic labels—they might be storytellers, social workers, or community organizers whose work doesn’t fit neat categorical boundaries.
This perspective has shaped how I approach collection development. Instead of only seeking materials from established theatre organizations, I’m learning to recognize that vital historical documentation might exist in community centers, family collections, or oral traditions that formal archives have overlooked.
Image: MSS-273, Rosa Lee Scott Papers, Arizona State University. Alt image description: Black and white photo of a Black woman standing in profile, thoughtfully resting her hand on her chin—a quiet moment of reflection—wearing a light jacket over a dark top against a plain background.
The “And” That Changes Everything
The collection’s new name—Theatre for Youth and Community—reflects more than a semantic preference. The addition of “and Community” acknowledges that methods and practices previously labeled “for youth” now serve a broader range of audiences. But it also recognizes that youth are often overlooked even in discussions of “community.” This collection intentionally works toward strengthening their sense of belonging and advocacy.
This seemingly small change necessitated extensive conversations with library leadership, faculty stakeholders, and community partners. It demanded research into the field’s evolution and careful consideration of how language shapes collecting priorities. The renaming process taught me that institutional change requires building consensus while maintaining focus on equity and inclusion.
Balancing vision with infrastructure
Academic libraries face constant tension between managing existing resources and adapting to evolving needs. With our collection, this meant simultaneously:
Addressing technical debt: Correcting years of processing inconsistencies, updating incomplete records, and rehousing materials according to current standards.
Processing decades of unprocessed materials using proper archival methods while working within realistic timelines.
Developing new community partnerships to address historical gaps in representation.
Training graduate assistants in both technical skills and community-centered approaches.
Learning from ASU’s Community-Driven Archives Initiative on hosting workshops and oral history events.
The key insight? These aren’t competing priorities—they’re interdependent aspects of responsible stewardship. You can’t build real community relationships without showing basic skills in collection management. You can’t help researchers well if your passion for inclusive collecting lacks strong technical support.
The unsexy work of fixing barcodes and standardizing folder labels might not align with the transformational vision I brought to the role, but it’s what makes that vision possible. Community members need to trust that their materials will receive proper care and remain accessible to future researchers. That trust starts with demonstrating that you can manage what you already have.
Community-Centered Collecting in Practice
Shifting toward community-centered collection development means more than updating mission statements. It requires:
Transparency and shared stewardship. Community members need to understand how they will use and preserve their materials, and they should provide ongoing input into those decisions.
Long-term relationship building. There’s no rush or pressure for donations. Trust develops through consistent engagement and demonstrated commitment to community priorities.
Resource allocation. Meaningful community engagement requires dedicated time and personnel—not good intentions.
Regional networking. Partnering with other institutions helps collection development focus on broader access goals. This way, they can work together instead of competing.
Acknowledging alternative forms of documentation is important. Not all critical work fits traditional archival formats. Community storytelling, oral histories, and unique documentation can capture experiences that formal records often overlook.
Lessons for Academic Libraries
My experience suggests several implications for academic librarians navigating similar collection challenges:
Embrace collaborative learning. Early-career librarians should not hesitate to seek mentorship, and institutions should create environments where questions and mistakes are part of professional development.
Invest in professional development and proper training. Specialized collections require specialized skills. Enthusiasm and subject expertise aren’t substitutes for professional competency in information management.
Address technical debt with transparency. Inherited collection problems don’t disappear—they compound. Building new partnerships while ignoring existing organizational issues creates unsustainable workloads and undermines trust.
Plan for the long term. Real change in collections, especially for diversity and inclusion, needs ongoing dedication. This must go beyond individual roles or funding periods.
Document the process. How we transform collections is as important as what we transform them into. Other institutions can learn from both successes and challenges.
Collaborate with existing projects. Rather than starting from scratch, look for community-led initiatives already doing this work. Projects like Coleman’s “Hidden and Erased” prove how academic institutions can support grassroots documentation efforts without trying to control them.
The Ongoing Work
Over two years into this role, I’m struck by how much I’ve learned and how much work remains. Processing continues alongside community outreach. Relationships develop over time while immediate access needs remain. At the same time, technical corrections occur alongside visionary planning. The collection grows in new directions while I’m still organizing what came before.
This tension isn’t a problem to solve—it’s the nature of the work. Academic libraries support various groups over time. Therefore, to create real change, they must balance short-term maintenance with long-term goals. For example, updating catalog records may seem dull, but it ultimately helps make collections more accessible. Rehousing materials shows the careful care communities need to see before they trust us with their histories.
Unsolicited advice
For ACRL colleagues facing similar challenges, my advice is this: embrace the long game while establishing your professional authority. Institutional change occurs at a gradual pace, yet it does occur. Furthermore, document your process and build authentic relationships. Most importantly, remember, the key question isn’t if you can change everything at once. It’s about whether you’re heading in the right direction. Remember that the key question isn’t whether you can avoid disappointing people who preferred how things used to be—instead, it’s about whether you’re stewarding collections responsibly for current and future communities.
The Theatre for Youth and Community Collection will continue evolving long after my tenure ends. That’s exactly as it should be. Our role as librarians isn’t to perfect collections, but to steward them responsively and responsibly for the communities we serve—including communities we haven’t served well in the past.
What stories are missing from your collections? How can community partnerships change what you collect and how you collect it? We all share the power to document history. But we must create conditions that allow everyone to join in. As Coleman’s project reminds us, the opposite of absence is to occupy—and academic libraries have a responsibility to make space for those who have been systematically excluded from institutional memory.
Questions for Reflection
When you consider collection development and your ties to the institution, ask yourself these questions:
When you assess your collections for gaps, whose voices are missing? How might those absences reflect historical power structures rather than simply acquisition opportunities?
What community-led documentation projects exist in your region? How might your institution support rather than compete with grassroots preservation efforts?
About institutional change:
How do you balance honoring institutional legacy with responding to current community needs? When does the preservation of tradition become resistance to necessary evolution?
What technical debt are you carrying from previous collection management practices? How does that infrastructure work to support or hinder your ability to serve diverse communities?
About professional identity:
How have you built your professional authority after a long-serving predecessor while also honoring their legacy? What strategies help you navigate stakeholder expectations?
How do you share changes in collection priorities with donors and community members?
When implementing equity-focused changes, how do you distinguish between legitimate concerns about process or resources versus resistance rooted in preserving existing power structures? What role might your identity markers (race, gender, age, career stage) play in how stakeholders receive your initiatives?
About the long-term work:
What would success look like for your collection transformation efforts in five years? In twenty years? Moreover, how do you measure progress on work that spans many career cycles?
How are you keeping track of your processes and decisions? Future librarians will need this information to continue the work.
Sources:
Coleman, S., & Sage, M. (2025). The Opposite of Absence is to Occupy. ArtsPraxis, 11(2). ↩︎
Editor’s note: This guest post has been authored by Jessie Loyer and Veronica Arellano Douglas. Jessie is the Indigenous Engagement Librarian at the University of Alberta. Veronica is the Interim Associate Dean for Research and Student Engagement at the University of Houston. This post is the third in a four-part series, “Discussing the 4 Pillars of Immersion.”
This series was inspired by conversations during a January 2024 Immersion Facilitators retreat that examined our relationship with the foundational pillars of the program. The team explored each pillar by sharing questions and perspectives and considered how to integrate each pillar into the portfolio of Immersion programming. The first post in this series focused on information literacy, the second on the changing roles of librarians in higher education, and in this third installment, Jessie Loyer and Veronica Arellano Douglas will explore the role of leadership in the work of teaching librarians.
Why leadership?
Veronica: Those of you who have been to Immersion in previous years may still have a much-loved and dog-eared binder of program materials, notes, and work scribbles. I still have mine from every Immersion I’ve attended since 2008! Yet in preparation for this post, Jessie and I returned to our 2019 Immersion program binders, which we both received as new facilitators and program observers. We wanted to reacquaint ourselves with the Immersion approach to leadership for teaching librarians, which is informed by critical leadership theory and appreciative inquiry. Leadership might at first glance not seem to be central to the work of teaching librarians, however, so much of the work of teaching involves creating and managing positive change; advocating for ourselves, our colleagues, and the communities we serve; and using our influence to center the needs and concerns of learners at our organizations. Whether or not you lead a department, team, or program as a teaching librarian, you are leading instructional efforts at your institution.
Jessie: While we were revisiting Immersion documentation on leadership, we were most drawn to two working assumptions or ideas:
Leadership is both a social process and social construct that tends to reflect the dominant cultural narratives of an organization
You do not need to be in a leadership role in order to create positive transformation within your context.
The Immersion program welcomes librarians from all roles within their organization, and invites them to a week of generative, focused reflection around teaching. For many of us, budget cuts, deprofessionalization, misinformation and other pressures mean that teaching is frequently scrutinized and asked to be justified; we can feel powerless in the face of these pressures. But I think that the way that we talk about leadership in this program is powerful: what does it look like to create transformation within the context that shapes your work? You don’t have to be the Dean of the library to make transformational change.
VAD: I think that’s a really important point, Jessie. I know that for a long time I had a really narrow view of “leadership” that was really just me conflating it with management or supervision. I still think that good leadership is essential for successful supervision, but I do think there are opportunities for teaching librarians to learn and grow as leaders at all levels of an organization. I really appreciate the way you characterize leadership as change-making. Teaching librarians see the day-to-day needs, pain-points, and successes of learners and colleagues and are often in the best position to know what needs to change.
JL: Understanding the obstacles and considering what to prioritize makes this work sustainable, especially as big change can seem overwhelming. I also think that connects so neatly to that first assumption: leadership is a process and a construct that reflects the narrative of the organization. When I start a new position, seeing organizational charts tells me so much about what an organization prioritizes, but witnessing how projects are managed gives me an even clearer picture of how staff at all levels are valued. Immersion helps us to see and name those structures of power that shape our work life.
VAD: Yes! A critical approach to leadership, rather than an adoption of corporate leadership frameworks is so needed in academic libraries. If we are turning a critically reflective lens to our teaching we should also critically consider our leadership structures and approach.
How did you develop your personal leadership approach?
JL: As an Indigenous librarian, I’ve benefitted from my own culture’s beliefs about leadership, and from the fellow Indigenous librarian role-models who shaped and continue to shape my sense of leadership. What is most unique to me about these Indigenous models is a true humility in leadership. My grandfather was Chief of our nation in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, and I remember him sitting at his kitchen table, fielding phone calls and stuffing envelopes: he took his responsibility as the external voice for our people seriously, but he never saw any of the work as beneath him. Similarly, I’m grateful for Indigenous librarians like Sarah Dupont and Kim Lawson, who worked with me when I was a student librarian: they were both committed to their own growth and had a hunger for knowledge in the service of others.
Models of leadership that are compelling to me all share this sense of the ecosystem of the work: we are all making this happen together, and all the work is essential and should be celebrated.
VAD: As an early-career instruction librarian I never thought I would be in a leadership role or position. It was an assumption that quickly proved false, as I ended up leading projects and coordinating teaching programs, then progressed to supervisory roles (department head, and now interim associate dean). I had a lot of preconceived notions of what leaders looked and sounded like and I was not any of those things. It took a wonderful mentor and friend, Celia Rabinowitz, for me to see that leadership could be feminist, inclusive, and always intellectually curious. She was and continues to be a role model for the kind of leader I would like to become. Turning to feminist leadership theory rooted in Emergent Strategy or Relational-Cultural Theory feels more true to who I am and how I operate in the classroom and in life. I frequently turn to adrienne marie brown’s statement, “small is all” as a reminder that culture and leadership is embedded in all levels of an organization. Being in a supervisory position or a position of authority is not about imposing your rules and will on others. Instead being an effective leader ties back to what Jessie describes as humility and an appreciation for the work of everyone. As a leader, you are responsible both for and to the people you lead, and means listening and addressing their needs and concerns, celebrating their work, as Jessie mentioned, and creating trust and community. The community ethos we try to cultivate in the classroom with learners is something that teaching librarians can bring to all aspects of their work throughout their organization.
Again, why leadership?
VAD: Although Jessie and I were able to connect leadership with the work of teaching librarianship relatively easily, we wrestled with this idea of why we would be discussing or focusing on leadership in the context of information literacy, which is at the center of Immersion. I think Jessie’s reasoning is the most sound here.
JL: Information literacy instruction requires clarity. It demands that we help connect students to a network of information, enable access, and ensure that students have the context necessary to understand our collections. These tasks require us to build negotiation skills.
Good information literacy instruction is also good leadership: collaborative, expansive, and responsive. In the same way that the best boss knows that they don’t have to micromanage their workers because they’ve recruited great workers, a good librarian knows that our students come with a whole life of lived experience that has informed the way they search: we don’t need to micro-manage them; we can offer strategies and tools for this unique context.
VAD: That valuing of the learner, of all people, is critical to leadership and to understanding and teaching information literacy. I really appreciate the way Jessie centers the lived experiences of learners and the influence it has on their individual approach to information literacy. I agree with those parallels wholeheartedly. A good leader does not try to flatten their team or mold them into a cookie-cutter shape of a model worker. Similarly, information literacy education is informed and shaped by the context in which it exists. The same critical reflection we bring to our teaching and try to impart on learners is essential to leadership. In our next post, Carlos Duarte and Mary Broussard will begin to dig into critical reflection and its centrality in the Immersion Program.
To work in higher ed these days is to grapple with institutional change. There’s no escaping it. Within our organizations, we’re experiencing structural, financial, curricular, pedagogical, or technological change — likely some combination thereof. We are working in a turbulent time.
This turbulence churns up doubt and creates strong ripple effects: suspicion and fear, not to mention low morale. Yet successfully navigating these waves of institutional change requires confidence in our leadership, in a shared vision, in our ability to collaborate.
You’ve heard that saying, collaboration moves at the speed of trust? We asked some librarians for their thoughts on the trust problems they’re seeing and how they’re building trust with their colleagues. Given the subject matter, we opted to anonymize this post.
Have thoughts you’d like to share, too? Drop us a line in the comments.
Have you seen the trust-in-higher-ed problem playing out in your past/current institutions? How so?
Response: One of my Directors of Libraries did not exactly instill trust among library staff. The Director claimed to be transparent in their decision-making, but library staff questioned their direction, with questionable decisions on budgeting, hiring, and new library services and technology. When asked respectfully, the Director was evasive and somewhat confrontational. This distrust feeds into work culture, creating a culture of fear and suspicion; it’s not a great place to work when that happens.
Response: At my institution, we had a very unfortunate situation play out with a partner that has seemed to pit the university vs. the local community. It was a PR nightmare, to say the least, and although the university is an anchor in this town and area of the country it’s severely wounded the local trust. As an example – social media posts that have nothing to do with said situation get comments about it because folks are so upset.
Response: As the budget situation at my public institution has worsened since the pandemic, we’re seeing very low levels of trust by faculty and staff in the upper administration. Several new administrators have come in over the past few years who have said they value communication, collaboration, and shared governance, though they have embarked on new, costly initiatives without input and now seem surprised at the pushback they’re receiving. While it can absolutely be true that higher educational institutions can be slow to change, especially if feedback is truly sought and accommodated, I think that often the lack of transparency and collaboration ends up dooming new initiatives from the outset, making things harder for faculty, staff, and ultimately for administrators.
What has undermined your trust in your past/current institutions?
Response: At both my past and current institution, a boys club mentality has undermined my trust in these institutions. When sitting on committees at a campus level, it’s disappointing to spend time and energy in those meetings but feel like the men in the room, and in positions of power, already have an agenda and we are there simply to go through the motions. It feels both difficult to make progress and is frustrating to think that your ideas (and ideas of your colleagues not in this club) are dismissed and not taken seriously.
Response: One thing that has undermined trust where I’ve worked is fake consultation. This is where library staff have been consulted on decisions, or appear to be part of the decision-making process in some capacity, but when recommendations are proposed, the decision seems to have been made from the start, as they would have been without consultation. When this happens over, and over, and over, trust is undermined.
Response: In my institution, the stark contrast between our leader in libraries and the broader administration (president, provost, etc) undermines the trust in the latter. Our Dean of Libraries is clear, transparent, and refers to a “life-work” balance instead of the other way around. We feel supported by them, and know that they are a staunch advocate for the Libraries in the many broader campus meetings they take part in.
The president and provost, however, are not as transparent. Once asked (or sometimes forced to an answer by tuition-paying parents) they willingly talk about things like the university budget and the new process about hiring. But they didn’t choose to speak about it on their own. Without explanations, there has been a new admin hired right at the end of spring semester last year (so, once most faculty left) and now there is a new position in the provost’s office, which has also not been elaborated on. That position was posted at around 4:15pm on a Friday. It’s like they either don’t see the optics problem, or they simply don’t care.
Oh, and did I mention we’re moving to a zero-based budget university-wide with mere weeks to submit, with an administration that prides themselves (overly so) on being data-driven? It doesn’t exactly build any trust whatsoever.
Response: I’ve also been struck by a boys club mentality in a previous institution, which was coupled with a lack of transparency from the president and head of finance about budgeting. The impression I had was that the president knew best how to allocate funds, and the library was far down the list of priorities for him. It was difficult for us in the library to plan from semester to semester because we could not trust that resources would be available for us to do our jobs, and morale was (not unexpectedly) a challenge.
What has fueled, reinforced, or stabilized your trust in your past/current institutions?
Response: In the last year, the institution I currently work at has brought in a new president, provost, and CFO. When sitting in the crowd for the president’s remarks upon the announcement of her hire, I felt hopeful about the future of the institution. Both the president and provost have done the work of showing up for events across campus, making time in their schedule to come to the library and listen to our ideas and concerns, and have communicated transparently about their work and external factors impacting our institution. I have seen the impact of this energy, on the dean of our library, the people I supervise, and colleagues outside the library. While our campus and budget problems aren’t completely solved, there’s a new level of trust that has re-energized us and made us feel a little more hopeful.
Response: Transparency; give me the reasons why a decision is being made. I don’t necessarily have to agree, but at least I can see the reason and I don’t have to guess or speak with colleagues for their opinions, which fuels gossip and can worsen work culture.
Response: I echo transparency. The gossip at my institution is out of control because the higher-ups are making moves without making sure that folks understand where those moves come from. I’m not saying that everything needs to be qualified and explained; I am saying you need to consider how things look to everyone that works under you, and make decisions about how to explain your actions.
What have you done to build trust with colleagues and teams?
Response: I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m a big fan of confiding in others and being vulnerable. I think this helps build long-term relationships that are built on a solid foundation of trust. Honesty and empathy, which can be common in long-term relationships, are huge components of building trust.
Response: My past professional experiences have shown me the importance of consistency in building trust. As a department head, I work to consistently show up for my team and for people within the library. In my current context, that plays out with me being on-site, keeping an open door and drop-in policy, and having frequent conversations with the department about workload and capacity. I do my best to communicate what I know, build consensus and make collaborative decisions as much as I can, and celebrate successes. I feel like it’s always a work in progress and maintaining trust is a verb, not something that can be attained and then you can coast.
Response: The open-door policy I have with members of my department has been crucial for the team to build trust in one another, especially with half of the entire department being new in one year. I know I can go to anyone’s office with a question, even our chair, and either get an answer or have a discussion on where we might find said answer. Us newbies have also been trying to build rapport with other departments in the library, which have historically been a bit siloed.
Throughout this academic year I’m participating in a leadership institute at my university. I’m part of a cohort of nine colleagues, from across the university and in various leadership roles. We meet once a month to discuss chapters from Reframing Academic Leadership, hear from leaders across campus, learn how to be better leaders, and discuss the challenges and opportunities we see and face in our roles. I’m really excited to be a part of this institute and learn from my colleagues across the institution.
For October’s meeting, we took the Leadership Orientations questionnaire. This was created by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal and published back in 1991. They developed four frames for understanding leaders: structural leaders, human resources leaders, political leaders, and symbolic leaders. You rank a series of choices based on how true you feel the statement is to you and your leadership. Once you’ve completed the questionnaire, you add up your scores and you see which of the four leadership frames you scored the highest.
I scored highest as a human resources leader (followed by symbolic, structural, and political). When I looked at the definition of a human resources leader, I wasn’t surprised that was my highest score. In particular, my attention caught on the last line in the definition of a human resources leader: “A good leader is a facilitator and participative manager who supports and empowers others.”
As I shared with my cohort, I feel like the last year as a department head has really pushed me into strengthening and sharpening my facilitator muscles. I’ve always enjoyed facilitation, but in my current role, that’s a huge part of my work. I’m leading department meetings, working through theoretical questions and decisions around our reference services, and overseeing a library informatics bachelor’s degree program. In doing facilitation, I hope that the people who participate in these meetings do feel supported and empowered. That’s certainly my goal and how I think about setting up those opportunities.
The phrase “participative manager” also resonated with me. I feel my leadership style is influenced and informed by the participatory design work I started while I was at my last institution. As much as possible, I like to collaboratively work with the department to make decisions, especially decisions around our priorities and work. This has resulted in meetings where we draw vehicles representing our digital learning objects or where I solicit feedback on a proposal for a way to move the work forward within the department. I feel that style has worked both for me as a manager and for my team (see my last post about laughing with the department).
In thinking about being a participative manager, I also started thinking about how I help, support, and often do the day-to-day work of the department. This is definitely something I struggle with; I feel strongly about “pulling my weight” and being an active participant in the department. However, my job now involves other types of work and sometimes I can’t do all the participating I want to do. In discussing these frames with the cohort, I mentioned that I struggle with balancing participating with some of my other department head tasks and someone in my cohort shared something along the lines of, “Well just don’t do as much.”
While I appreciate the straightforwardness of that answer, I don’t think the solution is that easy. In some ways, it reminds me of the ideas I was sorting through in my coordinator role particularly around my identity. When I started in this department head role, I felt pressure (whether internal or external) that I needed to prove myself. So I jumped right into the teaching and the outreach work of the department. I wanted to prove I could do the work and that I could do it well. And now I’m at a point where I’ve got to start making decisions about where I can step back. I need time to do the departmental work of keeping a department moving forward. I’ve got to find new ways to balance my understanding (and participation) of the day-in-day-out work and strategic department head work. I know it’s always a work in progress and having the space to reflect on my style has helped me bring this a little higher on my priority list.
I appreciated the chance to take this questionnaire and dig into some of my thoughts on how I lead. As a cohort, we had an interesting conversation on how our frames change over time, as we step into new leadership roles and grow as humans. I feel that I’ll always have the human resources in me but there are definitely opportunities for me to strengthen some of those other frames. Knowing where I feel most comfortable can help me think strategically about ways I can lean more into my structural, symbolic, or political side.
Have you taken this leadership questionnaire (or something similar) before? If so, what lessons did you learn about you and how have you tried to use that framing in your job moving forward?
