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These articles were originally part of May/June 2010's "Perspective's" column, but due to space restrictions could not be included in the print edition. Please take the time to gather some great leadership ideas with this web-only content!

ILA Leadership Institute

As a 1997 graduate of the Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, I didn’t think I’d ever return home to Iowa – I wanted to explore the world and the big bad city of Chicago. However, I needed some experience and DPL was hiring. For seven years I worked as a reference librarian at the Davenport Public Library (DPL). It was my first “professional” job right out of library school. I’m certainly glad I came home!

With an undergraduate degree in corporate communications it astonished me that DPL, which serves about 300,000 people in the Quad Cities metropolitan area, didn’t have a public relations professional, let alone a programming department. Since my first day on the job I wanted to be the one that could design that department. Flash forward to January 2005. With numerous retirements, the organization decided to give it a try. I was hired as DPL’s first PR/Programming Coordinator, and was assigned to create a brand new department and to get things organized. What an awesome challenge! I should mention that this was a huge time of change for our library. We had just passed a referendum to build two new library branches. I barely had time to move my things to a new desk before I hit the ground running. After a few months it became apparent that one person could not possibly do what was traditionally scattered throughout many people and departments in the library. Thus, I was given another new assignment – supervising staff. Around the same time we hired a new Associate Director, Karl Colón, who was ready to help me put our library in the forefront of people’s minds.  We had about six months to get our first new library branch open, and we needed people to hear about it. Karl was instrumental in guiding me to achieve my new department’s goals. He was an unbelievable manager whom I respected very much, so when he urged me to participate in leadership camp the following year, I was completely flattered and motivated. His nomination letter made me teary-eyed. Was I really that person? Imagine my delight when I found out that I would be one of 25 people to attend this biennial, four-day event, simply entitled The 2006 Iowa Library Association (ILA) Leadership Institute.

I’ll never forget the ILA Leadership Institute for many reasons. Maureen Sullivan was (and still is) the moderator of the Institute. She was a phenomenal leader who could get a mime to talk. The Institute was broken up into eight different sections: leadership, risk-taking, creativity, leading change, transforming libraries, managing differences, teams, and coaching. Although all sections apply to my job (and to my life!), my favorite areas of study were leading change, risk-taking, and problem solving. We learned something called “appreciative inquiry,” which I use almost daily. It’s a way to identify the “best of what is” and to put a positive spin on identifying and solving problems. As someone who speaks to the media often, learning how to put a positive spin on issues is paramount. It was such a motivating topic that I did a presentation to our own staff about it at an in-service.

I have to say that my favorite topic was “leading change.” As our organization still goes through enormous amounts of change, how do we get our staff to make the transformation?  I learned how to identify the four phases of change, how to build a commitment to change, and how to actively listen. As a participant of the Institute, we were all given a binder of information. I still consult my binder to this very day when I’m about to propose a change to staff. It’s great to be able to re-read and have those visual prompts reminding me of all the valuable information I learned at the Institute.

Being surrounded by peers from all different parts of library land – academic, public, school, special – was also an interesting dynamic. What we really learned was, even though our customers may differ, our issues are the same. Spending eight hours a day with librarians from all over the state, with numerous different backgrounds, helped me build a network of new contacts of people in the industry. I had seen many of their names on our numerous listservs, but putting a face with the name was helpful. Learning about the person behind the name was even more invaluable. This is just another example of what we learned at the Institute – get to know the people you work with.

I’m the type of person that if someone is doing a survey at the store, or on the telephone, I’ll answer it no matter what! If there’s a quiz in a magazine that will offer insight into my personality or my IQ, I’m there! The ILA Leadership Institute was numerous days of asking some very serious, tough questions about myself so that I could take a realistic look at who I am. It helped me become a more confident leader within my library, but also within the community. I think the confidence I felt after leadership camp and the skills I continue to practice and learn help make me a better librarian and supervisor. Additionally, it provided networking opportunities, idea sharing, problem-solving, and time to think outside the box. It was a terrific experience, and I would really love it if they would offer a “Leadership Institute 2.”