I first heard this advice years ago when I was still in the role of Organization Development Specialist at Regina Public Library. In hindsight, I don’t think I appreciated what an amazing job that was to have right at the start of my library career. Our Director (still the same guy all these years later) […]
A long time ago, a colleague gave me a way to think of hiring that totally changed how I view the process of selecting a candidate. Before, I was just thinking “Who can best do this job?” but he pointed out that you’re not just hiring the person for the immediate job but potentially for […]
In my Wisdom Wednesday series, I’ll eventually do a post about the difference I see between what I call “black & white” thinkers and “grey area” thinkers. (Myers-Briggs has 16 classifications. True Colors has 4. Hamology basically only has 2!) One big aspect of this difference is that are those who think there are hard […]
We didn’t see eye to eye on everything but I was very fortunate to have the first manager in libraries that I did as he was very experienced and knowledgeable (obviously people have to start somewhere but it can be a lot tougher if your manager is someone who’s newly hired or has only been […]
This was a lesson I learned from my first manager at RPL (who also happened to be the Manager of HR so had tons of great insights into managing people, dealing with conflict and so on.) The context was that I was in a very unique role as Organizational Development Specialist, responsible for all staff […]
I’ve been thinking about actions vs. words a lot lately. One of the things that really brought home this important distinction was when I had to leave the Regent Place branch of Regina Public Library after eight years as Branch Head following a re-org of supervisors and managers. It was a pretty emotional time and […]
Friday is my 15th work anniversary of starting at RPL which is hard to believe! (Uhm, time flies when you’re having fun?!?) I was trying to write a long post talking about the various roles I’ve held at RPL, some of the highs and lows, and more. But it was just getting longer and longer […]
This piece of advice ties directly to last week’s about how the absolute most vital piece of advice I’ve received in my 15+ years as a librarian is to do what you can to solve the problem of the person standing in front of you. In library school, I think I saw a stat that […]
I’ve been trying to write a post summarizing some of the various tips, pieces of advice, koans of wisdom that I’ve collected over the years – mostly from my time in libraries but from other workplaces, reading of books articles and just talking to knowledgeable people I respect. As that post grew and grew, I […]
