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silveradept[This year's December Days are categorized! Specifically: "Things I should have learned in library school, had (I/they) been paying attention. But I can make that out of just about anything you'd like to know about library school or the library profession, so if you have suggestions, I'll happily take them.]
Laurence J. Peter published in 1969 a hypothesis that people in any organizational structure are promoted to the level of their incompetence, based on observations that people who are good at what they do tend to rise in their organization, but people who aren't good at what they are doing tend to stay where they are. The Peter Principle can be used to suggest why everyone sees to have bad bosses and coworkers - if everyone's been promoted to the level of their incompetence, it means everyone is incompetent at what they do, at least enough to prevent further promotion. This doesn't mean that all organizations fall apart because of the incompetence of their people - most people are still going to be competent enough at their job that the organization still continues to work, just that there's always going to be at least one thing somewhere that a person will have to be routed around to get anything done with. Often times, the manager can seem to be that person for a multitude of things.
In the library world, though, there are some barriers that prevent upward mobility. If you want to work in a library, but you haven't gotten the requisite Master's degree, you can expect to stop at the circulation clerk level and advance no higher, no matter how many years of experience you have with the organization. Once you've gotten over the pretty significant hump of graduate school, you can continue going upward - good luck if your organization doesn't provide tuition assistance or you don't have enough privilege to be able to afford your degree. Some very fine librarians are stopped from ever getting to that space through something other than their competence.
As for management, well, a lot of job posting suggest that having the Master's is all you're going to need to be able to effectively run a library - one of the postings I applied for out of library school made it abundantly clear that I would be a person in charge of a division of the library, not just a person working there. There had been no "how to manage people" classes in my graduate education - if I had wanted to manage classrooms, I could have taken the school track, but there wasn't a degree unit or a class that I remember that was about managing people and all of the things that come with being a managers in an organization. Library and information schools now might have that as a part of their curriculum, now that they realized what happened to degree-holding people in the wake of the economic contraction, and if they understand that the only place that makes more money in the organization than the librarian is the manager of the librarians and branches, and so forth on up the chain of management. So, for a person who enjoys front-line work, they're not likely to want to be promoted out of it.
And personally, I think that would be to the level of my incompetence, anyway. Which isn't to say it might not happen anyway (or hasn't already, but that's another post), but it's not a thing that I want to do.
Which is to get to the point of the post - there are a lot of people managing libraries that are good at it and know how to make a functional workplace. And there are plenty that don't. I have found, though, in the many managers that I've had to this point, there's something that stands out a touch between those that I felt were doing good things and those that weren't. Specifically, there's one good question to ask for a start.
As an idea of controlling and making sure that your worker knows who to fear and what you think their job is, it's terribly effective. If, however, you are supposed to be encouraging your librarians to find community partnerships, to think of programming ideas, and otherwise put themselves to work doing cool things for the library, then it's just terrible. Which is to say that there were other things being talked about - making sure that program days and times were communicated, so that everyone had an accurate idea of what my schedule would be like, and thoughts about what might be good ideas to pursue, but this particular "you're not doing work" came as a strike from where I wasn't looking. This could have been avoided by talking to me about what appears to be going on and what's going on, or its perception thereof. (I might be annoyed at how things have been mischaracterized, but I am smart enough to understand what to do about it.)
That manager retired near the end of my probation, which is probably why I stayed with the organization at all, because it really did seem like she was looking for any excuse at all to be able to fire me at that point. (And any excuse would have done for it, even something like "I don't like the shirt you're wearing today.") The next manager didn't help to allay fears I had of management, because it was apparent that the rumor mill came through as well and was still working against me, perceptions-wise. The manager after that, however, started to show signs of knowing what they were doing (and would eventually go on to lead a different branch after being here). She regularly held meetings between herself and the staff, so that she could talk with us about things that we were experiencing, that she had heard was coming, and to make sure that we felt lie we were being supported and understood at our work. Whatever she may have felt about me, or heard about me, she understood that I was essentially terrified of what was happening, and gave me reassurance enough to start coming back out of the shell I'd hidden myself in because of what happened with the last managers.
I'm still not very fond at all of managerial changes for the reason of not knowing whether the new manager is going to pass the competency checks. So far, though, the current manager has managed to do it, chiefly because he practices the idea of talking to people about things before they become problems, and taking the attitude that what appears on a review should be no surprise to the person being reviewed. It goes a very long way toward reassuring people that relationships are not going to suddenly spring up into hostility or disciplinary action over perceptions or things that haven't been talked about before and opportunities given for improvement.
There are other ways to tell if the boss you have is going to be a competent one, many of which can be gleaned by listening to how they deal with both people on staff and with the public. The less they are in contact with both, the less likely it is they're going to be able to help when it comes to issues that arise, and the tone they strike and how they handle interactions that are more fraught are going to tell you a lot about how they will handle similar situations among people. It's not a surprise, however, that the managers I have felt most comfortable with have been the ones that have made overt effort to communicate, to make sure there are no surprises or traps waiting for their employees, and who acknowledge but don't rely on or encourage rumor-mongering and spying from co-workers on each other.
Now, if we could only manage to establish a good communication pipeline with the upper management...
Laurence J. Peter published in 1969 a hypothesis that people in any organizational structure are promoted to the level of their incompetence, based on observations that people who are good at what they do tend to rise in their organization, but people who aren't good at what they are doing tend to stay where they are. The Peter Principle can be used to suggest why everyone sees to have bad bosses and coworkers - if everyone's been promoted to the level of their incompetence, it means everyone is incompetent at what they do, at least enough to prevent further promotion. This doesn't mean that all organizations fall apart because of the incompetence of their people - most people are still going to be competent enough at their job that the organization still continues to work, just that there's always going to be at least one thing somewhere that a person will have to be routed around to get anything done with. Often times, the manager can seem to be that person for a multitude of things.
In the library world, though, there are some barriers that prevent upward mobility. If you want to work in a library, but you haven't gotten the requisite Master's degree, you can expect to stop at the circulation clerk level and advance no higher, no matter how many years of experience you have with the organization. Once you've gotten over the pretty significant hump of graduate school, you can continue going upward - good luck if your organization doesn't provide tuition assistance or you don't have enough privilege to be able to afford your degree. Some very fine librarians are stopped from ever getting to that space through something other than their competence.
As for management, well, a lot of job posting suggest that having the Master's is all you're going to need to be able to effectively run a library - one of the postings I applied for out of library school made it abundantly clear that I would be a person in charge of a division of the library, not just a person working there. There had been no "how to manage people" classes in my graduate education - if I had wanted to manage classrooms, I could have taken the school track, but there wasn't a degree unit or a class that I remember that was about managing people and all of the things that come with being a managers in an organization. Library and information schools now might have that as a part of their curriculum, now that they realized what happened to degree-holding people in the wake of the economic contraction, and if they understand that the only place that makes more money in the organization than the librarian is the manager of the librarians and branches, and so forth on up the chain of management. So, for a person who enjoys front-line work, they're not likely to want to be promoted out of it.
And personally, I think that would be to the level of my incompetence, anyway. Which isn't to say it might not happen anyway (or hasn't already, but that's another post), but it's not a thing that I want to do.
Which is to get to the point of the post - there are a lot of people managing libraries that are good at it and know how to make a functional workplace. And there are plenty that don't. I have found, though, in the many managers that I've had to this point, there's something that stands out a touch between those that I felt were doing good things and those that weren't. Specifically, there's one good question to ask for a start.
- Does your manager talk to you about possible problems before they become problems
As an idea of controlling and making sure that your worker knows who to fear and what you think their job is, it's terribly effective. If, however, you are supposed to be encouraging your librarians to find community partnerships, to think of programming ideas, and otherwise put themselves to work doing cool things for the library, then it's just terrible. Which is to say that there were other things being talked about - making sure that program days and times were communicated, so that everyone had an accurate idea of what my schedule would be like, and thoughts about what might be good ideas to pursue, but this particular "you're not doing work" came as a strike from where I wasn't looking. This could have been avoided by talking to me about what appears to be going on and what's going on, or its perception thereof. (I might be annoyed at how things have been mischaracterized, but I am smart enough to understand what to do about it.)
That manager retired near the end of my probation, which is probably why I stayed with the organization at all, because it really did seem like she was looking for any excuse at all to be able to fire me at that point. (And any excuse would have done for it, even something like "I don't like the shirt you're wearing today.") The next manager didn't help to allay fears I had of management, because it was apparent that the rumor mill came through as well and was still working against me, perceptions-wise. The manager after that, however, started to show signs of knowing what they were doing (and would eventually go on to lead a different branch after being here). She regularly held meetings between herself and the staff, so that she could talk with us about things that we were experiencing, that she had heard was coming, and to make sure that we felt lie we were being supported and understood at our work. Whatever she may have felt about me, or heard about me, she understood that I was essentially terrified of what was happening, and gave me reassurance enough to start coming back out of the shell I'd hidden myself in because of what happened with the last managers.
I'm still not very fond at all of managerial changes for the reason of not knowing whether the new manager is going to pass the competency checks. So far, though, the current manager has managed to do it, chiefly because he practices the idea of talking to people about things before they become problems, and taking the attitude that what appears on a review should be no surprise to the person being reviewed. It goes a very long way toward reassuring people that relationships are not going to suddenly spring up into hostility or disciplinary action over perceptions or things that haven't been talked about before and opportunities given for improvement.
There are other ways to tell if the boss you have is going to be a competent one, many of which can be gleaned by listening to how they deal with both people on staff and with the public. The less they are in contact with both, the less likely it is they're going to be able to help when it comes to issues that arise, and the tone they strike and how they handle interactions that are more fraught are going to tell you a lot about how they will handle similar situations among people. It's not a surprise, however, that the managers I have felt most comfortable with have been the ones that have made overt effort to communicate, to make sure there are no surprises or traps waiting for their employees, and who acknowledge but don't rely on or encourage rumor-mongering and spying from co-workers on each other.
Now, if we could only manage to establish a good communication pipeline with the upper management...
no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 12:20 pm (UTC)I had one job where multiple people were crying when I left, many because I'm a swell fella, many also because they would have to start dealing directly with my boss.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 01:47 pm (UTC)We could pick from several different variants: there was one for academic libraries, one for public libraries, and one for the school library track, though they were pretty clear that many of the topics would be relevant to whatever position you ended up in, so if you didn't have a clear type of library you were aiming at, take whatever worked for your schedule.
We covered budgets, some basic theory of hiring and managing (not tons, but enough that you could figure out how to ask useful questions in whatever setting you were actually doing it in), different kinds of situations that come up commonly. It wasn't sufficient unto itself, but it was a reasonably solid base given that a lot of management skills are knowing your specific setting and org requirements and how to work around custom.
My program also offered a class called Communication for Leadership, which was taught by a wife and husband where she'd had a number of high-level admin (and specifically HR-type admin) positions in the Chicago Public Library system over the years (so very big system with lots of different things going on). And he'd done a bunch of different kinds of consulting work, both inside the library world and outside.
She was great at setting up projects that got us thinking about different skills, and different ways to resolve leadership choices (there's often more than one possible 'right' answer, but some options will work a lot better for everyone involved than others, or set some kinds of precedent you may want to think about long-term, etc.)
The thing for me is that I actually like a fair bit of the management stuff (and I think I'm reasonably good at it) but not at the cost of giving up being able to do reference and other librarian-specific work, and way too many management positions are almost all management and no librarianing, which is no fun.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 07:32 pm (UTC)I'm glad you have a better one now.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-11 08:31 pm (UTC)Then one day all of us on our project who were using them were hauled into one of the manager's offices and told there was nothing relevant on the newsgroups and we were not to use them during business hours. As we knew damn well they were relevant, which was why the company provided access, all it did was further lower our opinion of management. It was doubly stupid in my case as I was specifically authorised to take breaks as needed to control my pain, which of course I then felt inhibited from doing.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-12 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-12 01:03 am (UTC)