Angel Suhrstedt - Learning Retrospective

This professional development workshop focused on the theme of “know yourself, grow yourself, and take your library with you.” One of the things I found intriguing was the fact that the program was designed so that we would do our homework prior to the event itself. Doing a little legwork and thinking beforehand led to thoughtful and valuable conversations at our table and throughout the room. I think that for upcoming reference meetings I will try this approach. I think it would be especially helpful when we are brainstorming or trying to work through a process.

One of the pre-workshop assignments was to take a personality inventory (Myers-Briggs) test, which I’ve taken many times. I seem to flip-flop between INFJ and INFP, and while I’ve found this knowledge beneficial, it just tells me about myself… not really how I can use my personality type/skills to communicate with others and achieve more in my career. One of the suggested (but not required) pre-workshop activities was to take a Gallup, Inc. strengths assessment test.(www.gallupstrengthscenter.com) The assessment took approximately 45 minutes, and provided me with my five “signature themes.” These themes represent my most dominant talents and provided ways to use my strengths to (according to the Gallup report) “enjoy personal and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.” Maybe that’s a LITTLE heavy-handed, but I did find the information valuable. In order of dominance based on the questions in the assessment my five signature themes are as follows:

1.Connectedness – I like to build bridges between people and groups so I can show them how to relate and rely on each other. I also have the ability to help others find meaning in the unpredictability of the world around us (I thought I just liked playing matchmaker!)

2.Positivity – According to the strengths finder people with dominant positivity talents have an infectious energy and enthusiasm and "everyone feels better about life when they are around” (that’s encouraging!)

3.Maximizer – I have always loved those moments when I have been able to see someone else’s talents and strengths, but I didn’t really realize that this was an ability that would benefit me. This report encouraged me to focus on the strengths of others to help them succeed, which to me sounds like what an assistant manager SHOULD be doing.

4.Input – People who rank high in the input area have a love to provide relevant and tangible help to others, and a resourcefulness and curiosity that causes them to store knowledge that can be shared (sounds like a librarian to me.)

5.Adaptability – I loved what the strengths finder said about people who have a dominant adaptability trait “The genius of people with adaptability talents lies in the way they respond to chaos: they can quickly change and respond to circumstances that would frighten and intimidate others.” My ability to take things in stride means that I can be a can be a calm and reassuring influence on people who don’t handle change well. Again, seems like a good fit for my career choice!

Short story long, while this single assessment was not the purpose of the entire workshop, I did find the results and advice really encouraging. In the future I would love to see our entire staff take this assessment or a similar one. It would be great to get a picture of all of our strengths and how we could use them to help us meet our goals as an organization.

So I’ve just spent an entire page telling you about how awesome I am (insert smiley face here) but what did I really take away from this conference? I think the ability to “know myself and grow myself” that I gained out of the strengths finder and other activities I participated in during the workshop is going to help me be a better assistant manager, which incorporates the third portion of the central theme of the event “take your library with you.” One of the best messages I gained from this program was that a person doesn’t need to have the title of “leader” to be a leader. This is the exact kind of behavior I want to encourage out of our staff. I want to guide people to make decisions for themselves that will best benefit our organization, while feeling good about their choices.

We also watched the following video. If anyone ever has doubts about their ability to lead (or why sometimes it's even more powerful to be a great follower), they should watch this: http://ed.ted.com/on/IgslePtt