Leading At All Levels - ALA 2012

As the chair of the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) Mentoring Committee, I had several events to attend.  The LLAMA President’s theme for the year has been all about mentoring and one of the events I needed to attend was the LLAMA President’s program entitled “Leading at all levels”.  The presenter was Heather Krasna is a career services professional  and author of Jobs That Matter, which we own in MLS.  Her website is: heatherkrasna.com/LLAMA.html and she has an outline from her presentation as well as the PowerPoint she used on that page.

Heather was easy to listen to and she had quite a bit of ideas for helping figure out what type of job you’d like to do as well as tips on how to network.  She began by telling us to take charge of our careers while mentoring others.

She asked us to think about one thing that inspires us about our profession. She asked us several other questions to prompt us:

• What do you want to do, what are you good at (may not be what you are good at doing), what skills do you want to do the most?
• Where do you want to do it?
• Other deciding factors/values (salary, benefits, market, work life balance)
• How do you figure out what you are good at doing? Ask yourself what are your favorite accomplishments?  Then identify 5-6 stories from work, life, school.  Then ask yourself why should I care?
• Problem – what was the situation before I got involved
• Action – what did you do
• Result  – what was the outcome

In reviewing your answers to each of the areas above, Heather said to look for skills or themes.  Notice what skills do you like to use. Then ask yourself what are the different jobs that use these skills and where do you want to do that kind of work?

She recommends using LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/) to network and to be sure and use its advanced search functions to help find relevant contacts.  Then start reaching out to people by asking for an information interview.  How do you do that?
4 R's of informational interviews

1. Research ( culture, who's hiring)
2. Referrals - hopefully the person will allow you to use their name on applications
3. Read/revised resume - ask if they will look at your resume and offer their feedback ( don't ask for them to forward it)
4. Be remembered...positively. Send them a thank you note, offer to pay for their cup of coffee, share an article

Then it’s important to determine if there is a gap between you and your goals and then ask yourself how will you fill or bridge that gap.

• Sometimes you just have to "mind the gap" so you'll have to cope with your frustrations, be patient, stay focused.
• Always keep your career in context
• Get creative
• Get a mentor

With Heather’s suggestion to get or be a mentor, LLAMA’s Mentoring Committee and the Mentoring program were introduced.  The mentoring program pairs librarians who are currently in leadership positions with librarians who are interested in becoming leaders. Applications for those interested are accepted in late fall.  The link to more information is: http://www.ala.org/llama/llama-mentoring-program

This year the Mentoring Committee conducted a Social immediately following the LLAMA President’s program and it was open to all of past, current and future mentoring duos to provide them an opportunity to network.  It was a great success!