Lessa Librarian

#ala11 Emerging Leaders Session June 30, 2011

Group N - We Emerged!

Friday of #ala11 was my last day of the Emerging Leaders program.  Remember my last post on Emerging Leaders, The 2011 Emerging Leaders Class Midwinter Meeting: Be Scared Everyday and Have a Drink in Your Hands, and how much I learned?  Day two was nothing like day one.

Day 2 was all about reflection from the get-go.  Questions like:

What Worked (in our groups)?

What Didn’t?

Lessons Learned (while participating in an association)

and what we think Leadership in ALA involved and how we can become leaders.

Which would’ve been fine – because I’m all about free therapy and introspection, except that that was all we did that second day other than our poster session.  I took a few notes from the meeting, key points that I should remember, like:

Delegate

Have a structure and clear expectations

Communicate, be Flexible, show commitment, and know your own strengths

Don’t be afraid to ask to be involved in an organization

Keep the perspective that ALA is a large, bureaucratic organization, and sometimes things don’t work out the way you’d hope

Be self-motivated and open to influence

Collaborate

*Assume everyone is your colleague

Path of Personal Mastery:

Step 1: Conscious Incompetence – You know you don’t know everything and you still have a lot to learn

Step 2: Conscious Competence – You have learned a lot and you know it

Step 3: Unconscious Competence – You a kick-ass expert and you’re so awesome you don’t even think about it anymore

Culture of Innovation – Risk Taking is important

When in a group – pose a question and wait for a response

All of these skills are very important, but my main problem was that we went over many of these skills the first day.  Additionally, they had us assess our strengths/weaknesses again, and, like at Midwinter, I still have a difficult time delegating.  But, I don’t have any new skills to help me figure out how to better delegate work through this program or really, I’m not sure what skills I came out of.

Enough of the complaining though.  Let me tell you what I did get out of those program, because some of those things are absolutely invaluable and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without this program.

I met a wonderful group of people from California, Chicago, New Jersey, and New York, who I work magically well with.  My group was one of the best groups I have ever worked with.  Everyone was accountable for themselves.  Everyone pulled their weight.  Everyone produced wonderful results (see our poster session below).  So meeting people is two-fold.  I met new people and learned that group work can be painless and successful and its possible to still want to talk to the people afterwards!

Another invaluable thing I learned how to do?  A poster session!  This was my first poster session ever, and I was a little scared at first.  I’m not the most extroverted person, but I can be when I have to be, and this poster session was a time that I had to be.  I learned what goes into a great poster session and what goes into a bad poster session and how to get people walking by engaged.  This helped for the Talk Story booth I did the next day at the Diversity Faire, certainly.

And, finally, I learned about a new organization (LLAMA) and met a wonderful new Mentor (new LLAMA President, Janine Golden).  Hopefully, once, I pay my membership to LLAMA, this will result in committee work and more leadership development through ALA from the Roundtable that represents Library Leadership in the organization.

Overall, despite my qualms with the reflection, I think that the Emerging Leaders program is worth the two days and worth the human connections we made which make ALA seem a little smaller and a little more accessible.

oh! and if you want to see all about our poster session, visit our website and you can see the actual poster here