What doesn't kill you, makes you a leader

I've been meaning to do a wrap-up post on my ALA and Emerging Leaders experience; the EL day was my main professional development experience at ALA, and I want to share some of my reflections on leadership, but I haven't been feeling very leader-y lately. I've been feeling far more sit-on-the-deck-reading-a-book-y. That feeling is not conducive to writing.

But then someone (I think it was Andy Woodworth) tweeted a link to a post by Jenica Rogers of Attempting Elegance (I'm not going to tell you how to do it), and it got me thinking again.

I remember my first day teaching. I was very lucky in that I'd gotten a job in the same school I'd done my student teaching, and so already knew many of my colleagues. They were very generous with advice and support. However, what I wanted to know more than anything was not what I should say, but what the students' reactions would be. I wanted some book that laid out, "If you say/do this, students will say/do this in response." Because what came next (and next and next) would build off how students responded and how was I supposed to plan if I DIDN'T KNOW AND NO ONE WOULD TELL ME.

I was, it is fair to say, a little anxious.

And this is kind of what leadership is like. I mean, it's in the name. You're leading. As in at the front. If you're doing it right, you're often doing things that haven't been done before, and you have no idea how people will respond, and that can be terrifying. And exhilarating. And, when it works out, awesome. And, when it doesn't, fodder for some great stories over drinks with sympathetic friends--and a some hard-earned knowledge of how to go about things the next time.

And that, too, is the point. The first time out in front as a leader is the hardest. Whether you rock it or fall flat on your face, the next time you take on a leadership role is easier--either because you have confidence from earlier success, or first-hand knowledge that failure will not kill you.

My first day as a teacher I was terrified because I had no idea what came next. Several years later, within my first few days as a school librarian, I was leading a previously unplanned PD session on the library for faculty. I knew it was a new library, I was new to the school, and there were lots of new faculty--and I knew if I didn't get in there early introducing myself and my vision of the library, it would be even harder for me to build what I wanted to. The ink wasn't yet dry on my MLIS, and I barely knew anyone's name. I had very little idea of what the future would hold (and most of the ideas I did have were wrong), but I did know that doing SOMETHING was far better than nothing. I knew that it was unlikely to be a disaster, but that even if it was it wouldn't do irreparable harm.

That, in general, is my leadership style--I like getting in the middle of things and seeing how they work. I plan, too, but at a point I have to stop planning and just *do* something; just as I didn't know what came next in teaching because I didn't know what the students would do, I don't know what comes next in a project until I can see how the first step actually turned out. Think of it as "fire, aim, ready."

But then there's this post that another friend pointed out: Don't Start a Sentence if You Don't Know How it Ends. This is the exact opposite of my problem. It takes me a LONG TIME to formulate a response to things. I tend not to jsut think through the end of the sentence, but sometimes to the end of the paragraph (this happens in my writing, too--I think and think and think about a topic and then whoosh! I've written two pages).

One of my hesitations about taking on formal leadership positions is that I am very, very introverted. And things like networking--which tend to involve small talk--take a lot out of me. And I'm just not very good at it. I could get better, I'm sure, but I really dislike small talk, so I'm not very motivated, to be perfectly honest. I need to feel a connection with someone first, and I'm much better at building deep connections with a few, than large networks of more casual connections. And in some ways that's definitely a strength, but it does make it more difficult to build the large networks necessary for institutional leadership.

(I have, perhaps coincidentally, been finding a lot of great articles on introversion lately, including this one: 10 Myths About Introverts and thinking a lot about how introversion shapes my practice, and how introverts fit in an ever-more-socially-networked world. But, as you might imagine, I'm going to need to think about it a bit more before I share my thinking.)

I'm still figuring out where I want to be in terms of formal leadership positions. I know that I have far too many opinions--and get far too frustrated by inaction--to not take on some sort of leadership role, if only informally.

I know I have areas of weakness I would need to develop in order to take on more visible leadership roles. I also know that some of the strengths I have make me uniquely suited to less visible leadership roles--and the strengths I do have are often areas of weakness for others. Do I have more to offer by sharing my strengths, or developing my weaknesses?

I realize, of course, that this is a false choice. Whether or not I take on visible leadership roles, developing my weaknesses would be a net good--and my strengths are, well, my strengths, and likely to stay that way. I guess, really, the question is whether leadership is more about playing to your strengths or being willing to work on your weaknesses. And I think in order to be a good leader you HAVE to be willing to develop your weaknesses--how can you convince others to try something new if you're not willing to? Even if you focusing on developing your weaknesses doesn't make you stronger, anyone with leadership experience knows that it will, at the very least, not kill you.

Think, Create, Share, Grow at your school library

Tomorrow morning, pre- crack of dawn, I leave for New Orleans for ALA and for the culmination of my Emerging Leader experience. It's been an amazing six months, and I've been lucky to work with a group of other smart, passionate, and creative librarians. It's been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.

We were given the task of creating some promotional materials for Learning4Life and AASL's Standards for the 21st Century Learner. We decided pretty quickly that the best way to promote the standards was to highlight the incredible work school librarians are doing all over the country. So we wrote and distributed a survey using a GoogleDocs Form, and used the responses we got as the raw material for all of our projects.

I created an Animoto using some images that school librarians shared, and included some examples of the standards in action:


Melissa Corey created a Storybird, which I just love:
Think, Create, Share, Grow at Your Library by melissacorey on Storybird

as well as a great GoAnimate video:
GoAnimate.com: Think, Create, Share, Grow in Your Library by melissacorey

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Alicia Blowers made this great Xtranormal video:


and Kim Ha made one too:


Kim also made several great Google Search Story videos (seriously, making those things is so much fun):


And I would be seriously remiss if I didn't mention our other team member, Leah Ayers, who did a wonderful job compiling all of our results and getting things ready for our poster session.

Which reminds me--if you're going to be at ALA we'll be presenting our projects during the Emerging Leader poster session Friday afternoon at 3:00 in room 271-273 in the Convention Center and in the Exhibit Hall at 1:30 and 4:00 on Saturday.

You can also find our projects at our Diigo group, Emerging Leaders Group A, all of which have been tagged ateamproject. Also in the Diigo group are links to work that school librarians shared with us--there's some awesome stuff in there, and plenty of ideas I plan on stealing.

Be my online friend, in real life

I met Abby Johnson at a reception Monday evening by saying, “Hi, I know you. My name’s Sara.” ‘Cause even though I’d never talked to her before, I did feel like I knew her; I read her blog, I follow her Emerging Leaders list on Twitter, and we (along with 80 or so other people) had spent an entire day in the same room on Friday for the official start of our ALA Emerging Leaders program.

The same feeling of knowing people I hadn’t met had been a common theme that day and throughout the rest of the weekend. And despite several such encounters, I never really mastered the protocol of introducing myself to someone I felt like I already knew.

Anyway, Abby and I were talking about how nice it was to be able to meet people in person before starting work on the virtual teams that are part of our Emerging Leaders project; as much as we (and by “we” I mean people who write about these things on the Internet) talk about how great it is to be able to work virtually and long-distance (and I’m not arguing that it’s not), I think those experiences are better and more productive when they’re built on real-world relationships. I know that being able to put names, faces, and conversations about Exhibit Hall strategy to the people I’m collaborating with virtually makes them far more real to me than if we’d simply exchanged Twitter names and e-mail addresses.

It is, I think most can agree, all too easy to forget that the people we connect with virtually are dynamic, real people unless we have a real-world connection to them. And I’m not just talking about being rude, or saying hurtful things, or assuming the worst of someone’s motives. It’s simply about being more able to give someone the benefit of the doubt because you have a real person’s image in your head. It’s a lot easier to empathize with someone when they’re more than just disembodied text on your screen.

Making virtual connections more real can work in the opposite direction as well. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, several times to explain Twitter to my mom. I was able to explain how things worked, but a grasp of the “why” eluded her. Until I told her about #strandedatala, the hashtag a group of us whose flights had gotten cancelled used to organize ourselves while we were still in San Diego. Tuesday night I ended up having dinner with 18 or so people I’d never met—and never would have met if we hadn’t been able to use Twitter to organize ourselves. And, given that it was mostly East-coasters who were stranded, I made connections with several people from Connecticut. These real-world connections would not have been possible without an on-line connection—and those real world encounters will be made stronger as we continue to communicate on-line. And yes, it’s distinctly possible I could have made these connections strictly online, and made a professional relationship that way. But if I’d never had a real-world encounter with these people on-line, I think something would, inevitably, be missing from our on-line communications.

I’ve noticed, too, over the past several years, the value that communicating via Facebook or Twitter has added to long-standing offline friendships—even friendships I have with people that I see regularly, but even more so with people that I see less often. I know everyone complains about mundane status updates, but knowing about the details of day-to-day life is important to a friendship.

Think about where some of your most intense—if not long lasting—friendships happened. College, right? Living in a dorm? Where you couldn’t help but be immersed in the day-to-day mundanity of your friends’ lives? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. And that, too, is likely why not all college friendships—even the ones that seem most intense—stand the test of time. When you’re not immersed in the day-to-day, you lose that level of shared experience that contributes to a friendship. Online social networks make it possible to stay connected to the day-to-day of your friends’ lives.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t note that when I posted about multiple flight cancellations, and worrying about being stranded overnight or having to unearth my car when I got home, friends responded immediately with offers of a place to stay or a ride. To have friends reach out with offers of help, especially from so far away, especially friends I hadn’t been in touch with for a while, was, well. . . the word “awesome” comes to mind.

I know this blog is, ostensibly, student and learning focused, so I’m gonna try and bring it around to that. The chances are pretty good that our students will need to work virtually—both with people they do know in person, and people they don’t. This is the value in having students who are in the same school and in the same class work on projects that involve virtual communication; students can learn how to build on-line working relationships that are built on the foundation of an off-line relationship. And knowing how to do that is a crucial step in learning how to communicate productively with someone you don’t have an off-line relationship with.

Do teenagers always behave themselves when communicating in online environments (whether for school or not)? No. And we already know that. But they’re not going to magically figure it out either. Their world—our world—will involve virtual communication; isn’t it a good idea to teach them how to go about doing that? And where better to teach them in a classroom, where not only are they answerable to their peers, but there is a teacher to guide everyone through the process.