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The road to success - The Library Director
Library Trends, Summer, 1994 by Herman L. Totten, Ronald L. Keys
Do MANAGEMENT COURSES in schools of library and information studies provide the necessary knowledge for born leaders to become great managers? What makes a good leader has recently been a hot topic in the literature. The conclusions reached have been that change is inevitable and how a leader responds to this change is the mark of how effective he or she will become. The focus of writings in this area is that knowledge about creativity, risk-taking, innovation, and intution--key elements in the makeup of a successful manager--is being successfully transferred to potential managers through the management courses being offered today in schools of library and information studies. The authors refute the conclusion that this transfer is happening successfully and infer that some curriculum changes are necessary to achieve this goal. It is suggested that an analytical model of leadership should be implemented in the curriculum to emphasize creativity, risk-taking, innovation, and intuition. The model would also include a discussion of these elements, their interdependence, the background of these elements, and their uses in the workplace.
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INTRODUCTION
The "Road to Success" in becoming a director in the field of library and information science is not unlike that of many other fields and professions. It is the element of self-knowledge that will lead one to understand the nature of the road upon which one chooses to travel. Thus, one must know, or at least have seriously thought about, where one wants to go and the obstacles likely to be encountered along the way before one starts the journey. All too often this is not the case.
Part of knowing where one wants to go comes from the knowledge attained in the educational process. For those seeking success, a beginning point will be based in management courses. Library management courses traditionally include the concept of management by objectives, that is, managing by setting and accomplishing goals and objectives. The goals and objectives of the library, the larger organizational structure of which it is a part, and the individual must be consistent to achieve any level of success. As an individual in a library who aspires to become director, it is essential to understand the nature of both the library and the parent organization.
Three key questions should be asked in seeking this understanding:
1. Is the organization rigid or flexible?
2. Will my leadership or management skills be more conducive to
upward mobility?
3. Are there opportunities available internally and externally to the
organization that will assist me in developing the necessary skills
to be a successful director?
The issue of the perceived and actual differences between leadership and managerial skills is important because this can influence how an individual is perceived. In looking at the differences in leadership and management skills, several questions readily come to mind with respect to these differences:
1. Are there, indeed, any differences between leadership and
managerial skills? If so, what are they?
2. Are leaders born and are managers trained/educated?
3. Can management courses transform natural leaders into efficient
managers who can both lead and manage?
The thrust of this article deals with the operative question, Do library management courses provide the necessary knowledge for natural leaders to become efficient managers? The perceived and actual differences between leadership and managerial skills have been unclear at times. Indeed, in some instances careers have been destroyed when managerial skills were perceived as leadership and vice versa. These differences will be discussed briefly and then related to how the pertinent information can be incorporated into library management courses.
Paraphrasing George Santayana (1905) in his book Reason in Society, many people do live in this world without any practical interest in life, and one wonders if it is because their goals are too far in the distance to be perceived, or if they allow the proximity of the others to pass unnoticed. Recent systematic studies of library leadership and the characteristics of library leaders have been fully discussed within the profession in several articles (Gertzog, 1992; Kilgour, 1992; Sheldon, 1992; and Spitzberg, 1992). Unfortunately, it appears that there is little awareness of the practical and profound implications of this information to the profession. Thus, one wonders if many in the profession do indeed, as Santayana suggests, wander the professional landscape unaware of the needs of the organization without well-defined personal goals or without a practical means of achieving the goals they do have.
While our professional library education programs have attempted to provide the skills we need to manage libraries, leadership has been viewed primarily as an innate personality characteristic (Sheldon, 1992, p. 391) which is not incorporated into the curriculum. One view perceives librarians as being gateways to sources of information for those in other disciplines who are studying the concept of leadership. In fact, librarians are "uniquely qualified to help the student or scholar efficiently seek the guidance of earlier thinkers as he or she addresses questions about leadership" (Spitzberg, 1992, p. 382). Perhaps the concept has been mostly omitted from the curriculum in part due to such attitudes as, "leadership, much as we admire it in the abstract, is something we suspect in the specific" (Sheldon, 1992, p. 391). An examination of the differences in leaders and managers should precede the development of a model of a library management course which is more relevant to the needs of current library managers and directors.
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