That was the question posed by the speaker I listened to on Wednesday afternoon. She was Dee Roche, from the Australian Institute of Management and UWA Business School and the talk was part of a networking lunch organised by ALIAWest.
Dee informed us that the question itself is one that has been asked by the researchers Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones when conducting their research on leadership qualities.
The 80 or so librarians who turned up were asked to reflect on and quickly discuss what we thought were leadership qualities. The usual suspects were mentioned: integrity, vision, inspiration. Dee told us that Goffee and Jones found four “unexpected” leadership qualities:
- They selectively show their weaknesses. By exposing some vulnerability, they reveal their approachability and humanity.
- They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them know just when and how to act. [Dee: this is the “heart stuff”; meeting and working to key values is much more difficult than performance based on meeting Key Perfomance Indicators]
- They manage employees with something we call tough empathy. Inspirational leaders empathize passionately—and realistically—with people, and they care intensely about the work employees do. [Dee: leaders are passionate but realistic; hardheaded while being softhearted.]
- They reveal their differences. They capitalize on what’s unique about themselves. [Dee: what makes your leadership unique?]
She pointed out a few myths about leadership:
- Everyone can be a leader - not true. Followers are just as important as leaders. You can’t be a leader if you don’t have anyone following you.
- Leaders deliver business results. We’ve seen what’s happened with major corporate collapses when the emphasis was solely on business results…
- People who get to the top are leaders. Often getting to the top just means knowing how to play the game.
- Leaders are great coaches. This is not not necessarily true, says Dee. Good leaders often have the capacity to share their vision and excite others, but they may not be able to teach others. Mentors rather than coaches.
Dee finished off by telling us about the work of Kouzes and Posner, on the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. They are:
- Model the Way. In other words, set an example; “walk the talk”. Find your voice; clarify your own personal values [I want to take a closer look at this].
- Inspire a Shared Vision. Imagine exciting and enabling possibilities. Be enthusiastic.
- Challenge the Process. Meet and overcome barriers. Experiment, take risks. Never fear failure.
- Enable Others to Act. Have the desire to make things happen. Foster collaboration.
- Encourage the Heart. Recognise and acknowledge contributions of others. Keep going when times are tough. Celebrate. Simple actions/dramatic gestures.
I don’t always find talks on leadership to be very useful because they are too fluffy (my scientific term), and I also sometimes get annoyed by their faddishness. This one was interesting because it was based on research - and I could also relate to the idea of being authentic and human, rather than just pursuing the bottom line all the time.
Whenever I attend events billed as “networking” events, I realise how inept I am at the kind of small talk that is required at these sorts of things. I tend only to talk to people I already know. That doesn’t really count as networking, does it?
Now I think of it, what is networking? If you read stuff like the Wall Street Journal, it’s all about job hunting and making sure you’re known so that people pass on information about opportunities. If that is the case I don’t know how interested I am in the whole process, really. Given that I work in, and enjoy working in, the academic library sector, and that jobs in this sector are few and far between, and that the hiring process at universities is very formalised and structured, I don’t know how useful “networking” is. I suppose you could hear about possible future openings, but that would be about the sum of it. (And there are other possibly more efficient ways of hearing about jobs.) What am I not getting about this whole networking thing? Please feel free to tell me!
Because I tend to talk with people I already know, such events can be a good way to catch up. Problem is, there’s never enough time to really chat anyway - mostly it’s along the lines of “hi, what’s new at YPOW?” and you might hear snippets of information about people’s personal lives as well (depending on how well you know them). But that’s it.
Yesterday I attended a talk on leadership, entitled “Why would anyone want to be led by you?” It was organised as an event to give librarians networking opportunities while bringing a non-library speaker to talk to us. No doubt my reservations about the usefulness of such events are Just Me - no doubt some people find these sessions very useful, and it’s good that people are willing to give their time to organise events.
As for what the speaker actually said - more on that later.
The unconference is next week! And I haven’t prepared anything to present yet!
I’ve been looking at the barcamp wiki and their tips on hosting an unconference/barcamp, and I think we have most bases covered. The two bloggers linked to on issues to think about when running an unconference provide a great overview.
Darren Barefoot says:
1. Despite it being an ‘unconference’, where everybody’s all groovy and doing their own thing, you still need a few people to be dogged organizers and keep things running smoothly. Specifically, you need to make sure sessions start and end on time. This is an unpopular but fairly essential job.
4. You should be able to borrow projectors from participants. They’re expensive to rent. [I think we’ve got this covered. The State Library should have projectors.]
8. This one is obvious (and, I think, a tenent [sic] of BarCamp), but do the scheduling first thing in the morning with everybody standing in front of the scheduling board. Use post-its and butcher’s paper for the board, so that it can be changed on the fly. Don’t try to maintain a parallel electronic version of the schedule. Here’s what our schedule looked like. [Here’s people picking slots to do their presentations, at the recent Perth Barcamp.]
9. Leave some time for networking in the schedule.
From Crystal Williams’s great list:
- …I recommend setting up a Skype or IRC chat. Very useful for real-time collaboration without the hassle of in-person meetings [hear, hear]
- …Wi-Fi Guru: People are going to want wi-fi, and may even need it for their presentation. In order to provide this, you’re going to need a decent internet connection and several routers to handle the traffic. Someone needs to set this up and keep it running during the camp. [thanks to Nick Cowie for his help with this!]
- Make lists of all the minor things you need to round up: Projectors, paper, markers, pens, nametags, paper towels, garbage bags, toilet paper, surface cleaners, kitchen gadgets for breakfast/lunch, ice chests, garbage cans. etc. Put the list on the wiki and try to get people to bring or donate as many of these as possible. Borrowing is way better than buying whenever possible.
- In-person Meetings are overrated. Unless you all need to view the space or exchange something in person, keep it online. [so far I haven’t attended a single meeting to plan this!]
- Don’t over-complicate things. Don’t let other people over-complicate things. This is surprisingly hard. People have lots and lots of cool ideas that they want to execute to make your Barcamp awesome. That’s great as long as it doesn’t sidetrack the organizers. Try to get things accomplished in the order in which they are absolutely necessary. If you have a location, shirts, food, sponsors, etc locked down, then people can go nuts with the extras. [Librarians can be great at over-complicating things!
But I don’t think we’ve been too bad this time…]
- Don’t get anyone’s company books involved. Too messy. Either deal in all cash or get a special paypal account. At the end of the day, you don’t want to be holding extra money. Best to get people to sponsor things like chair rentals, a meal, etc, and never touch the money yourself.
- Don’t get too slack about the “everyone must participate†rule. It’s not just about attendance, it’s about knowledge transfer. Make sure people don’t think that it’s just a tech thing - creative talks are well received as long as they’re well thought out.
And, from my aggregator, Lilia Efimova shares a few links to information on unconferences. I especially need to read Scott Berkun’s How to run a great unconference session. And I need to start preparing!
