Tomorrow, I’ll be presenting at the Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference (#CALC26) about coaching as critical praxis in library leadership. As a librarian, I was active in the #critlib space on twitter, and focused pretty heavily on critical pedagogy and critical information literacy.
For a long time, I was adamantly opposed to moving into a formal leadership role. All of my narratives about what it meant to be “a boss” ran against the values that led me to embrace critical approaches. And since I didn’t want to move into a leadership role, I avoided any of the standard leadership training programs that may have shifted my perspective!
I eventually became a reluctant leader and had to figure out how to lead effectively without sacrificing my values.
I’m obviously biased here, but I believe that having a solid grounding in critical librarianship makes for better leaders. When we’re willing to question why things are the way they are and what unexamined assumptions went into those decisions, then we can build more equitable and inclusive spaces – for our users AND for our teams. When we’re willing to listen to our team members’ expertise and share power in the way we approach important decisions, then we can do a better job of helping our team members develop in ways that are meaningful to them.
And, I see coaching skills as a way to shape conversations around those goals.
Quick side note: open registration for Lead With Curiosity: Coaching skills for library leaders will close this Friday, May 15. If you’ve been waiting for the last minute to register, now’s the time!
As part of my presentation, I’ll be talking about the narratives about leadership that kept me from wanting to move into a formal leadership position, so that we can challenge them, and hopefully encourage more people with a critical approach to consider taking on a leadership role.
But also, these are things that come up regularly with coaching clients who are relatively new to their leadership roles – whether they chose this move or are reluctant leaders. So I thought you might also find this discussion useful!
I don’t want to tell people what to do.
This was a HUGE block for me. And I regularly hear others with this perception that being in a leadership role is all about telling people what to do.
The job does include some responsibilities that make this power dynamic feel real, like setting clear expectations, holding people accountable, and communicating demands from above.
Framing those responsibilities as telling people what to do leaves a lot of the leaders I work with feeling like their work is in conflict with their values. Whether you call it a collaborative approach or a critical commitment to sharing power, they want to work with people instead of holding power over them.
But there are ways to share some of that power and give your team members some degree of autonomy. How much depends on their job descriptions – librarians tend to have more autonomy baked into their roles than the staff members who are hired to spend most of their shift at a public service desk. But even when the job description doesn’t leave much room for flexibility in day-to-day tasks, sharing power can mean actively listening and involving people in the process of making decisions about policies that will directly affect their work.
We need more people in leadership who want to look for as many opportunities as possible to share power.
Leaders are supposed to have an answer for everything.
Another common narrative is that leaders are supposed to know everything already, and have an answer for everything on their own. This one is really good at feeding the imposter syndrome gremlins, because none of us knows everything.
But when you walk around feeling responsible for having an answer for everything, how do you honor the expertise that your team members bring to the equation?
When you feel responsible for solving every problem, how do you help your team members develop the skills and confidence to take ownership of their work?
As employees, many of us find it frustrating when our leaders make decisions without giving us a meaningful role in shaping that decision. It’s far more empowering to have some shared governance structures and a manager who asks us to share our expertise. But when we step into leadership, it can feel like we’re not allowed to ask questions or admit to not knowing everything.
One of the many things that I love about coaching as a leadership style is that it’s an established approach that explicitly gives you permission to ask questions and provides a framework for using inquiry to help your team members develop as professionals.
Focusing on a work context, we don’t generally get to talk about helping employees develop a critical consciousness or liberatory practices. The closest we can usually get is helping them shape their work in a way that’s meaningful to them and giving them a meaningful voice in making the decisions that are most relevant to their work. Coaching is a powerful way to accomplish those goals.
Leaders aren’t supposed to show weakness or doubt or make any mistakes.
Brené Brown has been influential in promoting a more authentic style of leadership, but her work is important because of how pervasive this narrative is.
From a critical perspective, this story hides our full humanity. As bell hooks discussed in the context of “engaged pedagogy,” teaching with care and empathy toward liberation can take an emotional toll. And that applies to leaders, too.
We need to put time and energy toward our own self-actualization in order to continue showing up the way we want to show up. When we don’t prioritize this work, it’s really easy to wind up reacting instead of responding thoughtfully. Those knee-jerk reactions can be anything from just solving the problem out of habit, when you really would rather coach them through solving the problem for themselves, to behaviors that can damage team morale. And spending too long just reacting without taking time to take care of yourself leads to burning out.
Taking care of your own well-being and carving out time for reflective practice are important parts of maintaining your coaching mindset.
Some people are just “natural leaders”.
Another common narrative is the idea that anyone can be a “natural leader”, as though leadership were an inherent trait instead of a skill that has to be learned and practiced.
This is problematic on one level because it supports a more fixed mindset instead of a learning mindset. If it’s something you just have or don’t, then every little difficulty feeds the imposter syndrome gremlins – maybe it’s a sign that you don’t really belong here, instead of just a sign that you need to build some new skills.
But then on a more structural level, this sets up a rigid hierarchy of haves and have nots: the natural leaders who deserve to be promoted and the rest of us who deserve to just be worker bees.
As bad as that sounds, it becomes even more problematic when you start to explore the ways that privilege and structural oppression shape this discussion. Race, gender, class, ability, and many other factors play a role in how the exact same behaviors are perceived. We see this in studies that show reviews of the exact same behaviors described as assertive when men do it and as aggressive when women do it. We see this in the ways one’s accent shapes the ways their words are perceived. And on and on.
Beyond just the ways actions are perceived, we don’t all have equal access to opportunities to learn leadership skills in lower stakes contexts throughout our lives. Those seemingly “natural leaders” had access, support, and resources to learn those skills, and parents who recognized the value of nurturing those skills. Anthropological studies of differences between working class and middle class parents have shown that those class divisions are maintained in part by the ways parents reinforce or discourage different behaviors in tiny little ways throughout a child’s life.
There’s nothing natural or innate about being a great leader. It’s a skill that you have to learn and actively practice.
Anyone who wants to be in charge probably shouldn’t be in charge.
I don’t hear this one as much from others, but it’s one that made me incredibly reluctant to accept a formal leadership role. And I came to it by watching the ways some really toxic leaders clung to power, becoming more toxic as they resisted any suggestion that they have room for improvement.
And when I modify this one to focus on anyone who wants to be the type of leader described in these narratives, then I still agree that they probably shouldn’t be trusted to lead a team.
But we need more people who want the power to challenge these narratives about leadership, and to reshape what it means to lead a team.
That means bringing a critical approach to your leadership style. That means building the skills to empower your team members and share power in the decision-making processes.
Coaching alone doesn’t always lead to a critical approach. Embracing your curiosity makes it easier to do the work of learning about structural oppression without being derailed by fragility, but you still have to do that work along with learning to use a coaching approach.
But coaching skills are a valuable tool to help you put a critical leadership approach into practice.
What narratives about leadership did I miss?
What other stories about what it means to be “in charge” have fed your imposter syndrome gremlins or held you back from wanting to move up?
Leave a Reply