AtoZ Blogging Challenge – Growth

During the month of April, I’ll be participating in the 2017 Blogging from A to Z Challenge. For this year’s theme, I chose to look at leadership qualities as I’ve just recently (within the past 6 months) become the director of my public library. We have about 50 staff members, most of whom are part-time employees serving a 30,000 resident community by providing high-quality programs and resources. Each day, I’ll look at one trait and how it’s helped me to become a better director.

I believe growth is so important to being a leader – to be able to allow yourself to grow, to provide opportunities for your staff to grow and to look for ways to allow your organization to grow as well. I’ve only just become a director a few months ago and already I have learned so much and yet I know there is so much more to learn!

Currently, I’m working on streamlining some processes we have at work, it works, but also takes a lot of staff time, so the wall in my office is covered in post-it notes with the entire process laid out with other post-it notes with who does what part of each job. This has been 2-weeks in the making and I’m still trying to learn about the ins and outs of this process.  Part of the reason is that although my staff works really hard, sometimes they’re doing their job “the way its always been done” even though new resources have become available and there may be an easier way to finish a task. It’s definitely a time of growth for me and I believe it will be a time of growth for my staff as we make their job easier and allow them time to spend on other projects… or at least that’s my hope!