AtoZ Blogging Challenge – Humble

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.

To be humble is to be modest when talking about your successes.  My success, is due to my staff’s hard work and dedication to the job. They work tirelessly day in and day out almost 365 days a year to provide resources and programs to serve our community. Without their work, I wouldn’t be able to focus my time on large scale projects like our strategic plan, fundraising and looking more closely at the processes we currently have in place.

I hope that my humility will empower my staff to feel comfortable to grow and develop, to be team players and to know that all their hard work does not go unnoticed. I also hope that being humble encourages my staff to take risks when it makes sense and to think outside the box, knowing that I’ll support them. Do I ever want to take credit for a great idea? Of course. But I know that making sure that my supervisor and the library board knows that our staff is dedicated and willing to work hard to do whatever it takes to be of service to our community is my job and that’s more important than taking credit for a good idea.