AtoZ Blogging Challenge – Willing

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.

It’s important, at times, to be willing to make compromises as a leader. It’s not always easy to make these compromises, but sometimes compromises will get you further down the road. This isn’t always easy for me as I tend to make a decision and then expect results, but sometimes you have to work with other people to get the results you’re looking for and compromises have to be made. And as I’m finding, to be willing to work with organizations and groups of people, we often get positive results and are able to dream bigger by having others to work with.

We recently built a new community center in our township, which is great for residents, but took some time for our Park and Recreation Department and the Library to figure out how to work together to provide classes together. We’re currently partnering once a month to offer a free fitness class to the community and just submitted a grant to provide a healthy living series of programs in the future. It hasn’t been easy, but by willing to make compromises on both sides of the table, we’re able to provide better services to our community and that’s what we both want.