The Coaching Librarian
Every other week,* I share tips to help leaders build more empowered teams by developing a coaching approach to leadership. I'm a leadership & career development coach with a dozen years experience as an academic librarian, so the examples come from library work, but you don't have to be a librarian to learn something valuable! *Some issues are email-only, so be sure to subscribe!
How can you start to put some of these coaching ideas into practice?
This week, I’d like to share my experience of getting started actually coaching someone else for the very first time. I’ve shared this story before here, but a lot of folks have joined since then! And it bears repeating, because a lot of library leaders share some of the same fears that I had. So I hope that this reassures you that you don’t have to wait until you feel like a fully competent coach to start practicing at least a little bit of this! I’ll drop a quick reminder here that if you...
Understanding how trauma affects your team's willingness to be coached
Before I jump into today’s newsletter, I’m super excited to share that I recently appeared on a podcast! I joined Lorene Kennard on the Librarian Linkover to talk about coaching and leading with curiosity, as well as some potentially controversial opinions about what skills I’d like to see more librarians develop these days. Here’s the direct link, or you can find it on all of the major podcast platforms. Last time, I talked about the reality that you’re most likely going to stumble several...
Knock me down 9 times but I get up 10
Yes, yes I am starting today with an early Cardi B reference 😂 The hardest part of developing a coaching approach to leadership is that you're going to feel knocked down over and over, but you just have to keep resetting your intentions to try again tomorrow. One of the major challenges is that you can't expect everyone to just magically open up and engage in the way you're hoping for them to respond. You'll probably get at least some resistance from employees who have good reasons to not...
Make sure everyone on your team feels supported
One of the big stories in the onslaught of bad news coming out of the US lately has been the systematic dismantling of DEIA. So we're no longer allowed to openly talk about equity and inclusion. OK. I've been in this long enough to remember when we discussed many of the targeted policy measures under the label of "affirmative action." The words we use change and our understanding of the scope of the work has expanded. But the fundamental work to move toward treating everyone more fairly...
Coaching exercises to help you (and your team) reclaim your sense of agency
Sending out that last edition of this newsletter was really scary. It’s a lot easier for me to talk about coaching skills than it is to talk about myself like that. I don’t even have words for how much I appreciate those who responded with messages of support. And fewer people unsubscribed than I feared! So thank you for quietly supporting me by still being here! Two weeks ago, I was feeling frozen. Every day since has felt like another barrage of bad news, and it would be easy to still be...
How setting intentions can help you practice your coaching approach
Happy New Year! January always feels like a new beginning for me. When I was an academic librarian, this time of year meant starting a fresh new semester. And it meant starting to think about the annual self-evaluation I had to write as part of the regular review process - which included setting goals for the upcoming year. Now, it’s more about natural cycles for me. We just came out of the darkest days of the year, and every day is bringing a little more light into each day. Back in...
Using the Year Compass to chart your path forward
As the year draws to a close, I’m looking forward to some rest and rejuvenation. Whatever your plans are, I hope you have gentle holidays and space for reflection. In the last issue, I talked about reflecting on your accomplishments over the past year and setting meaningful goals. Today, I have another totally free tool to share with you: the Year Compass. You can download a fillable pdf to complete digitally or a version that’s formatted to print. This workbook includes questions to guide...
How coaching can help your team reflect on accomplishments and set meaningful goals
For many people, December is a time for wrapping up projects and reflecting on accomplishments. That reflection can help you identify what matters most to you. And you can use that clarity to shape your goals for the upcoming year. If you’re still in the thick of things and won’t be able to think about reflections until after the end of finals week, flag this email to come back to it later this month! Around this time last year, I was working with a coaching client who was in a bit of a...
How can coaching skills help you navigate holiday gatherings?
My regular every-two-weeks schedule says that I should be sending out a newsletter today, but this Thursday is Thanksgiving in the US. When I worked as a librarian in the US, I was either out-of-office or just mentally checked out for this whole week! So I'm "officially" skipping this week. I’ll be back next week with my regular content focused on applying a coaching approach to leading your team. But, I don't want to leave you hanging if you are paying attention! This week, my mind is on how...
How do you "manage up" to get the support you need?
The main topic for this week is managing up, but first, I want to acknowledge a huge elephant in the room. It has been a pretty somber week here in Lisbon, Portugal. Every person I’ve talked with has asked how on earth Americans could re-elect that fascist.* They’re scared about how US policies are going to affect the whole world for the next however many years. And that’s just the sentiment from a distance. I know it's much scarier for those who live in the US and who will be among the first...
Every other week,* I share tips to help leaders build more empowered teams by developing a coaching approach to leadership. I'm a leadership & career development coach with a dozen years experience as an academic librarian, so the examples come from library work, but you don't have to be a librarian to learn something valuable! *Some issues are email-only, so be sure to subscribe!