Librarians lifting each other up!
Conversation hour
What principles and practices can help us to build supportive work environments that encourage and inspire? How can we affect positive changes within our communities of practice? Let’s get together and talk about it! Library workers from all kinds of professional backgrounds are welcome.
Here are some observations to get us started. However, the hope is that this conversation will be organic and the direction driven by those who attend.
- Open up - something magical happens when teams are built based on interest instead of org charts and when individuals are invited to participate at the level that they are able.
- Be real - there are good reasons that many of us put on a “game face” at work, but when just one person in a group lets their guard down, it engenders a safe environment for others to share from their real selves - and it isn't our personas that get things done, it's real people with real strengths and limitations.
- Engage with ideas and people - when people make time to get together just to talk about ideas, we build bonds and become better professionals.
- Listen - the library profession has a huge diversity of roles and specialities - when we show our colleagues that they matter by learning what they do on a daily basis, we begin to trust and rely on each other.
- Clarify expectations - unwritten and unclear rules create work environments that perpetuate inequality. Let's not gatekeep success.
- Tell the truth with kindness - providing continuous improvement opportunities and low stakes assessment measures benefits everybody.