(Public library, staff of 28/22 FTE, 2 locations)
We work in teams at our library (collections, public service, programs, PR, technology, facilities, etc). Every team has a manager embedded and most staff members are on more than one team. Most decisions are made at the team level, with the manager in charge of workflow, budget, alignment with strategic plan goals, and coordinating work with other teams. Our management team (6 of us) meet together once or twice a month to share information and do management training. So while teams make decisions, those decisions have management oversight. Some decisions are made at the individual level with manager input/oversight one-on-one.
Managers call team meetings, and they set the agenda (often informal). As director, I don't call that many meetings. Sometimes teams will invite me to their meetings (they want to share something with me or they want my input). I have on-on-ones with the people who report directly to me and I also sometimes call meetings to get policy or planning input. I do call the monthly staff meeting, which is to do trainings, to have a round-table sharing of what is going on in our different areas, and to re-connect over breakfast. We generally do not make decisions or discuss issues at full staff meetings, since very few topics need input from all of us.
To help individuals and teams make good decisions, we are working on teaching goal-focused decision making:
- What is the problem you are trying to solve or idea you are trying to promote?
- What are your goals in solving this problem or creating this new thing? How do these goals align with our mission and our strategic plan?
- Who should be involved in this discussion? Who brings expertise (rather than opinion)? Who is impacted?
- What information do we need to make a decision? (what are other libraries doing, what does our data tell us, what are the other possible ways we could solve this problem or meet these goals)
- Following information gathering, evaluate your favored proposal. Does it meet goals? Is it simple, sustainable (cost, time), and flexible? Does it build relationships? Does it align with the mission and strategic plan? Is there anyone else we need to include in this discussion?
- Present your proposal (to your team, manager, director, board - whoever needs to approve this idea).
Regarding 360 reviews, I think there are better ways to get feedback. Staff members don't really know what a director does, so they are not really in a position to evaluate. Our employee manual talks about the kind of work culture we are trying to create, so we have done surveys in the past regarding whether we are succeeding. We now get most of our feedback through check-in conversations between employees and managers held three times a year.
------------------------------
Mary Jo Finch
Library Director
Westbank Community Library District
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 30, 2020 01:55 PM
From: Susan Anderson
Subject: leadership style
"Developing your personal leadership style. How do you handle meetings and meeting schedules, how do you engage people in decision-making (or do you?), what are the risks/benefits of asking employees about your leadership style (or doing a "360 review")?"
I have found with meetings that it helps with the atmosphere to assign other members of the team to be the primary speaker on items instead of me speaking on every one. Also on the advice of another Director, to send out the agenda ahead of time with objectives for each item. As far as a 360 review I think that would depend on whether you have a team that you would trust to be sensitive and fair.
------------------------------
Susan Anderson
Library Director
Redondo Beach Public Library
------------------------------