My academy diary

Hello

Let me introduce myself. I am Suzy Nyakale and work at the Basic Medical Sciences and Dentistry Library of the University of Pretoria. I want to share with you my experience and what I have learnt from the 2nd Carnegie Library Leadership Academy which was held at Leriba Lodge, Centurion on 12-26 March 2010



My background information

Just a few months ago I was appointed to assume a leadership role where I am in charge of a unit in a faculty library and lead a team of the unit. I have great ambitions about the way I’d like the unit to be. This academy couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Apart from being overwhelmed by new responsibilities I am challenged by the style of leadership to follow to lead my team. As much as I am an expert and champion in facilitating information access and library systems, all that will count for nothing if I do not know precisely the leader in me, the clients and my team members.

About the academy

My expectation of the academy is to address the above-mentioned concerns. How do I position myself and my service unit in good standing, and meeting the needs of the library users. Simply put, I expect to learn the following:
What the results of the Hermann Brain Domain say about me
to explore and know what qualities and skills of leadership do I have and improve, and which do I need to learn and develop.
How to develop an effective team that will render efficient service to satisfy our customers, and contribute to the success of my institution .
How to really think smart and have vision.
To share my work experience and get better ideas and guidance from the presenters.
To know more about librarianship as a whole.

We started by hearing and getting to know one another during the introductory session and my expectations were raised at the opportunity of learning things from a perspective other than that of an academic institution.

Introduction to Web 2.0 Technology

This session was presented by Johan Van Wyk – Education Faculty librarian at UP.He started by unfolding the concept and its development. He explained that it’s a 2nd generation of internet based services. I was looking forward to be motivated to really use as a communication tool for library users because it was daunting to use it. The same goes for Wikis and facebook. But was more fascinated by LinkedIn. That it was professional and concluded that I am going to try it out back at work. If I get good results will then use it properly. And now that I know the value of these tools, I will use them to get online comments, feedback from users unlike website that is often unfriendly to users. This was a good presentation.

After he first session where I felt like I was in a virtual space , the second session brought me back down to reality with the introduction of assignments that we will be doing during and after the academy. Now that was beyond what I had expected. But it actually alerted me of the intensity of the program and I realised that this was the real assessment of myself as an individual and as a teamworker. The teamwork project actually tested our ability to work as a team, understand one another and eventually that the leader has to always take the group with him for success. We were assigned a team of people with whom to work the group assignment through.

In the next session, Mrs Hilda Kriel introduced us to the first part of Campbell Leadership Descriptor. The purpose of which was to outline and discuss major components of leadership and evaluate ourselves based on those components and characteristics. We were handed out the participant’s workbook to fill out a questionnaire by which to benchmark our leadership qualities against those of a “good” and a ‘bad” leader. It is where it was clear that both the good and the bad leader are not at all perfect and entirely bad respectively. A bad leader can possess some of the good qualities and a good leader some of the bad ones. I learnt that one does not have to have all good qualities to be a good leader, but that leaders have to design a suitable style of leadership capitalising on the good qualities they have. As I reflect on it, I realise that there is no definite good style of leadership. Everyone can create their own leadership style based on their strong qualities, while working to improve on others.

Herman Brain Dominance Instrument.

This session was the highlight so far. The HBDI model and its explanation. It has helped me a lot to know my thinking capabilities, my strong and weak points. From the results of the questionnaire and an exercises that we had in class, I got a confirmation of the kind of abilities I have, both on a personal and professional levels. My strength and weaknesses were discovered in a good way. Now that I know, I will be able to set myself realistic achievable goals according to what is within my thinking domain and ability, not just aspirations. I found out that I am “green thinker”. That explains why in the Campbell Descriptor tool I scored low on Vision and Entrepreneurialism components. Now it makes sense why I could not do well in Mathematics at school. It was not dominant and thus I lacked interest. But because school system did not take this into consideration, subject were chosen based on what was thought to be important. Maths was considered to be important. I agree now with De Boer (2001) when she says that “traditional teaching methods are no longer effective because brain dominance leads to the development of preferences which in turn establish specific interest” This teaches me that interest that is not just aspiration, it is determined by the dominance of the brain and breeds competence once fully developed. And one learns effectively when one has focused on brain dominance. But the weaknesses can only be developed into strength if one stretches oneself a bit where it is crucial. This is the lesson about reality that I will always remember.

Reference
De Boer, A. The value of the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) in facilitating effective teaching and learning of Criminology. Acta Criminologica, 2001;14(1):119-29.

Setting the South African LIS context

This session painted a picture of what the LIS sector in South Africa looks like at present and how it will be in the future depending on how LIASA and LIS workers as a whole take action. The role of the National Council of Library and Information Services (NCLIS) was outlined by Mr John Tsebe, CEO of National Library of South Africa (NLSA). It was pleasing to hear of the progress made by the transformation charter about the state of our libraries, especially public and small community libraries, and also interesting to learn about about the responsibilities of NLSA. To add on to this, Mrs More, President of LIASA mentioned that progress is made to have LIASA as a statutory body. From these two presentation I learned the significance that LIASA and NCLIS play in our profession. I felt that being in an academic institution, I have very little understanding of how our libraries are run by the government. Although I am a member of LIASA, I was oblivious of the happenings in the public and community libraries. Colleagues from those libraries shed a light of light in this regard. It was learning curve for me, and a real eye-opener about the state of our public libraries.
I was also challenged by Prof Archie Dick in his presentation about social responsibilities of libraries and librarians. What do we do to educate the communities about the importance of libraries. To change the thinking of the majority of township people who protest by torching libraries, that libraries are not part of our culture. Although LIASA condemned the act, it is not enough to condemn but we must do something. It was an important presentation from which to learn to be aware of what is going on in the LIS sector, and take action to make a difference.

Organisational Leadership

Mr John Moalusi, CEO of Bridging the Gap introduced the topic whose central theme was based on what determines effective leadership. Characteristics and qualities of leaders, leadership models, leadership trends, and theories. The main focus was on helping organizations and people succeed. An organization can be made or broken by leaders. I found this presentation challenging as it was presenting a good leader as a visionary one, a go-getter and has the ability to motivate followers. It is well and good for people to know their purpose but it is not always simple to motivate them. What is crucial in leadership is communication, interpersonal relations, empowering followers and also be user focused. It was interesting to learn that not good qualities alone can make one an effective leader. In organizations co-workers and stakeholders play an important part. People are the basis for dynamism in the organization. This needs to be managed carefully. Trust must be built among colleagues, cultural differences needs to be taken into consideration, work has to be coordinated to meet expectations of the users of the service or even exceed them. We identified tools that help to attain objectives. Standards have to be set; policies and procedures have to be communicated, and job description and profiling have to be clear and understood. In this way a balance is maintained between the task, the service team and the individual.

Maximising Human Capital

On maximising human capital the importance of people in the organization was discussed. What is it that gets the best out of people in the organisation. Some challenges were identified as playing major role in impacting on the level of service in our libraries.
Key performance areas of individuals were looked at and how they are interpreted into tasks. We found that some of the KPA’s are not SMART and impacts negatively on performance management. Employees can only be motivated when they realise clearly their objectives and see room for growth. Issues like how does one measure performance of routine work. In my team I have colleagues that do routine work and do not look forward for performance review because in their thinking nothing has changed. I have learned about “stretch targets” that I will definitely apply for such staff members.

Ethical Organisation
Prof Deon Rossouw explained the difference between ethics and values. And the discussion was around why ethics matter in the organisation and how do organisations build and manage ethical culture. Companies or organisations exist because of their stakeholders. Stakeholders need to be acknowledged and taken good care of. That is why companies have to align their strategic objectives with stakeholders in mind. So being ethical means that organisations do not only think of themselves but stakeholders as well. It is those ethical values that determine the interaction between companies and stakeholders. As much as the overriding concern for companies is survival, we learn that it should not be at the expense of stakeholders. Stakeholders need to be treated with respect and friendliness.

Building trust among employees is as important value in service delivery, and would be impossible without ethics. Trust can be facilitated by acts of commitment, openness, competency, integrity, and benevolence. Unethical treatment towards employees can hamper their human potential and affect service badly.

Leaders in companies should be of good morals, to enforce good ethical corporate behaviour and be open in communicating policies of the company. Show, talk and implement ethical standards.

Knowledge Management and the Knowledge Society

In her presentation Marietjie Schutte introduced the concept of Knowledge Management and reminded us that librarians and information specialists are and always have been knowledge managers. Knowledge management is all about managing knowledge that we have about our service, clients, how to put the service pocket together to meet the clients’ needs, how to make optimum use of resources and producing information literate society. I have always thought that the concept is a bit exaggerated and can’t be anything different from what librarians do. The end product is always the user of information. How they access information, what information they access and how they use it to gain knowledge.

This correlates with COPs as explained to be a group of practitioners who share a common interest on a specific area of competency and are willing to work together to capacitate one another for effective action. They are consumers of information. As librarian and information specialist I thought I could be advantaged if I were to identify experts in my fields of subject that I deal with, join them and facilitate access of information needed thereby learning more about the subject. It is sometimes a disadvantage that we do not study for specialised subjects before we obtain a qualification as a librarian. But it is all about being able to identify sources of information for the subject without knowing in details about the subjects. For me knowledge managers are still information specialist. The service is always user oriented to foster a learned society.

Visit to the NLSA

It was the day of launching South African Library week and was marked by different displays of library products from surrounding institutions, South African poetry and story-telling. The day was also highlighted by the birthday celebrations for the National Library of South Africa.
In general I found the workshops that were based on presentation very helpful. Apart from refreshing tired minds, they provided a chance to share different views according to our individual experiences from workplaces and also test our teamwork capabilities. Some components of teamwork were exposed to us as they were evident in team members.

Week two

Marketing, branding and effective communication

The second week of the academy dealt mostly with the status quo of the LIS sector in South Africa, both public and libraries in the higher institutions of learning. The topics included marketing our libraries as well as our profession, improving services that we render, looking to groom leaders who will be advocates for our libraries, dealing with challenges that we encounter in African Librarianship and especially addressing the challenges posed by multiculturalism in our society.

Prof. Ronel Rensburg introduced the topics with her presentation on how to market, brand our companies and using communication effectively. Good brand always attracts potential employees. It has to begin within the company. Outside people should always learn about the good that the company is doing from the employees themselves. As we always network with different people we should always guard against painting bad pictures about our companies. It is upon ourselves to be good ambassadors for our companies, organisations or institutions

Status quo of libraries in South Africa

Prof Peter Underwood emphasised the role that our external environment play to change our services. We must always be aware of the needs of the clients at any particular time and period and respond accordingly. That was the message. We have to be able to make choices according to what the situation demand. An exercise of projecting our library services in the future was challenging taking into consideration the rapid growth of technology. We must prepare ourselves for such changes and adapt our libraries according to the needs of the clients.

Client service

Mrs Kriel in her presentation of client service made it clear that the customer satisfaction is what we need to strive for. We should not sit on our laurels and think that everything is fine. Only the customer can make that call. I agree with her because if it were not for customers we would not bother ourselves with wanting to know what the client thinks of us.

Quality is very important as Christa North emphasized in her presentation on Quality Assurance. It should be an ongoing process to make sure that once attained it is maintained. It is attained because it has been planned for in the management strategy for good service. So it has to be on the agenda all the time. Frequent evaluation needs to be taking place, and also benchmarking against possible competition.

Some of the external factors that play a role are in a form of competition. Dr Nisha Sewdass presented a paper on Gaining a competitive edge thereby explaining the competition, how to identify them and how to counter them. Not only does competition comes from outside, there are factors within our workplaces that are considered competition. Anything that impacts negatively on service delivery is competition. I did not think of it that way, but as she explained it made more sense. This teaches me to look very closely in the workplace for anything that threatens service delivery. They may come from staff, management, rules and procedures, and resources. As leaders we need to be aware of things like those to enable us to think creatively and put our organizations in a competitive position. This was an interesting session because before then I did not have an understanding about competitive Intelligence

South African Diversity context

Dr Danny Titus talked to us about managing diversity in a multicultural workplace. This is one aspect in our country’s endeavour to forge a head the nation building process. From what he was saying, a lot of effort is put into this exercise. He introduced to us an organisation which is leading in addressing diversity management in our country, Desmond Tutu Diversity Trust and what their role is in nation building. As people of different cultures in South Africa, it is important to acknowledge the diverse nature in one another’s thinking and a way of doing things. But this should not take precedence over professionalism at the workplace. Communication is the cornerstone for effectiveness in our workplaces. All forms of communications should be considered, written or spoken. No part of the society should be made to feel excluded in any form of communication.
Change should be handled with utmost sensitivity in organisations. People most often resist change but only if it changes them. Despite this diversity we should still focus on our one goal – customer satisfaction. Team effectiveness is determined by the way we respond to change and look at how it changes the way of doing things to facilitate improvements in our organisation.
The day culminated with the visit to Constitution Hill, Constitutional Court and Library

Winding Up

In winding up, Kay Raseroka highlighted the challenges that are faced by African Librarianship, and also opportunities that are available for emerging leaders like us. She challenged us to take responsibility for our careers, profession and LIASA.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that the presentations were invaluable. My work will be influenced positively henceforth. I’m going to implement web 2.0 tools with understanding, improve my leadership skills, treat with sensitivity the diverse nature of our clients, make sure I am aware of what is happening outside the confine of my premises, take ownership, respect and support my institution, work hard to have SMART CPA’s.


Finally I want to thank the organisers for such a rich experience I was exposed to. It’s such a privilege to interact with experts and feed from their amazing abundance of knowledge. I must say that the whole experience has been a life changing one and the kind I will cherish and remember forever.