Directors, leaders and work-life balance

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Directors, leaders and work-life balance

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Can you be a library leader and still maintain a reasonable balance between the demands of work and the rest of your life? To put it another way, can you have it all?

Consider a slightly different question: Can you be a library director or administrator and have it all?

After spending three months editing, arranging and revising scores of pieces on aspects of leadership, I wrote Who's a leader? in January 2008. That essay discusses many kinds of library leadership, not all of them involving management or administration.

Steven J. Bell commented on that piece with What's special about the organizational leader, making the case that directors need special qualities that other leaders may not need. Related discussions took place at ACRLog and Academic Librarian, synthesized into Are we doing enough to create the next generation of leaders? (The posts noted in Steven J. Bell's first paragraph appear as part of that essay.)

Naturally, related conversations continue--and perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the most articulate people on these issues continue to disagree. To my mind, that disagreement offers food for thought, whether you are (or plan to be) a director or administrator or whether your leadership plans go in other directions.

What follows combines modified portions of two posts and comments on those posts, with both posts used by (blanket) permission: "Sorry but you can't have it all," posted April 24, 2008 by Steven J. Bell at ACRLog], and "But what if I don't want it all?" posted April 26, 2008 by Wayne Bivens-Tatum at Academic librarian. Do note that I provided all subheadings while editing these pieces; don't blame the writers for my language!

Feel free to add your thoughts, either on the talk page here or by adding related articles. As always, if you don't want to deal with MediaWiki markup syntax, you can send me your contribution and I'll do it for you.--Walt Crawford 13:31, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

Update, May 14, 2008: Editor's note: Jeff Scott commented on this discussion at Gather no dust on May 7, 2008, and I've added excerpts from his commentary, which adds insights from a public library director.

Sorry but you can't have it all

by Steven J. Bell

I recently gave a keynote talk at a meeting of a statewide library directors group. I called the talk “The Search for Tomorrow’s Library Leaders in A ‘Dissin’ the Director’ Landscape” and part of the talk referred to previous ACRLog posts on leadership and library directors. I mentioned some of the reasons that Gen-X and Gen-Y librarians are disillusioned with library management. With their negative perceptions of library directors these individuals can find few good reasons to aspire to careers as library administrators.

Why else are nextgens disinterested? Past research indicates they want a better work-life balance and were hesitant to make the necessary sacrifices required to lead libraries from the director’s office. I made that point with a quote that appears in a chapter titled “Preparing the Next Generation of Directors and Leaders” by Nancy Rossiter from a book titled Making a Difference: Leadership and Academic Libraries by Peter Hernon and Rossiter:

Rachel Gordon Singer found that Generation X and Generation Y librarians have a negative view of management...the amount of time a library director devotes to the position is potentially a turn-off; younger librarians do not want to detract from time spent with family and friends... One of Gordon’s respondents stated “There is no amount of money or prestige that would entice us to sacrifice our families, our home lives, and our sanity for the long hours and Sisyphean ordeal of a directorship.”

A dose of reality or a need for sensitivity?

That led to interesting discussion and thoughtful reactions, both pro and con. One director said this was all well and good but that the current generation of directors need to give their nextgen colleagues a dose of reality. Getting the job done, said the director, requires certain personal sacrifices and a work-life imbalance, staying late, working weekends, getting emergency calls in the middle of the night, is occasionally necessary. Bottom line: you can’t have it all.

But another director expressed concerns about the blurring of work life and personal life in an increasingly 24/7 connected society. This director thought library administrators need to be more sensitive to the next generation’s desires for work-life balance. If work-life practices and behavior of the current generation of directors establish the model upon which the next generation forms its attitudes towards library administration then today’s library directors, as part of their effort to recruit and shape the next generation of leaders, need to live and promote an image that will attract the best and brightest to academic library leadership.

Attracting the best and creating change

Not unexpectedly, there was no clear resolution on how best to attract nextgen librarians to library directorships. What we do know is that perceptions are important. As long as nextgens see the current crop of directors working long hours without a clear sense of potential rewards, it’s unlikely they’ll be motivated to enter into directorships. The current generation of academic library directors need to better communicate that their jobs do occasionally involve long hours, but that there can be great rewards. Chief among those rewards is fulfilling a vision about how an academic library can best serve the needs of its constituents.

Here’s my message to those nextgens who diss their director and whose own vision is in conflict with what they see coming from the contemporary academic library director’s office:

You may be the best person to become a library director. There’s no better way to fulfill your vision of what an academic library can and should be for your community. And if you can do it while creating a better work-life balance for yourself and your next generation of leaders then go out and create some change.

I finished my talk with a quote to emphasize that today’s library leaders do have a responsibility to the next generation of leaders. It comes from the book Crucibles of Leadership:

As the scholar Noel Tichy argues, leaders must be teachers--and the leaders in this chapter offer precisely what Tichy calls a “teachable point of view.” He argues that leaders’ responsibility is not only to provide direction and judgment in the moment, but to strive continuously to develop leadership in others, now and into the future.

So you could argue that it is incumbent upon the current generation of leaders to help the next generation learn about leadership. Today’s library directors must think more clearly about how their leadership style and the examples they set send a message of learning to our next generation of leaders.

Comment (edited): Barbara Fister

I have to say...that the lack of interest in prestige and money in exchange for your soul, er, your lifestyle has two parts. In terms of the second, I think it’s healthy to want to balance work and life. But in terms of the first, “I don’t want to work as hard as that” is not the issue I hear brought up the most. It’s more often that the prestige and money seem unrelated to the amount or quality of work that comes with the money and prestige.

I’m trying to think back to the times I’ve heard people say negative things about a director. I have to say it has never been “wow, he works way too hard; that’s so unhealthy.” It’s much more likely to be “he’s never here,” “she has no idea of all the innovations we’re implementing” or “he gets paid so much and he doesn’t do anything.”

That could stem from simply not knowing what a hard-working director does all day, which suggests the director needs to consider sharing more authority, making collective decisions not ones from the top, not requiring “permission” from adult professionals to do things they are capable of doing and making sure the things that take a director out of the library are well understood and valued by everyone who works in the library (while encouraging them to do some of those things outside the library, too). That kind of transparency in itself makes it more tempting to be a director someday. If you’ve never been privy to budget decisions, for example, the idea of managing a complex budget may seem far more daunting and far less fun.

Sometimes, frankly, the reason being a director doesn’t look like fun is that some librarians work with a person who climbed to the top fifteen years ago and has run out of steam. They get stuck in an administrative rut and don’t keep up with what’s going on. They are joyless, bored and sometimes inhibit innovation in their own libraries. That sure isn’t a tempting future!

I agree that those who seek change should consider making it happen by becoming directors. But for that to seem worthwhile, they have to meet directors who make change, who empower people, who love their work (not just the prestige). Quite often directors seem to belong to a club where they talk to each other more than to librarians who might someday be among them. The next generation needs to feel that the work of leadership is shoulder-to-shoulder, not something to aspire to one day.

I’m not at all convinced these librarian need to be taught about leadership as much as they need to be allowed to lead in ways that make sense. That doesn’t necessarily mean learning at the feet of the current generation of library directors. Maybe it should go the other way around.

Comment excerpts (edited): T. Scott Plutchak

Eight or nine years ago, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) started taking the issue of leadership development very seriously, and I think we’ve been somewhat successful. Details of the various programs that have been developed can be found here.

Barbara’s points are very well taken. Directors need to be visible and engaged and need to be very involved in mentoring in both formal and informal ways.

The other point that I always make in regard to work/life balance is that although I work a lot of hours and that includes some evenings and weekends, the technology we now have at our disposal allows me tremendous freedom as well. I don’t feel that I have to be in the library every day, and when I’m traveling I always try to work in a bit of sightseeing. I am passionate about what I do and I think I do a pretty good job, but I also have a rich and varied non-library life.

Comment excerpts (edited): Bill Drew

I was at that conference and thoroughly enjoyed the talk. I agree entirely with this quote from your post:

Here’s my message to those nextgens who diss their director and whose own vision is in conflict with what they see coming from the contemporary academic library director’s office: You may be the best person to become a library director. There’s no better way to fulfill your vision of what an academic library can and should be for your community. And if you can do it while creating a better work-life balance for yourself and your next generation of leaders then go out and create some change.

Change the status quo. Just because directors in my generation cannot make a better balance doesn't mean that nextgen leaders shouldn’t at least try.

But what if I don't want it all?

by Wayne Bivens-Tatum

Bell points out that many Gen-X and Gen-Y librarians are critical of library directors and unwilling to sacrifice their personal lives to achieve a library directorship. These cohorts want a better work-life balance than library directors appear to have. Bell also argues that part of the problem is that they don’t see the potential rewards and that the current generation of library directors should do a better job of communicating with younger librarians, teaching them about leadership, setting good examples of leadership and cultivating the next generation of library directors. The goal isn’t to get just any library directors but to attract the best and brightest to directorship.

Notice I’m saying “directors,” though Bell often uses the term “leaders.” The person in charge isn’t necessarily a leader, and to conflate the terms unnecessarily both aggrandizes the incompetent directors and leaves us without a way to praise directors who are great leaders or acknowledge librarians who are leaders but not directors. For some reason, Bell doesn’t want these terms parsed, but that’s neither here nor there.

I don’t necessarily disagree with Bell and think he makes a compelling argument, though I was struck by some of the reactions to his speech, in particular this one:

One director said this was all well and good but that the current generation of directors needs to give their nextgen colleagues a dose of reality. Getting the job done, said the director, requires certain personal sacrifices, and a work-life imbalance, staying late, working weekends, getting emergency calls in the middle of the night, is occasionally necessary. Bottom line: you can’t have it all.

This comment seems to have inspired the title of Steven’s post, but it inspired me with irritation. Thus, I’m responding more to this comment than to the general argument of the post. I am hardly a voice for my generation (that would be Gen-X), but at the same time I’m not necessarily responding with personal arguments. I’m just putting forth some plausible reasons why bright people might not want to be library directors based on librarians of all ages I know.

Not dissin' the director

Since I dislike generational and “class” wars, I want to state my opinion of library directors up front. I’m not in the camp of “dissin’ the director,” and in fact just cringed when writing the word “dissin’,” though perhaps that’s more because of my concern for the English language than any concern for directors. I’ve gotten along just fine with every library director I’ve worked for, even when I disagreed with them. If we extend this to library managers in general, the same applies. Early in my career I did have a horrendous experience with a library (mis)manager, but instead of developing a suspicion of management in general, I took my issues straight to the library director, whom I liked very much and with whom I got on quite well. And I suppose it’s just barely possible I’ll be a library director someday myself and I wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite.

Back to the comment. I was particularly irritated by the notion that library directors need to give us mere librarians a “dose of reality.” The arrogance of that statement took me aback. We Gen-X and -Y librarians work in libraries. We know what reality is, thank you very much. Personal sacrifices, work-life imbalance, staying late, working weekends: many of us do that without either the title or salary of “director,” and to imply otherwise itself shows a disconnect from reality. The generational difference, if indeed there is one, is that perhaps younger generations don’t see this sort of sacrifice as a badge of honor so much as a road to unhappiness and burnout.

Self-sacrificial machismo?

This tough talk reminds me of people who brag about how hard they work and how little sleep they get, as if I’m supposed to be impressed by them ruining their health and running themselves into the ground for what is most likely an enterprise of dubious value. That these sacrifices are sometimes necessary is one thing. A larger issue may be that lots of younger librarians see these sacrifices as always' necessary for library management, and they’re not willing to make the sacrifices. Perhaps they have more fulfilling personal lives than this particular library director. Perhaps they have a young child, as I do. Perhaps they have hobbies or interests that transcend their jobs.

Then comes the inevitable platitude: You can’t have it all. But what if you don’t want it all? Isn’t that exactly what younger librarians “dissin’ the director” have said? They don’t want it all and now they’re being criticized for not being able to have something they never wanted in the first place. Steven’s concern is to show the best and the brightest of these younger librarians the benefits of directorship, not just the burdens. I don’t know if I would be included in his “best and brightest” category of librarians, though I’m no slouch, but I would like to posit some reasons why librarians might not want to become library directors--reasons that have nothing to do with “dissin’” anyone.

Not wanting it all

A lot of academic librarians identify as much or more with “academic” as with “librarian.” For whatever reason, they’re more interested in being a librarian for a particular field than in just being a librarian, or they identify more with the professors than the library administrators--and some of them have a horror of ever being identified as a “manager.” Management is what commercial folk do. Being engaged in the teaching and learning of a university is enjoyable. Spending time reading widely and trying to understand a particular field or the entire world compels many librarians. A lot of librarians have wide-ranging intellectual interests that have little to do with librarianship, though they might need libraries to fulfill their intellectual needs. They might be interested in literature or history or politics or even books, but not in management, and they’re not interested in the hassles they see library managers burdened with. They’ve had a “dose of reality,” and they know they’d rather work with scholars and build collections and follow their interests than deal with these burdens.

Take, for example, dealing with people’s personal problems, which managers and directors sometimes have to do. They probably don’t like it either, but it comes with the job. While making exceptions for emergencies of various kinds, some librarians think people should keep their personal problems and their work separate. Being professional means we do our jobs. Being decent human beings means we take into consideration external problems and opportunities that happen to us all but interfere with work and make allowances for them. But then there are the petty squabbles, the gossipy scandal-mongers, the perennial layabouts, the needy, the whiners and the pouters, the offensive and the offended who sometimes in some places take up inordinate amounts of time for some managers.

The purgatory of middle management?

One might respond that directors usually have middle managers to deal with this stuff. That’s another issue. Even some librarians who might be interested in being library directors have no interest in spending ten to twenty years working through middle-management positions to get there. They might be brilliant visionaries and don’t want to spend years making sure a service point gets staffed or student workers show up or writing gobs of performance reviews. They don’t want years of being pressured from above and below. Having a vision and trying to make that vision a reality? That’s one thing. But decades of middle management can crush their vision and their spirit.

One might respond that this trip through what some librarians consider the purgatory of middle management is necessary for seasoning a director. After all, people have to “pay their dues” (which goes along nicely with the banal cliché about a “dose of reality”). But the point is that a lot of librarians—-smart, talented, capable, even passionate librarians—-believe, rightly or wrongly, that these dues are just too high. The opportunity costs are disproportionate to the rewards.

Crossing over to the dark side?

There could be other reasons why talented librarians aren’t very interested in being directors, and some of them might indeed reflect a certain hostility toward library administrators. The venom some librarians have toward the powers that be can be potent stuff. These librarians seem to believe that stepping over the line into administration is like stepping over to the dark side, that the goal of all library administrators is to manipulate their underlings and destroy the library. People who think this way may have been the victims of especially incompetent directors, of managers who don’t know how to manage and may have been promoted by default, as was my horrendous (mis)manager. If this is the case, then Bell's overall goal is even more compelling, because the way to prevent default administration by incompetents is to persuade the talented to step up and wrestle for control.

But for other librarians, the problem could just be that they think being a library director carries too many burdens and not enough benefits, that the dues paid along the way are just too high. Can those librarians be persuaded to become library directors? I’m not sure.

I am sure that those librarians aren’t going to be persuaded by some library director’s version of tough love. They’re not impressed by the tough, and they don’t want the love.

Comment (edited): Barbara Fister

I work at a small institution, and perhaps that gives me the luxury of thinking most of what passes for management and administration is self-generated busywork supervising people who are actually quite capable of doing their work without supervision.

I like the peer-review model of tenure and promotion, in spite of all the negative feelings people have about it, but it is a group of peers examining a body of work and saying "that shows promise" or "hmmm... we expected more." It gets inflated into some weird Academic Idol competition but it doesn't have to if we decide to stop doing it that way.

But then, I'm basically a cheerful anarchist who thinks people are capable of organizing together to make things work.

The fact that we artificially divide our work into "work" performed by librarians and "visionary leadership" performed only by people with other titles sets up a totally false structure that has little bearing on what people really do day to day.

I don't feel there's any shortage of leadership, just of imagination to change the way we frame it in this field.

(And yeah, as if us ordinary peons don't work evenings and weekends? Even custodians have to do that, and respond to emergencies. Sheesh.)

Comment response (edited): Wayne Bivens-Tatum

When it comes to library work, I'm something of a syndicalist and think that librarians can and do organize themselves to get library work done. In fact, they have to in large places, because the director is certainly not going to be standing behind them making sure things work. The division between worker bees and director queens is indeed false. When it comes to running a library, the best director or "leader" in the world can't do anything if the librarians are incompetent and listless and the resources scarce. Conversely, with good resources and dedicated, competent librarians a library can run itself with an incompetent director if only the director will get out of the way. Having good librarians and good administrators is the ideal, but I bet if users had to choose one or the other they'd take good librarians.

I also don't think there's a crisis of library leadership and that things will work themselves out. Salutary change in libraries will not be the result of visionaries imposing their visions, especially if, as Bell argues, many of the best librarians are already hostile to the idea of the top-down management model this argument assumes. If anything, it's more likely to come from those good librarians who aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for unnecessary but traditional power structures.

Then there's the perspective I put forth in a previous post:

There's at least one other possibility as well, a faint hope or a daring dream. Libraries will always have leaders, but there may come a time when they have very few administrators. Thoreau wrote that that government is best which governs least, and concludes that if this is true then that government is best which governs not at all, and that when people are prepared for it, that will be the sort of government they will have. As power disperses and communication changes and librarians are more empowered because their jobs demand creativity and flexibility and initiative, less library administration might be not just a necessity brought on by circumstance, but a good thing. A library of motivated, dedicated librarians with creativity and initiative who lead and exert power through influence might need no administration at all.

Oh the joys of management and directorship

by Jeff Scott, excerpted and adapted from the original post.
Note: Scott's post begins with excerpts from and comments on the posts above and some of the comments above. Then, Scott continues...

What is "all"?

What does this all mean? What do we mean when we say we can't "have it all"? You can't have a life if you are a library director? What is the difference between a librarian scheduled to work two evenings and a Saturday shift and a library director? Family and personal time suffer in both cases.

The job can be thankless

The problem with being a director is that the job is never finished. The project is never finished. The library is an organism that constantly needs something. There is always a problem, there is always a need and, most importantly, it is always your fault. Most meetings I attend are mandatory and involve problems or requests for service from the library. I have to make the decision to say, "Yes we can do that" at the possible cost of staff time, "No we can't do that" at the cost of being unhelpful or "Let me look into that" at the cost of looking evasive. This is often why so many library directors get so defensive. The library is their baby and it gets into their head that it is their sole responsibility.

It isn't, as Michael Wade notes in "Resign as master of the universe", posted March 19, 2008 at Execupundit:

A great many of those burdens that you carry would have happened no matter what you did. The people you think you could have changed and the events you assume you could have prevented would have turned out that way or close to it regardless of any additional cleverness or effort on your part.

Unless someone is dedicated to their job beyond reason, they go home at the end of the day and leave work at work. A library director is always at work. I go into the grocery store and I am the Library Director. I go to take my kids to dance class and I am the Library Director. They ask me questions like, "What's the deal with that librarian, she was such a jerk?" or "Why don't you provide classes for homeschoolers?" or "I went to use the library's computers and someone was looking at porn." Worse, sometimes I run into someone who had a dispute about a library fine. I wonder whether there will be some big confrontation, but usually, they pretend not to recognize me.

Growing need to be selfish

The general lesson for a busy schedule is to be selfish with your time. You could subscribe to a "getting things done" philosophy so you can complete the important things first.

Delegating work can help alleviate the stress and give your staff (particularly the librarians) more autonomy. Many people go into librarianship with the impression that they can be fairly autonomous. Too often, they are met with the opposite. The more a manager can delegate and not interfere, yet be informed about what is going on, the better the organization can become.

You can market yourself

No one will speak up for you and say whether or not you are a good boss. That is a fruitless endeavor. However, you can see the benefits of what you do from the people you see in the community.

  • When I see a child reading a book outside of the library and it is a library book, I feel happy.
  • When I see community members thank me for what I am doing, that keeps me going.

The benefits are being able make a huge difference in the community. You can see that change little by little. Right now, more than 90% of our community has library cards. For a rural library to do that is a thrill. Everyone connects with the library in one way or another. That's good enough for me.

Get a life

Sure, being a director is difficult. You need to find something else to do. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. This year, my goal was to learn to cook so I could spend more time with my family. Now I cook almost every night. (New England Sammies are the favorite. I bought a Rachel Ray book to get me started on my New Years' Resolution). I enjoy the time I spend and the ability to turn work off.

I love reading. I love spending time with my family. I learned to love to live in the moment and not think about work. Sometimes you get late night calls, but to be honest, if you train and empower your staff, they learn to handle it on their own and prefer it. I don't understand why more people don't do that. We are all adults here, they can figure it out. They don't need you :)

Comment excerpts

  • "I am getting ready to start my first Director's job, and to say that I'm a bit nervous would be an understatement. I am a "GenXer," and from what I understand, I will be the youngest person on staff at my new library. While I know that this may give me an advantage in some respects, I also expect that it may be a disadvantage in others--at least one person on my small staff has been a librarian there since before I was in college.... While I am sure that the job will spill over into my "life" more than my current reference job has, I'm not overly concerned about that (watch me live to rue that statement). I have a good sense of humor--I'm hoping that helps get me over any bumps I'm sure to encounter."
  • Scott responds (in part): "Being young and being a "gen x" always plays a role in perceptions. You have to earn trust and navigate the politics of the job. On the second part, play naive as long as you can:)"

Closing note

by Walt Crawford

In one of the earlier posts Bivens-Tatum refers to here, he says:

There’s a lot of concern about the future of library leadership these days. Steven Bell blogs frequently about it at ACRLog, the ALA has talked of a crisis of library leadership, and Walt Crawford is working on the PALINET Leadership Network. It’s just possible that part of the crisis is a resistance to talent not accompanied by decades of experience.

I'm not going to get into generational issues here, since I'm also on record as disliking generational generalizations ("gen-gen") and since I don't even know the name for "my generation" (pre-Baby-Boom).

I will suggest that PLN isn't necessarily a response to a crisis in library leadership. I have no idea whether such a crisis exists and I'm not much of a crisis-monger. To my mind, PLN is an ongoing resource to serve current and future leaders and help them serve one another--not because there's a crisis but because we can all use help.

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