Who's a leader?

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Who's a leader?

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by Walt Crawford. The first portion up to "What's a leader?" originally appeared in Cites & Insights 8:1, January 2008, as part of Bibs & Blather: Thinking about Leadership. Originally published January 2008, with "What's a leader?" and "Library leadership" sections added March 13, 2008.

When you’re managing something that calls itself a “leadership network,” you’d like to know who your audience is. Theoretically, you could restrict the audience to “leaders”—-but that would require some reasonable way to verify that someone is a leader.

So who’s a leader?

Are managers, directors, other bosses leaders? Maybe, maybe not. Ideally, every manager and director should be a leader—-but I’m sure many of us have had managers who didn’t qualify. Some of us may have been managers who weren’t much at leading. I’m inclined to believe that may have been true of me, back two decades ago. And, indeed, at one point I said, “Well, I can be a neutral party in PLN because I’ve never really been a leader.” That turns out to be nonsense—-or at least I hope it’s nonsense.

Are only managers, directors, other bosses leaders? Absolutely not.

Consider two of the most obvious cases within organizations:

  • Project leaders may not have managerial roles as such, but do take the lead for a particular project.
  • Team leaders may not manage their teams but provide the primary contact point and organizing hub for the team.

And there are other kinds of leadership. For example:

  • Professional leaders-—committee chairs, organizational presidents, all sorts of other leadership roles. I was president of LITA in 1992/93, and I think I was a pretty effective leader at the time. (Similar roles exist in all sorts of other organizations—-community, church, charitable, hobby, whatever.)
  • Innovation leaders-—people who bring up good ideas and, more importantly, make them relevant and workable, bringing them into the real world.
  • Thought leaders-—a tricky phrase, but it applies to many nonfiction writers, some speakers and others who provide leadership for ideas.

That’s a partial list. I’d like to believe I fit in at least two of those three categories.

But wait! There’s more!

This incomplete list doesn’t cover the territory—-because it leaves out two groups who are important but also somewhat amorphous: Future leaders and emerging leaders.

PLN directly targets one group of emerging leaders-—those in ALA’s Emerging Leaders program. We hope that relationship will be mutually beneficial. Naturally, PLN should also be useful for those who expect to be leaders in the future.

Cue Sly and the Family Stone...

“Everybody is a star” was a great lyric (and a great song—make sure you hear the 1969 original, with three Stones and another band member trading off lead vocal lines, making everybody a star).

Is it a reasonable sentiment in the real world? Can everybody be a leader?

Can, yes. Will-—probably not: Some people are content to follow.

Should everybody be a star? Should you be a leader in some area at some point? That’s a tougher question. I’m inclined to believe that, at the very least, every professional librarian and a lot of us other library professionals should exhibit leadership in some areas at some points.

Maybe everybody in the library field is eligible for PALINET Leadership Network and could benefit from it. It would be nice to think so. As it stands, we’ve opened up PLN to “everybody”—-with the caveat that all material in PLN is in English and anonymous or pseudonymous users might not get editing privileges.

A sidebar about pseudonymity: Yes, there are in-stances in which it makes sense for a PLN essay or comment to be pseudonymous—in fact, there’s already one pseudonymous essay on the site. We’ve made provision for “indirect contributions”—-articles that come to PLN via .doc or .rtf or .txt attachments, or just plain email—to pln.content@gmail.com, PLN@palinet.org, or crawford@palinet.org. That’s mostly for the benefit of people who don’t want to learn wiki markup, but if someone has good reason to want an article or comment to appear under a pseudonym and makes that case and request, we’d honor it.

There’s a flipside: I don’t believe it makes sense for anyone to be a full-time leader in all aspects of life—-to lead all the time in everything they do. I think that’s hard on the soul, albeit possibly good for the ego. I’m convinced that effective leaders must also be effective followers. Which brings me to the final chunk of this wayward essay:

Leaders need followers

One sure sign that a manager isn’t much of a leader is when that manager’s employees flee as soon as the chance arises—transferring to other groups or quitting for other jobs.

If nobody follows you willingly, you’re not a leader.

You say you’re an innovation leader because you espouse shiny new things? Are people taking your suggestions and providing useful new services, solving real-world problems? If so—-if you have willing followers—-you may be an innovation leader. If not, you’re either a voice in the wilderness or a crank.

If nobody follows you willingly, you’re not a leader.

I’d almost go so far as to say that leadership is defined by willing followers—-that the quality of leadership can be directly mapped in the quality of followers. But maybe that’s too simplistic.

There’s another aspect of this: Leaders aren’t necessarily out in front. Just as I was writing this (that is, between writing sessions, during PLN work sessions), a colleague I’ve never met sent me a note about “leading from behind.” It’s an interesting concept, one I hope this colleague will expand into an article.

Making the PALINET Leaders Network a Network

We’re off to a great start in providing and organizing thoughtful, interesting, varied content on many aspects of library leadership and leadership in general. But that’s just the start.

I’ll continue to look for “outside” content that makes sense for PLN, discussing it or importing it as appropriate and possible. We’ve started the PLN Challenge Panel and hope to see it continue, and to see each set of responses kick off additional discussions and maybe new articles. We’ll continue to get some content through other arrangements.

But for PLN to be as effective as it should be, the leaders (of all types, present and future) need to participate. Comment on existing articles: There’s always a talk page, even on essays you can’t add to directly. Respond to or expand on existing articles through related new articles. It’s easy to write a comment, include “I have more to say in [[Name of my new article]]” (with the double brackets), save the page, click on the new red “Name of my new article” and proceed to write the article on the page PLN just created for you—-or to import and mark up text you’ve already written. (It’s also easy to send me the text and tell me what it responds to: I’m not from the government but I am here to help.) Poll other users (it’s amazingly easy to set up a poll!) and respond to polls. Get involved in the forums. Participate.

We’ll all benefit.

What's a leader?

Not part of the original Cites & Insights essay.

PLN is full of worthwhile commentary on aspects of leadership--as of March 13, 2008 there are 30 articles in the Leadership category, and that count will keep growing. Here are a few articles on aspects of leadership that I found particularly worth reading. For library leadership, see the next section.

Library leadership

Not part of the original Cites & Insights essay.

Some of the PLN articles on library leadership that I found compelling and you might find worth reading.

Leadership and management

  • Leading or managing? - two library managers discuss key differences between managers and leaders and times when what you need is good management.

Your turn: Talk about it

Steven Bell offers insights on what's special about an organizational leader on the Talk page. Your thoughts?

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