Find Your Inner Leader in Grad School
Don’t wait until graduation to start creating leadership opportunities. Take advantage of ones that present themselves as part of your graduate program right now.
When you’re thinking about (or pursuing) graduate studies, “leadership” may not be the first word that springs to mind. It’s more likely that after having chosen the program that best meets your needs and offers the type of learning opportunities you’d like, you’ve moved on to concerns about schedules, course choices, assignment due dates, and similar types of decisions.
However, now is a great time to be thinking about leadership, for a number of reasons as explained by Dana Vanzanten and Heather Robinson during a San José State University School of Information webcast titled “A Day in the Life of a Leader: Part 1.”
Both Dana and Heather work at the St. Thomas Public Library in Ontario, Canada: Dana as the manager of advocacy and community development and Heather as the chief executive officer. Dana is currently a student in the SJSU School of Information’s Master of Library and Information Science online program, she moved into her leadership role mid-way through her graduate studies, while Heather has held multiple roles in public libraries, moving into management and then leadership roles as her career progressed.
The two librarians shared multiple insights into LIS leadership best practices in the workplace, but also stressed that students needn’t wait for opportunities to start developing their leadership skills until they had graduated and started their careers. Rather, they advised, start creating leadership opportunities or taking advantage of ones that present themselves as part of your graduate program right now.
Among the steps Dana and Heather recommended for getting in touch with your “inner leader” while pursuing your grad school studies:
Work on the most basic element of good leadership: self-awareness. Understanding yourself, and most especially your strengths and weaknesses, enables you to more clearly assess how to bring your strengths to leadership roles and how to prepare for the challenges that may arise from your weaknesses. Understanding your own personality characteristics and how they affect, for example, your decision-making, communication style, and relationships will help you more readily bring your strengths to the fore while also recognizing and bringing out the best in others.
As Dana noted, self-knowledge can be developed through personal reflection, discussions with others who know you well (including fellow students and faculty members), journaling, and reading. For excellent books to get you started on your leadership learning journey, Dana and Heather mentioned Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books, 2009) by Daniel Pink, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Harper Business, 2006) by Robert B. Cialdini, Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It (Jossey-Bass, 2011) by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, and Power: A User’s Guide (Belly Song Press, 2016) by Julie Diamond. But you’d probably want to start off with the classic work on personal strengths and weaknesses, Tom Rath’s Strengthsfinder 2.0 (Gallup Press, 2007).
Practice overcoming fear-driven responses. Heather pointed out that as an introvert, she faced many instances throughout her career where opportunities opened up that pushed all her introvert boundaries. Whether it was public speaking, managing a group, or “finding her voice” and expressing her opinions, each of these activities triggered an initial fear reaction. Graduate school can provide a target-rich environment for practicing these types of challenging activities. Heather’s advice: the more often you practice those activities that push your fear boundaries, the more easily you’ll eventually be able to move beyond them.
But don’t restrict yourself to grad school opportunities; look for additional ones in other aspects of your life, for example, in a civic group to which you belong or in an LIS professional association in which you’re a member.
The reason both Dana and Heather feel that overcoming fear is so important is that one of the most important aspects of leadership is self-confidence. Both speakers commented on their own struggles to finally “own their strengths,” or accept and have confidence in the things they’d found they were good at. Grad school is a terrific place to start owning your strengths and developing your strong, confident voice.
Take a leadership course. The SJSU School of Information offers a course in leadership in its MLIS program, which Dana highly recommended, but for students whose programs don’t offer this, see if there is a management course you can sign up for, either in your MLIS program or in another degree program offered by your school. Another alternative would be courses in psychology because, as Dana noted, understanding human psychology and motivation provides important insights into how to bring out the best in your staff.
Practice self-leadership skills as part of your studies. Self-leadership skills would include time management, project management, self-motivation, meeting deadlines, holding yourself responsible for your decisions and outcomes, honoring commitments to others, setting and achieving goals, and learning from your mistakes, among other skills.
These are skills that not only will benefit you as you manage the demands of your courses, but will also enable you to develop the strengths you’ll want to model for your staff when you find yourself in that first leadership position.
Learn from good leaders. A great way to level up your leadership smarts is by interviewing those who are doing it well. So you might want to keep an eye out for course assignments that provide an excuse for you to reach out and interview several library leaders in your area about their leadership practices and philosophies. This not only gives you an opportunity to learn from knowledgeable practitioners, but also gives you some very valuable connections when it comes time to look for jobs. Be prepared with great questions, listen attentively and don’t interrupt, and be sure to send a thank you note. Why? Because asking the right questions, active listening, and acknowledging others’ efforts on your (or your organization’s) behalf are all core leadership skills.
“A Day in the Life of a Leader” is a four-part webinar series examining real-world library leadership questions, issues, and career pathways. The series is publicly available for viewing as part of the San José State University School of Information’s career development webcasts.
