pilot complete!

Well we've had our final workshop to conclude the mentoring pilot. All the pairs made it through and found it beneficial. The atmosphere at the final workshop was joyous. I don't think this was just my feeling because it was the end of a long year that involved me being outside my comfort zone a lot.

I think others felt it too.

But for me it represented the end of a process I hope to be part of again and again: identifying something that needs to be done for the benefit of positive culture and finding a way to fill the need. Starting something that has never been done from scratch and seeing it through to the end.

For me it will be a benchmark. When I think a project is too big I'll be able to think back on 2014 and know that I can do it. My leadership skills have been developed, I can see aspects of all the ICVF roles have come into play and worked together. I'll admit I didn't understand them at the start of Inspire but now, when confronted with a tricky situation I can actually answer the question - which role to I need to use here?

It's been a hard and rewarding year, I feel honoured to have had the opportunity for the experience.

final Mentoring workshop planning

We have had our planning meeting for the final mentoring pilot workshop. We met once, planned and finalised everything for this workshop a week before the workshop. This was an object lesson for me that shows leadership growth. At the start of the year we met six weeks out, had multiple meetings and I was very nervous.

This meeting was fast and only a week before-hand and I was excited! I came out of the meeting fired up by spending time with the wonderful people on the team. I've learned more from seeing them operate than I could ever learn from reading a book, not that research is an unworthy pursuit - not at all. 

I just mean that I was surprised by how much I had to learn and how much some very young people know already. The collaborative process with Abby, Kelly and Christine is one that I will treasure and one that will have a permanent influence my leadership style. Abby tells me that this experience is rare so I will cherish it all the more. 

what did I learn this week?

I learned that it's really hard to be a leader when you're busy. Well if I'm honest I've been leading this all year not just in the last week but in the last week as I was feeling overwhelmed with my workload, leadership duties, HMM modules that need to be done, visiting with mentoring partners ... 

I looked at the leaders I admire at work. They must be busier than me but they never show it. I'm going to add this into my leadership aspirations: work out how to be calm on the outside even if I'm feeling overwhelmed on the inside.

Negotiating change

I got some handy insights from the last Inspire workshop, listening the Angelo Kourtis, UWS Pro Vice-Chancellor (Students), speak about negotiating change and influencing others that I can use as I endeavour to develop the ICFV innovator. This is my main driver for Inspire. As I go I realise when you develop one ICVF quality you actually work on them all, but I really want to improve the service as much as I can while I'm acting in the team leader role, undertaking an higher duties appointment (HDA). 

I'm starting small - just improving as I can that which is already in place. One day, if I get the job permanently I might be able to look at bigger innovations. There's lots of options to harness the power of our new Library management system to revolutionalise the way we currently do things and I hope that after Inspire I will have the confidence to investigate this further.

From Angelo I learned the importance of understanding and developing the narrative that supports the change, to compelling reason for why change needs to happen. This is part of the strategic communication around change. this can be done using conversation outside the formal process by taming and engaging with water-cooler conversations to develop a support network.

It's important to articulate what is not changing and to communicate clearly to eliminate heat that can come from fear of the unknown by highlighting certainty were certainty exists. leaving some room for people to provide feedback and influence proposed changes. 

Design & deliver change from an ethical values based framework. It's harder for people to get angry about a change that effects them if it's done with integrity and in a way that values them. It needs to be empathetic and professional. 

Be clear. Constantly and consistently reinforcing the message because it promotes engagement. Inspire the influencers but don't shut the nay-sayers because they need to have their voices heard.

All of this wisdom in one talk! It was great listening and learning leadership from someone so knowledgeable and, as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Students) i imagine hugely busy, so it was an honour to have him take the time to visit and speak with our Inspire cohort.

Team leaders

A couple of weeks ago the Library Leadership Team facilitated our team leaders meeting. It was so good to have Kelly and Abby there from ODU to talk to about the UWS response to the MyVoice survey. They talked about all the MyVoice working groups, which includes the group collaborating with us on the UWS Library MyVoice mentoring program.

It was a good symmetry since we started the mentoring journey meeting with the same team leaders group. I consider myself very lucky to work with such talented leaders. Their generosity in sharing their knowledge is a great leadership example. I find myself wishing that more staff could attend this meeting to hear just how clever these people are.

Leadership can be seen if you're looking for it, and learned if you're willing. From the experiences I'm having doing Inspire and the HDA position I've discovered that a sign of a good leader is not only their ability to step up but their willingness to teach.

inspired mentoring

Mentoring is an aspect of the Inspire leadership program and one which I anticipated with enthusiasm because I had heard great things from colleagues who had already completed the program. For my cohort mentor pairing was done geographically as much as possible. 

This was to facilitate face to face meetings, didn't quite work from my point of view because I'm on a split campus so it still meant a drive, and park in the middle of the day on a campus with no spare parking spots. This added a pressure point to an already busy schedule and I would often arrive to our lunch time meetings quite flustered.

I was in a group of three and this is one of the advantages of this type of mentoring - we now know someone who works in a different department of the uni. I often find myself thinking of the impact for these departments of decisions and events. And I know I could drop in on them anytime and ask their advice or help. 

In fortnightly meetings we shared our stresses and thoughts on projects. We shared a little of our personal lives and things that worked/didn't work. At some points I was worried that we weren't doing it right because I've never having been involved in formal mentoring but in talking to other groups at an inspire workshop it turned out that some were impressed at our fortnightly schedule, having never met face to face or only managing irregular catch ups, and regarded our group s quite successful.

It was an interesting experience - although not at all what I pictured. For me there was the added coincidence that my Inspire project was focused on mentoring. Working with my partners gave me a complimentary insight that helped me support the participants in the pilot program - serendipity at its best.

Workshop 1 DONE!

Well after the most excitingly collaborative process the UWS Library/MyVice mentoring pilot has begun! We launched it in a workshop at Frogmore house a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing.

Abby facilitated and we had guest speakers: sponsors Sue Craig (University Librarian) and Steve Marsh (School of Science and Health). We started out together doing the river of life exercise and then broke into groups for concurrent mentee/mentor sessions so that they could inspire and learn from each other.

After lunch we came back together for some more work on resources and toolkits. Getting to this point has been such a steep learning curve for every aspect of my leadership skills. I'm excited by my progress which is noticeable by the fact that I feel much more confident in my ability to do tough things.

Now when an obstacle is in my path I have skills to overcome it, not the least of which is not being scared of it. I also have the buoyant response to workshop 1 to spur me on. As we were leaving Frogmore House at the end of the day it was not just me that was walking on air, all the participants seemed to really get a lot out of the day and are looking excitedely forward to the mentoring process to come.

will add some photos to this post later