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.