 All right, for our last lightning round session for today's big talk from Small Libraries Conference, we have Mark Ross, who is, well, he's got multiple head of the Hanley and Haskell libraries, two different libraries to the University of Pittsburgh, two of their smaller campuses, FTE about 1300. Yeah, roundabout between the so small section of the University of Pittsburgh, and he is going to talk to us about he's dealt with his small staff with big personalities and conflicts that may arise. So go ahead and take it away, Mark. Thank you so much. Yes, my name is Mark Ross. I am going to talk today in my lightning presentation, small staff, big personalities. I did change one word in my subtitle to recognizing and managing conflict in small libraries. As I was doing my practice runs this week, I realized that a lot of the conflict and a lot of the things that I may that came about in my libraries were due to me not recognizing things or other staff people not recognizing themselves as they were working. So I added that word recognizing into the title, because I think that's really important. As I'm sure all of us are aware at small libraries, small regional campuses, small branch campuses of colleges and universities. And in public libraries, we all wear many hats. I have two libraries under me. I wanted to give a brief introduction about myself. I'm ahead of the Haskell Memorial Library. That's at the University of Pittsburgh Titusville. Here I'm the IT person. I'm the building manager. I'm the sole instruction librarian. The sole collection development librarian on top of all that all my committee work and all the departments that I help throughout the campus. I do that. I've been here at Titusville for about eight years. In July of 2021, I took on the role of the head of the Hanley Library at the University of Pittsburgh Bradford. Because I'm mostly remote in that position, I'm more of an administrative role, a sounding board for faculty, librarians to bounce ideas off of a sounding board for staff members to bounce ideas off of, and I'm trying to become a better mentor for my staff and librarians. So there's a real balancing act between all those roles and being a good leader. And that's what I'm going to attempt to do and I'll discuss a little bit in my presentation. So a little bit more about my campuses and my libraries just so you get a sense of just how small we are and how the staff might work. Titusville is the smallest pit campus. We're a two-year degree granting institution. Pre-2020, we usually floated around 350 students. Now we have about 42. That's a huge drop. It's not because of COVID. It's because we've moved away from a traditional liberal arts two-year degree program. So one that focuses more on career and technical education. Along with that, we have had some staffing changes pre-COVID. There was one full-time librarian, which is me, and two full-time staff people. One daylight staff person, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then one evening and weekend staff person, usually 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Post-COVID, one full-time librarian me and one full-time staff. Both of my staff pre-COVID and throughout the COVID took on other roles. So whenever we reopened, I was able to get one full-time staff person back. Bradford, the small campus in North Central PA, they do offer four-year bachelor degree programs. Usually floats between 1,200 and 1,300 students. Pre-COVID, there was three full-time librarians and four full-time staff members. Post-COVID, when we reopened fully for more normalcy in the fall of 2021, we started with just two full-time librarians and two full-time staff. So we only had four people to cover about 70 hours a week, with me being 50 miles away in a remote position. We were able to hire on a third full-time librarian, but we have not been able to hire on the two full-time staff. So currently between my Titusville and Bradford team, we have four librarians and three staff, so seven team members across the two libraries. I wanted to start with a brief case study about a conflict that came up at my Titusville library. This was right before COVID, so probably in 2019, fall of 2019, if I'm remembering my dates, right? And I'll fully admit and I have it as the last bullet point. I think it's really important for leaders and managers to admit whenever they make mistakes and learn from them. Most of it arose from a failure of leadership. So I had two full-time staff members at the time, one evening person and one daylight person. I assumed because there was the evening and weekend person that she would want to take on a role of doing some fun programming for the students. There's not a lot to do in Titusville, especially on evenings and weekends. So we wanted to open up the library for nighttime activities. So I asked my evening person if she would start putting together a video game night. It was a really good success. We had a lot of students come in. You'll see some students playing Jackbox in the one picture and somebody running, I think it was a Call of Duty tournament in the other picture. But what came about as I was putting this together and as we were doing like an assessment of the program to make sure that if we wanted to do it again, the daytime person felt really out of the loop. They communicated mostly with the evening person. The evening person went to the dorms, they put up flyers, they posted flyers, sent emails to the student lists, and the daytime person was kind of out of the loop. She let it be known a little bit later. And I will fully admit some of that was my own personal bias and I had some biases. My evening person was in her mid-20s. My daytime person was in her early 70s. I assumed that she wouldn't want to program a video game night or stay up until midnight on a Friday night. What came about after, you'll see I say I had three individuals instead of a team, after we had our program and some of these feelings started coming out about feeling out of the loop and being undervalued, was that instead of working as a team, it seemed like we were working as three individuals. And then I say gathering allies, what I mean by that was because there was some resentment with the staff, the daytime staff people, staff person kind of reached out to daytime staff on the campus to kind of like vent their frustrations. The evening person did the same, vented her frustrations with the evening staff people. It became kind of an awkward, intense situation and I'll talk a little bit later at the very end about how we ended up resolving it. And really what it boiled down to, there was a real lack of awareness on my part. I didn't know that there was resentment until it kind of boiled up and boiled over. My daytime person felt undervalued because I didn't utilize her for the programming. My evening person felt underappreciated because she wasn't getting praise for putting on a great project because there was some resentment. I appreciated it, but she wasn't getting appreciation from the full staff. And really what it all boiled down to was a failure leadership I'll fully admit, and I'm trying to do better as my gut a new slate. As both of those people moved on to other positions or retired and I got a new library under me at Bradford. So that's what the remainder of the presentation will be about is becoming a better leader. So what I've done throughout that process as I was hearing that things were boiling over. And we started to confront some of the issues that arose because people were feeling undervalued and underappreciated. I started doing some of my own research reading books about conflict management conflict resolution. I'll share the one that helped me the most. There's an updated one from 2020. I think in my recent references slide. I also met with a few of the HR professionals here at the University of Pittsburgh. They did some coaching for me to see how I could discuss problems with my staff to make sure that things don't boil over in the future. So I boiled it down to basically four main points that I was trying to be better become better at. Self awareness, both for myself as a leader and then also try to teach my staff to be self aware of the things that are around them. Communication obviously is the biggest one. I think if I would have communicated better from the get go on that first conflict. We probably could have nipped it in the blood right away teamwork rather than silos. If we would have worked as a team right from the get go. Things would have been a little more successful and there wouldn't be quite as much tension. And then confronting the conflict. That's always the hardest part and I have a little slide at the end. About how we might confront conflict and how we might discuss things civilly and without judgment and emotion. So we'll go through. So I titled the next round of slides avoid making the same mistake twice. This is like I said I kind of have a clean slate now at my libraries. I'm trying to do better. I'm trying to notice things around. So my first point that I wanted to make with self awareness. Again, it's so much more than just understanding yourself. Of course self awareness is self explanatory, but it also is understanding others and understanding how you are perceived by others. So you might whenever you become self aware, you might be able to put yourself into other shoes and see how they see you. So to that end what we did as another team building exercise and I'll talk a little bit about team building in a few slides at my weekly Friday meetings that I have with my staff. Every once in a while we'll do kind of like a lunch and learn presentation so the first one we did and we actually just did it in January I think after we came back from winter recess was to discuss the social style of communication. And this was a really great presentation and a really great opportunity for the staff. We all got together. I talked a little bit about some of the research I did on the social style of communication. Put together a quiz for them to take. And then we also were able to get a webinar that are kind of our professional development health and wellness people put together about social style so we watch that webinar together and then discussed it. And what was really great about it is you'll see I kind of broke it down into the four four styles that are most prevalent analytical driving amiable and expressive. As people were talking as we were discussing. I could see people said oh I can understand that I'm a driving expressive. And my coworker is analytical so even though I like to jump on things I like to jump on tasks and get them done my analytical coworker likes to think things through really figure out the problem think all the solutions before acting. And so right away they could tell each other and themselves in the social style so I thought that was really great. Also on top of being self aware. And understanding others is understand that there's cultural differences. We might have a staff person that really comes from like a pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. You know family lifestyle. We might have somebody that is you know no nonsense wants to answer questions right away. Others that might want to. Ask permission to do things so there's you know cultural differences the way people were raised definitely changes how they are perceived by others and how they perceive others as well. And of course, and I'll get into it even more with the next slide communication differences we learned that as we were doing the social style of communication. Some people may, like I mentioned want that you know in your face kind of you know. Rapid fire talking and answer question answer. Some people might want to think about things through and then there's a mixture of other things so understanding that before it boils over is a really great thing. avoid making the same mistake twice communication so really what I'm doing at my Bradford and Titus will team is really breaking down silos I don't want any more. People to think that I'm leaving them behind in my discussions. So there's a constant flow of information. We have a Microsoft team channel called the Bradford and Titus will team. We have an email distribution list for the campuses that I can reach out to both groups and send it one message to everybody. So all of the Titus on Bradford folks get together on teams or zoom depending on what we're using and get together and talk about things but I also offer weekly one on one meetings so if there's something that's uncomfortable that somebody doesn't want to talk about in the group. They can approach me one on one, even though I'm remote for most of my staff, I have an open door policy but I also go the other way. And because I'm open door I'd like people to approach me. If they have a problem. I really ask that they come see me. So that we might be able to talk about it. Some caveats to communication and all of this information flow. One thing that I've learned is that face to face is preferable. So even though it does take up time a lot of us have a lot of meetings that we're in all the time. Having a face to face meeting seems to be better with a camera on, especially since I'm remote. But sometimes face to face meeting might do better as an email so I have to keep that in mind as a manager that sometimes if I just have a quick bulleted list I can send that out rather than having a big meeting. But if it's something kind of intense intensive where somebody might be feeling uncomfortable they probably wouldn't want to put that in an email but something to think about as you're developing your communication styles. Communication is much more than just text. I think, going back to self awareness, how you write your text, how you speak, you know, your tone is really important to understand how others hear your tone. You know, if there might be a short answer. Yes, no answer kind of thing and some people might be offended by that and think that you're being short with them. But others might say that that's just all the information that's needed. So be careful whenever you're emailing folks. Think about how your answer will be perceived. Again, some more caveats. There could be a pushback to the amount of emails. So far I haven't really had that issue or nobody's mentioned that to me. I think having something in writing that we can go back to is always helpful, especially if it's just like a decision or a programming idea something like that. I know if it's something sensitive we should do it in person but that hasn't been an issue and then very similar to the perception and self self awareness interpersonal communication. There's always interpersonal communication differences. So, again, if somebody has a tone in their voice somebody might be offended by it. If somebody short with an answer it could cause trouble. So just be aware of those things as a leader and as a staff person if you're in one of these situations. Team building. Something again I'm really trying hard to do is there is an inherent at the university level and in our library there is an inherent difference between faculty librarians and staff. But I really try not to go any further than that other than the job titles. Rather than saying that we have four librarians and three staff, I really like to say that we have seven members of the Titusville Bradford team. We all have a shared mission. We all have a mission to help the students staff and faculties at our campuses. And eventually after covert restrictions kind of loosen our greater communities and be able to get out there. So we all if we all have that shared mission and we're all pushing forward to it, it should really help and make the team stronger. To that end also for team building. We try to do small internal programming that might promote teamwork. So one Friday a month or so. We started something called fun Fridays. This was something that was done by the previous director pre COVID whenever people were in the library full time. So about three years or so ago they did fun Fridays and what that is is one Friday a month. Somebody that has a special talent or a special skill can bring in something and share it with the whole group. So if somebody knows about quilting or sewing, they can do they can bring in a little sample and if they have enough supplies, they can share it with others to demonstrate. I think what I'll demonstrate is like an Excel spreadsheet. I'm not as exciting as other people, but how to use Excel properly or how to set up folders and outlook. And also team building and I'll talk about this a little bit in my collaboration celebration of successes, creating some kind of external programming that allows individual talents to shine. So low level, low stakes programming that allows input for all people. So a lot of times our library programs are generated by librarians, the faculty librarians, but if there's an event that you can come up with that helps bring everyone together to get input. If they have special talents again if they can craft something that might hang up in the library for a program or an event that would be really great and really helps build teams. Probably the most difficult thing is confronting the conflict. This has always been the most difficult for me. I see that I'm going over so I'm going to go fast. Yeah, I just want to jump in and say yeah anyone joining us for afternoon sessions we're just wrapping up our lightning round so feel free listen in here about confronting conflict with our staff will be starting with our afternoon sessions in just a minute year. Thank you two more slides so I'll be done soon. It's the most difficult aspect for me as an introverted librarian I think there's probably a lot of people like me in libraries. So what I try to do is think of the best way to talk to talk to my staff. Do we want to confront probably confrontations probably the worst to jump right at somebody and avoidance is probably the second worst it's probably not going to go on it away on its own what I've had success with my title so folks whenever we had some conflict was compromising and discussions one on one. And then that kind of evolved after people got comfortable talking to me one on one. I could act as a mediator between my two staff because at the time I only had two staff members and myself. So I had to be the mediator between them. And it seemed to really work to get them to feel comfortable talking to each other and then talking to me about their problems and knowing that they can feel comfortable doing that when talking civility is the most important thing. Make sure that people and yourself as a leader might have empathy humility and compassion understand that others feel different. Depending on their backgrounds and their, you know the culture that they were raised in. But honesty don't have civility over honesty honesty is the most important thing if we brush it aside and avoid it. The conflict is not going to go away. But in that honesty make sure that you're non judgmental. I wish I got this from some of the HR professionals I saw and some of the books I read really push it's the behavior that's being confronted not the person so if there is some, you know gossip, or somebody is talking at a turn. It's that behavior it's not the person that you're confronting you want to stop that behavior and that you know be aware that emotions are going to be harsh you know there's going to be a lot of emotion in these discussions so be aware of that. Whenever you're communicating very similar if depending on if you're doing email or face to face be aware of your tone for these sorts of things you probably want to do a face to face. And then really at the leader really have self awareness put yourselves into other people's shoes understand their cultural differences a lot of the conflict really boils down to communication and self awareness. And really celebrate success. That's what I had at Titusville and what we've had a few successes at Bradford for low stakes things low stake work tasks what I did with my Titusville folks because there was two of them. I had them after they felt comfortable talking to me about the issues they had with each other and with the way I manage them. I had low stake work tasks so I did book displays had them come up with book displays together so they'd be pulling books off the shelves together and be comfortable working together. We have a very small periodical collection but you know it needs to be we did every once in a while after five years or so. So we had some book journals that needed to be cleaned up and some records that needed to be cleaned up where they had to work sort of close but not, you know right next to each other and our small archive cleanup, just organizing it. And then some fun events what really broke the ice at Titusville is when we did an edible cake contest for banned books. You see a couple that I posted there. That helped get you know as people were coming up with ideas or my staff people were coming up with ideas for what books they wanted to do and how they might bake their cakes you know it really got the laughter going it got people feeling comfortable. And then we did an escape room or it was like a Harry Potter themed escape room night at my library and then at Bradford what we did as a low stakes fun event that highlighted everybody's skills was a haunted library tour where some staff members yeah crafted snakes and spiders and some staff people wandered around and laughed like a witch. So it really allowed people to get out of the comfort zone but also their own talents to shine through and help build teamwork. So, here's my references I did want to point out this cultivating civility practical ways to improve a dysfunctional library was super helpful. It's really easy read really points out a lot about self awareness and communication. Thank you so much Mark that was I think very helpful I know as you said your description this is something small library small groups of people working very closely together conflicts can, you know so much about each other but you know so little sometimes. Yeah, reach out to mark if you do have any questions there's his email address right there on his slides and all the slides and references and all this will be available in the recordings afterwards. So don't try and scribble down all these book titles here. You'll have access to all of this with the recording. Awesome. So thank you very much.