 Hello everyone. I'm Cheryl Stenstrom as Sue just mentioned and along with Dr. Allman we chair the Library and Management Advisory Committee at the San Jose State University School of Information. We have a variety of advisory committees that help us work through different subject areas and different topics and our committee on leadership and management has asked us over the past while but particularly in the last year to help prospective students and some of the newer students and continuing students talk about and see what it's like to have a management position within a library and information science organization and so in response we've developed this four part series with a variety of different speakers and different presentation styles to talk about their experiences current and past or however works best for them in terms of what it's like to really be a leader or a manager in a library or information organization. We collaborated as well with the San Jose State University Career Center. We want to go special thanks to Kim Doherty and Jill Kleese and today we are very very pleased to welcome Dr. Tracy Elliott from the San Jose State University King Library. She is the Dean there and has been there since 2016 June 2016 so it sounds like you're getting close to an anniversary Tracy and has really extensive experience in higher education management more than 20 years. Before becoming the Dean at SJSU she was the Director of Libraries at the State College of Florida. She was the head librarian at St. Petersburg College and the Dean of Learning Resources at I'm sorry I can't say the name of the community college in Virginia you worked out you might want to tell us that. It's Rava Hanuk. Thank you. She holds a PhD in Leadership and Education from Berry University which is also in Florida and a master in Library and Information Studies as well as a Bachelor's in Communication from Florida State. So living a bit of a long way from home in California. So again thank you for joining us today Tracy we're thrilled that you could and you and I are going to do a bit of an interview style presentation today. I've got some questions prepared and we'll work through until you know 45 or 50 minutes into the presentation and leave a bit of time at the end for questions. I'll ask you quickly though are you comfortable people have questions and they put them in the chat or raise their hand are you happy to answer those as you go or would you prefer to leave everything to the end. We can we can try as we go. Okay all right great so I think unless you have comments before we start we'll get started. I think we'd go ahead and get started. All right great so the questions that we prepared again in conjunction with the Career Center because they know what students really want to know for leadership positions and the first one is before you were in a leadership role did you have hesitations about moving into this level of responsibility and how did you handle that. Yeah no I had no hesitations I'm not really sure why that is I probably should have but I never did so I can't really say how I handled it. In most cases the leadership roles that I've had I've jumped in head first and probably should have done a little bit more thinking before I took them but they all worked out pretty well so but for me I definitely learned a lot then the most surprising thing about leadership was learning how being humble and admitting your mistakes is essential in building trust among your associates. You can be infallible it's okay in fact when you are it's a tremendous opportunity for team building you need to own your mistakes and enlist others to move the organization forward and also the other thing that I've learned is that those are your biggest cheerleaders when you start a new position will most likely be the ones you will disappoint the most in the long run whereas the most skeptical people of your who are skeptical of your abilities as a leader will potentially be your staunchest supporters once you prove yourself. So those were two surprises for me. I bet and we've got a question here in the chat that's really relevant Samantha's asking what made you feel confident about taking on those roles you know why do you think there wasn't any hesitation. I think that's just something I've always done. I don't want to say that I was like the play school or playground bully but I was also I was always the one to say hey come on let's do this or let's try this. I my mom used to laugh at me because I used to you know bark orders at my my dolls and my stuffed animals. I was always in charge so I think I've always just sort of levitated to wanted wanting to be the one to lead. And so I think that I've never really shied away from those opportunities. I was always to the government president. I was always the you know the the chair of things. I was even in my daughter's school. I was the PTA president. It's just for me I end up taking on that role even with it subconsciously I think so. Great. Thank you for being so open about I guess personality and your desires. The next question we have is related but I'm wondering if you haven't answered it. So if you can move to the next slide. We just wanted to ask why you wanted to seek out leadership roles. So is there anything that you have to add other than it sounds like a natural predisposition to wanting to be in that kind of position. Yeah I think that's what it is. You know obviously you want to be in the position in which you can be most effective and there have been times where being the leader of a team I recognize that I was not the one that should be the leader and that I needed to be more of a follower and more of a take more of a back role and and and play to my strengths in a particular situation. But for the most part I feel that as a leader I can be much more effective in moving the library forward and moving any organization that I've worked for forward and for it to help it be successful. I have another question in the chat and I will ask you a little challenges later but I think this one isn't really covered in our prepared questions and it's around being a woman in leadership. So wondering if you have found that you had any specific challenges related to that. Absolutely. I mean you have to be honest about that. I had definitely been in very uncomfortable situations where inappropriate things have been said to me by male leaders and even in some case or other male leaders and people in higher positions than I am. But in not just men either women as well where you're put into categories or it's just assumed that you're being over-emotional or sort of a response to a situation that if I was a man behaving in that way or acting in that way there would be no conversation about you're being too emotional or you're being irrational and that's difficult and what you do have to do is compartmentalize that and not attack the person that's doing that but really try to help reframe the situation so that you can both see things differently and you can have a conversation moving forward and it is definitely challenging. I'm not I'm sure that men have their own challenges but as a woman there is a lot of that there's a lot of stereotyping there's a lot of expectations of what you can and can't do and and I've had to I've had to work over those hurdles over and over again and and it was interesting because when I most of my work has been in the southeast in the United States so you expect you know a certain amount of misogyny in the south and I had was completely blindsided when I moved to California and found it was actually worse here so I was really expecting it to be in many ways California is so progressive but there is definitely a definite and especially in Silicon Valley I understand it's much worse in this area I was just blindsided by what what I was experiencing really within the first few months of me getting here so that has been really really challenging but nothing you can't handle and nothing you can't overcome by showing how effective you are as a leader. Right always that the standards right of good leadership is good leadership and no matter who it is for sure. Yeah, Sue's put a question in our chat here and again we don't quite cover it in our further question so I'd like to ask you now and it is a bit related a little bit to what you said sort of your own personality growing up and so for those when you got you have employees who are looking to develop their leadership skills or just you know as you're supervising or managing or leading your own employees are there ways that you help them to be leaders as well specific things that you can think of in that sense. Absolutely I think there are some some questions about that kind of kind of about that coming up but I believe that it's my responsibility as a leader to ensure that everyone in the organization has an opportunity to lead and and really I as the dean of this library I am my expectation is that everyone who comes here is a leader in some way and particularly if you're a librarian you have more of a responsibility to do that because you are the expert in the field and the expectation is that you will bring something to this library that no one else is able to do and so you have to be able to lead so I believe in the investment in professional development for employees I believe in mentoring I make I really applaud and cultivate those middle managers who also look and provide opportunities for leadership for those who report to them there are so many ways that that you can help cultivate leaders within your organization and really it's your responsibility as a leader to do that. Okay good so on the other side how would you define a successful leader so when you're mentoring them or for yourself and what about the influences that you've had as leaders how has has that been affected by the leaders under whom you've worked. Well I believe that a successful leader is someone who can help others achieve their potential even when they themselves don't even recognize that potential within themselves and I think that the measure of a successful leader is the satisfaction of the associates so those that follow you or those who report to you or within your organization their satisfaction on having completed a job well done. We are always celebrating in this library because I think we're doing amazing things every day so it seems like every day there's a reason for us to celebrate and to be patting each other on the back and just say stepping back and saying oh my goodness we just did that we just did that amazing thing we are the first ones to do it or were the leaders in the CSU or which is the California State University System or the leaders in the country on something so the leader is really the measure of a good leader is the satisfaction of those that they lead and and they feel that they feel pride in their work they feel like they make a difference and I think if I can you can't look at me and say look at you know just what the library is accomplished you need to ask the employees of the library are they satisfied or do they feel like they're making a difference that and if they say yes then then I'm a successful leader oh and then leaders that I worked for so leaders I work for they believed in me even when they didn't understand what my vision was even if they didn't have the same vision they were willing to take the risk they were willing to allow me to push the envelope on things and a lot of times as a library I've been a library director and dean for the majority of my career as a librarian and I work my supervisors have been provost and vice presidents and most of the time they don't understand the library speak they understand information science they just know when people are happy and when people are satisfied with with the work that you do and so a lot of times it does take them really believing in me and giving me lots of autonomy and so I think that I tried to replicate that as much as I can as a leader because I need to give people the space to be able to be experimental and to take risks and I've had lots of feedback from employees who've said that that's what they appreciate the most about me is the willingness to try something new and be it's okay if we fail at it as long as we learn something from it great I think Sue and I both want to circle back to you know you're just for mentioning the first part of that question when you're talking about developing leader you know showing leadership style and working with your employees and how everyone in the King Library takes on a leadership role and she's asking what ways do you recognize those accomplishments and further what are some of the accomplishments that have happened in the King Library since you've arrived well one of the things we did for those of you who truly understand or have worked in libraries for a while or have used extensively use libraries we move from a server-based library management system or integrated library system to a cloud-based but we went from a shared system with the public library here at San Jose to a shared system among all of the CSUs which is 23 different institutions and we went to Alma we went from Sierra to Alma and that was quite an undertaking and there was very little support at the central office so we have the chancellor's office for those of you who we are a system of 23 institutions we do have a centralized office that provides some support to the library but there was very limited amount of support that came out of the chancellor's office so there was a lot of responsibility placed upon the campuses to make sure that this actually happened and it had to happen for all 23 of us we couldn't just say oh well we have programmers and we have experts here at San Jose State and and not help out Channel Islands or not help out Chico or Humboldt the smaller the smaller college or the smaller universities in our system so there was a lot of work done here at San Jose State to make that happen and we were recognized by the chancellor's office for that work that we did we we had a party made a lot of cake there was a lot of congratulating every opportunity we had we we brought those that were responsible there's an outside of a lot of people that were leaders and in this area we brought them in front of the provost we had him thank them the they were recognized in front of the president at a regular basis our senior management team would talk about the accomplishments of the individuals and make sure that they were given given you know adequate I guess credit for for the work they did we had one person in particular that was just a game changer we think for the CSU and being successful and we made sure he was rewarded monetarily so we do we we come up with as many ways as we can to recognize the the excellence in our employees and and the leadership that they take I can go on out we we've done so much we started the first ever late night tutoring program at a university library in California and we are responsible for those tutors and it's incredibly successful we went to 24 hours study five days a week for the whole building so we're the only ones and the CSU that do that we just added VR and AR lab and we're working with the deans and the faculty across campus to integrate that into assignments we are opening an incubator in our lower level of our library which from what we can tell is the first of its kind in the country so we're doing all kinds of things that are you know we don't have anybody that we can turn to and say hey how are you doing this and we are very very proud of that that's amazing so if you can go to the next slide I'd like to ask you about attitudes for successful leaders and I'll add a question to that about style as well but it sounds like you know one of your traits for success is having a lot of energy so in addition to the questions on the slide which are around the skills that you think help you most in your role and how you develop them we have another question that fits in with that from our chat board which is how would you describe your leadership style so if you could address a kind of skills and styles yeah I think you know what they say once you get a PhD you realize how little you know and my PhD is in leadership and so there's an enormous amount of pressure on somebody who has a PhD in leadership to be able to describe their leadership style it's like oh gosh where do I bit begin read my dissertation you know so that's a hard one but there's certainly some traits that I recognize that are really important for me and I think that are things that I have to remember on a regular basis to make sure that I emulate the first is to to serve as the role model you have to walk the walk if you are not the biggest cheerleader for your organization then you're not you're not gonna be success you don't deserve to lead that organization so and I did this I think what I first started to walk the walk is a library director and really it wasn't as a director it was as my first library position my librarian position at Columbus State University I I made sure that I led small projects that had the potential for big impact and I had the support of my library director at the time and and my supervisor and the impact was throughout campus and people started talking about the library and what librarians could do for student success how students could get better grades how they could how they could save time in their studies by talking with a librarian and how they did better on tests by developing assignments that required library library resources be included in those assignments so so that's important is walking the walk and and really taking the opportunity that you had to to create projects that will have a good a large impact and create advocacy for your library either the second one is providing inspiration we need to know as as librarians and as directors and deans that we have to constantly be telling the story of the impact that we do have on the institution on faculty research on student research or on your community on your your organization that you're you're in regardless if it's a public library university library or an information organization you constantly need to understand and talk about what it is that you do and why you're important and and helping other people feel inspired by that so the people who work within the organization for them to be able to do the same thing for them to know immediately why what they do is important and I think the third thing for me is that you have to concern have concern for each individual in the library you have to know what their strengths are and and you need to help them realize that potential so again if it's not a library in any organization that you have you really have to know the people who work there you have to know what it is that they do and and sometimes you're able to see potential in them that they don't see in themselves and you need to help them realize that I mean that is so so important we can't do any of the things that we've done at this library or any of the other libraries I've worked at if people didn't believe in themselves and somebody didn't allow people to do what it is that they do well and and give them you know the opportunity to do so I hope I answer that question thank you I just was just reviewing the question that came to the chat just as you wrap that up and it's but it's really related so if the question is what what do you do when you have an exemplary employee with the they have this highly needed skills but you don't have an official position to offer them at that time oh there's always opportunities for leadership so we're constantly creating new services we're exploring new projects and we put together and I and sometimes ad nauseam we try to come up with different names for committees we might call them a task force or an advisory group or you know something different than committee but you can always find opportunities for people to lead and you can appoint them as the chairs of those committees or they can work that out within the committee themselves but or you can even just give them a project on their own to do some research on something new that the library might be able to do or how do we maximize the systems that we have in a different way how do we use like SharePoint to help us with scheduling our meeting rooms things like that so you task people with things in within their own capacity and let them lead that project let them be the expert of that project I believe that every single employee in a library has leadership responsibilities and it's all about making sure that they recognize that they are the leader in these different capacities if I could just jump in here a minute I'm wondering if the question though might have been more directed to a person who's not in a full-time professional librarian position and there are no librarian positions open so what do you do if someone is a clerk or another member on the staff who seeks to be a full-time librarian has the skill sets but you don't have that opening that's really interesting because I actually entered that question with with the staff in mind the librarians because I really feel like you like said libraries already in this leadership role so we actually have 60 staff members are in our library and I think about 15 of them have masters in library science from SJSU I believe most of them if not all of them so there are some of your most six in my opinion some of your most successful graduates they they are in leadership positions they we give them opportunities for leadership and as a matter of fact while we're speaking we have some work lead training going on that is being that was put together by our associate dean they're literally in in the training right now as we speak because I was supposed to help her and I realize we had this conflict and these are people who are they're not administrators they're not librarians and they do have a few people that are reporting to them but they are not in an official capacity within the university to make any administrative decisions on behalf of their employees so it's all about leadership they're learning how to to manage one-on-one they're learning what the responsibilities of a leader or manager is so they're they're kind of at the cusp of moving up to a director position or or a coordinator position but they just don't have that they don't have that rank yet and they don't have that responsibility and and then those that are at the face-to-face or at the I hate to say it so the lowest rank I suppose in the library as far as positions they are often involved in decision-making and particularly within their departments our our managers are always making sure that they're getting input from the individuals and they're testing them with with projects and goals so annually they're given goals to accomplish and sometimes they're expected to be the leader of of a project and that's one of their goals so there's always opportunities for people we want to make sure that we're taking advantage or want to take advantage we're maximizing the potential of the people who work for us and making sure that they're also feel very fulfilled in their work so we have to provide them opportunities to feel like they're contributing and so there's always that conversation and dialogue between the manager and the employee and and then that information is also brought back up to me to make sure that yeah I'm asking well as people are moving on as things are shifting as we're reorganizing who do you think is would be good in this role and who do you think would be good in this role and we have conversations about that all the time so it's not just about becoming a librarian for me some of our most important positions are non librarian positions within the organization to make the organization work for me the librarians are the leaders in the outward facing this of the library and some of the the key work that's done between the faculty and the students the number one in are the the most impactful thing that the library can do on student success or or provide for students to be successful is that collaboration between a librarian and a student my research has shown over and over and so of many colleagues within the the the um the profession that it's that one-on-one collaboration with a student librarian that has the greatest impact on their success their their time to graduation their GPA their their opportunities to go into graduate school etc so all out of everything that the library does the one thing that is most impactful is the librarian collaboration and in that way the librarian is always going to be a leader they're always going to be trying to get people to to take advantage of of that collaboration great this I've got a question in the chat that relates a little bit to the question that we have the on the slide as well as we talked earlier about collaboration between you and the employees not so much between librarians and students but that kind of if you know having being informed as you make decisions and working with your staff on some of those decisions but the question in the chat is around tough decisions so how do you go about making those tough decisions and maybe you can address that a bit around and I think you have already been addressing this questions on the slide around anything that you want to add around attitudes that you think are important for leaders and I think I'm asking those because in my experience those are tough decisions and attitudes are often related to but maybe you don't find that so much either way those are the questions on the table right now Tracy okay well um I think what you do when you make tough decisions is you you you make a decision based upon what is best for the users of your organization so the users of your library and the people who work within the library so as long as you know that you're putting students and faculty and the mission of the university first as well as those people who are responsible for making making things happen as long as you're you're putting them first and you're not doing anything to to to challenge that mission or to make life harder for students or make life harder for faculty or make life harder for your employees then and you've got and you you do that to the best of your ability with the information that you have and you're most likely going to make the right decision not everybody would agree with you and some people may see things a little differently but it's easier if those decisions are challenged the other thing is that we're always telling everybody it's just books you know we're not making life or death decisions here this is not med school this is not we can if we make a mistake we can make up for that mistake we can we can make things right if we make a decision that is it does not go well that doesn't turn out the way that we thought it was going to we can always fix it and that's what I was saying in the beginning that's one thing I learned as a leader is that you have to be willing when you make a mistake when you make a tough decision and it's not the right one or it's not quite right you can fix it you just have to own it and you have to enlist the help of others to fix it and to help move the institution forward that that is really important we all make mistakes and it's okay I mean that's how we learn and that's how we get better at what we do you try to minimize those mistakes as much as you can but you can't be afraid of making tough decisions you just have to know you have to know who the most important people are when you make those decisions and you need to protect those people and you need to make sure that they're you know that you're not stopping them from being successful so as far as what I think are most important attitudes for leaders I think it's really really important that that you embody the mission and the vision and the values of that organization and like I said before if you are not your organization's number one cheerleader you have absolutely no business being the leader if you find yourself at home saying you know I really don't like that place I really don't want to go to work today then you need to really rethink about where you are you really should not be there you should you need to be somewhere where you truly believe in what you're doing and what the institution is doing in order for you to be effective and and that's so true I mean I I have to fundraise I'm asking donors for millions of dollars for the library and if I don't believe in what we're doing I have no business asking for that money I have no business asking for it but I don't even blink because I know that the investment in this library and in this university is a good one because I truly believe in what I do and what this institution does but if you can't say that then you're not going to be a successful leader you're also need that same attitude if you want to attract and retain good employees talented employees and you need to have that same attitude to get people to buy into the value to be an advocate for your library it's so important that's all I had to say about that great thank you we want to shift questions a little bit I'm thinking a bit more about some of our participants today who are either taking the program or thinking about going to library school or maybe a close to graduation and are looking to take on leadership roles in organizations and and so if you can skip forward a little bit the question is what kind of experience did you have supervisory experience specifically before you took on your first leadership role I know you've been doing this for a long time but maybe even before you had a job in a library or you know some of those transferable skills that you helped that helped you take on leadership role and and specifically even around supervision right I actually held two management positions and in the retail industry before I decided that I wanted to get my my library degree at Florida State one of them was the manager of a portrait studio and the other one was assistant manager and that led to a management position at a clothing store and that was really all about supervising and you know when you have to sell items and you need people to be at work and you need them to provide good customer service and that was the that was very that was very helpful for me in my role now and and what I learned I did make mistakes I mean you're you're going to as a manager probably the hardest thing I ever did is right out of college I got a management like the portrait I managed portrait studio and I had to fire somebody that I hired because he was scaring the children that he was taking photographs of he didn't mean to but he was it was in Columbus Georgia as a military town and he he was a sergeant in the army so you know sometimes you just can't turn that off he was a great photographer but he just couldn't get children to smile because they were afraid of him so so I had to fire him and it was really hard because technically he did everything right and he showed up he was the perfect employee but you know so you I learned then that you have to take responsibility for putting somebody in a position that should not I should not have hired him I should have thought about that beforehand and you have to think about all of the skills that were required for that particular position and how every position is so key to the success of your organization he was one of three photographers and one third of the of the customers he was in front of and so that was really impactful the other thing is that when I was in school I was always in especially in high school I was always in a role that was responsible for like student government president I was in charge of event planning I was in charge of advocacy for students for the for the school I was in front of school boards I had to do public speaking all the time I did fundraising for for my school and for my class I did budgeting I ran meetings I did strategic planning so I didn't know that I was getting management experience while I was in middle school and high school but I was and you always have the opportunity to get to get that experience and so related to that our next slide is a question again about people who are aspiring to leadership roles what do you think is most important for some of our students to know about leadership I think what's most important is that you need to be prepared to be a leader as soon as you graduate and you get your position librarians are considered leaders even if they're an entry-level librarian physician so you will be expected to lead programs projects and in many cases students right out of grad school are managing people and budgets and even if you don't have the title of manager or director you're doing this so therefore you need to think seriously right now about what kind of leader you are going to be the biggest tip I can give you is to remember it's not about you it's about the library or the organization that you work for including the people who use it and the people who work in it putting users and employees first is the key to successful leadership you can't go wrong if you do that you may fail that you'll fail honorably and you'll learn enough to be successful soon enough so don't be afraid you are going to learn as you go but just remember and be prepared for the fact that you will be a leader if you don't see yourself when you get an entry-level position as a leader then you're already setting yourself up for failure you need to look at how you can lead your organization forward even at the entry-level position in terms of you know you talked about those great examples of you know being on committees and you know participating in planning even when you're a kid and you didn't realize those strategic planning all those things do you have advice or ways you could suggest students practice those skills while they're at in their program you know in terms of specific activities they could take on or beyond the job maybe that you think you know if you as an employer saw their CV what would stand out to you and show you that they've been keen to develop those skills as they're applying for those first jobs right um I often hire people who had no um official or paid experience um leading into positions that I knew that they would have to be leaders because I think that if you if you are leading so my suggestion is that think of a project and apply for grants or other funding for that project it could be a research project um a program at a school a public or academic library for example you could offer to raise money for books for your local elementary school they always need books you know look at Oklahoma the teachers are are saying how they they teach reading and they don't have any books in their classrooms or in their library there's always there's always an opportunity for an organization to need leadership to need more resources and you could be that person or you could join a group that's doing that and take on some of that responsibility um and you can you you need to ask help from others my suggestion is that you come up with your own project and that you lead it and then you ask for help from others because some of the most accomplished leaders are those who can successfully volunteers or making something out of nothing so when i was the pta president um at my daughter's high school i learned how difficult it was to get busy parents to want to give their time i found it very easy for them to write me a check so that they didn't have to participate um and and any of the fundraising but it it was very challenging and i i truly believe that a person who can lead volunteers is a much it has proven that they can do so is to me almost more convincing of a leader than somebody who is able to lead employees who work for them and their paycheck is dependent upon whether or not um they like them you know so i think that you really have an opportunity in that case to develop into a transformational leader when you're leading a project that's a non-profit um and then you don't know what your potential of a leader what potential you have as a leader until you're in that kind of situation i learned and i my daughter graduated five years ago from high school so i've been a leader all this time but i swear i learned and maybe it was because i was going through my phd at the same time that i was learning about leadership but i found a lot more of the applicability of studying leadership to that position than my own position of director of the library so i think that you have a tremendous you you make your opportunities for leadership and you can do that in so many ways your community needs you it needs your leadership so you should take advantage of that um i if we have time i want to go back and sort of ask you about some of the challenges but i do want to ask you our last prepared question which is if you've got some titles that you'd recommend or articles that you'd recommend to our participants are on leadership that especially given your dissertation work i think you'll have a lot to say about this and i also want to have time to open the floor for questions so if you've got a couple of titles that would be great and then we'll move from there yeah my suggestion is some easy reads um of course you can look at the bibliography my 35 pages of references for my dissertation or whatever it is and and look at the leadership or even just the literature review on the history of leadership um and there you'll find lots of books within that that you can read but for me the ones that i find very um something that you would listen to like when you're commuting to work or or just picking up and just wanting 15 20 minutes to read while you're sitting at the doctor's office or whatever first one is leading change by john cotter he's a harvard professor um i think that that one's really important because the hardest thing to lead is change there are literally people who have phobias against change and being able to move in an organization through a difficult transition is essential and he really gives some really practical really down to earth advice and he's a harvard professor so i'm assuming you know he he also brings a lot of theory into it but he really makes it a very practical book it's a it's a great book it's called leading change and the author is john cotter uh there you go thank you sharel and the other one which will probably be surprising to most people is leadership in the new science by margaret weatley i read that book um in my my leadership my first leadership class in my phd program and um and i had to do like a sort of a book review of it to the class and um i was really surprised i thought oh my gosh really i what i don't know science i don't i'm not a scientist but oh my goodness it was just it was really amazing it's really an interesting way of looking at leadership and looking at the way organizations work and um and organizational culture i mean if you're not aware of the impacts of organizational culture on your the output of your of your institution then you're missing some amazing opportunities and she does a really good job in helping people look at things differently there's a lot of youtube videos um from margaret weatley as well that um she talks about what she's in front of um like gm and she does a lot of consultations with major companies um and it's all based upon the science the new sciences like quantum physics and and that kind of stuff and so it's it's really interesting it's a great read it's a great listen that's a really good book for audio if you're if you're into audiobooks it's a lot of fun she does the reading of it um but it but it's really exciting and of course then i have my theories my favorite theories i have to talk about those real fast so transformational leadership um is what my dissertation is on primarily um i think that there's really key my research shows that three of the factors for transformational leadership are extremely extremely impactful and are predictors of of success in the organizational learning of an of an academic library and um of course there's tons of research out there that says it's also impactful in most organizations um and then another leadership theory that's really interesting to me is the leader member exchange it really helps you to think about being honest and being inclusive in your leadership capacity it's so important to be inclusive it's so important to think of everyone in the organization and that leader leader membership member stage or lmx theory is really important and then finally one that i use all the time is it i because it's so easy to remember is kurt louen's change theory and it's that freeze unfreeze um theory about organizational change that is so crazy applicable i think about it constantly i've been using it in my own life when uh i don't mind that use it i i follow the sort of the principles of it and recognize what's happening in my own life when i'm going through change um so those are really cool theories are really easy to um to get your brain around and very helpful wonderful thank you um before we get into a little few more informal questions i want to open the floor to our participants to see if there are additional questions that you need anything burning that you want to type into the chat or if you want to raise your hand or take the mic sounds like you saw the question that's just coming how do you avoid taking on too much i should have seen this coming um yeah that i think for me that's the biggest challenge because you do um with this new um incubator that's coming into the library it's uh we have all of our dean we have nine deans at the institution and all of us are working on this project making sure that it's interdisciplinary that we're able to scale it across the university eventually we're opening the incubator in the lower level and i have this desire to literally be the one to buy the furniture and to pick the furniture and and to pick out the laser cutters and the you know the the 3d printers and the 3d scanners and all of that and the white boards and and i have to back off because i there's so many great people in the library that can do this and the only way that this project is going to be successful is if we involve more people within the library or really across the campus so we now have faculty a faculty advisory group and we have a library on the faculty in this faculty from from engineering science blah blah blah you just have to remember as a leader that your responsibility is to help people be successful it's not about you and it's not about a reflection on you it's a reflection on them it's you helping them be successful and you got to remember what it is that you do that helps them be respectful or successful and for me most of the time it's about cutting through red tape so we have an we're an institution where getting something fixed or installed or built is very very challenging and everybody on campus is trying to build something and everyone on campus is trying to fix something and and we only have so many people in our facilities department and so many people in our purchasing department and they're you know so where do we how do we get this project elevated that's my responsibility is helping my people not get stalled in their creative process and their the work that they're trying to do so i'm here it's not glamorous it really isn't i'm here to make sure that everything goes well and goes smoothly when others are not able to do it because they need a dean to step in so it's it's hard you want to take on more you want to be more involved you're you're really you get really excited about a project you want to see it through from start to finish but you got to trust people and that's what helps with not taking on too much is remembering what your role is and what your responsibility is and really you need to be looking to the future what's the next big project that you can help get started and then allow others to to work on and it was the time those great ideas are right here within your own library or your own institution so you don't have to look outside of your institution because people within your institution we have 90 people they have great ideas every day and so it's listening it's taking the time to do that and then helping them be successful but not trying to do it all yourself that's that's a hard thing i want i want have more time to do research i want more time to do writing and i i don't allow myself that time so i do take on too much all the time but i think being being willing to delegate and being willing to um trust those who work for you and work with you um is really important the great great point that's um it's easy to forget when you get caught up in a big detailed project like that for sure yeah do we have any other questions from the floor uh while people are thinking about that we put maybe a time for one more from the floor uh just very quickly Tracy uh you've talked about your pta experiences you know the amusingly that it may have been one of your greatest leadership challenges maybe not but certainly challenging uh and just wondering if there are if there's anything you want to say about challenges that you face uh you know either on a day-to-day basis in your role or uh you know as a kind of overview concept of being a leader i think that i think that last question is probably for me my biggest challenge it is trying to find that balance and making sure that you understand that you're a leader and not a manager and that you where what is your role and where can where can you as a leader be most influential and most successful and always remembering that and not putting yourselves not doing the work of others who are probably even better at it than you are like um we have an opportunity at our academic senate to start talking about open access because our university library board has um passed a resolution that they're now passing on to the academic senate to talk about open access and what that means here at san jose state it's very thrilling it's so exciting but i'm not the expert on open access i can be i'm on the senate so i have to be at the meeting anyway but i have people here who it's they're passionate about it they know so much more about it they understand the uh the challenges the implications and so allowing them to speak to the academic senate and be the ones to answer the questions to me makes me more successful so i have to allow them to do that it's it's the best thing for the university it's the best thing for the library and it's the best thing for them because they need that opportunity to to take on that leadership role and to take on that responsibility and and to be to get the credit for being the expert in that area wonderful thank you um not just uh you know um insightful words that you have to leave us with but uh inspirational as well too you're right that we have a role to take on across the library any organization any uh information organization as leaders and um and doing in enacting those traits of leadership every day so um we are going to wrap up i see a few people needed to get going and we always try to be prompt and finishing on time and so i really want to thank you uh dr elliot um i want to also invite dr allman to have any closing words uh and as well you tracy if there's anything that you need to add before we sign off for our afternoon thank you for inviting me it's been an honor well thank you tracy um we really appreciated having you here learned so much and the comments that are coming in the chat are ranging from uh inspirational to uh even more uh appreciative of your work so thank you so very much and thank you to all our participants who are who are here today and remember we have two more webinars so we hope you'll join them for with us thank you