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WHEN YOU’RE NOT (EXACTLY) THE BOSS: HOW TO MANAGE EFFECTIVELY IN A “COORDINATOR” ROLE

Kim Becnel

In many cases, library hierarchies are less than cut and dried. Managers who hold titles such as children’s services coordinator or reference services coordinator can have ambiguous relationships with those staff members who work in their departments but are ultimately under the direct supervision of a branch manager. These ambiguous relationships can lead to unnecessary conflicts and divided loyalties, but the coordinator or department head role can be a rewarding and productive one if some basic principles and strategies are kept in mind. Developing a strong sense of teamwork in your department, maintaining a strong relationship with your employees’ supervisors, and keeping your own role in perspective will help you make the most of your position in the library.

Develop a sense of teamwork and loyalty among all of your employees, no matter where they work. This sense of teamwork is important for morale, but it can also be crucial to your success as a coordinator. When you lack the power to reward or punish employees directly, you have to get their buy-in, make them feel like they are part of a team that is doing worthy work. If you can succeed at this, your staff members will do what you ask. The following strategies help keep your staff members from feeling isolated and remind them that they are part of a department with common goals and shared challenges:

• Get your staff together as often as you can for meetings and training sessions. These gatherings provide everyone on your team with a shared sense of purpose and reaffirm your common mission.
• At meetings, work with your team to set department goals and priorities. Do not only solicit their input. Use it.
• Try to visit your staff at their locations on a regular basis. It is vitally important that they feel like you are aware of and invested in what they are doing on a daily basis.
• Especially when budgets are tight and staffing is short, it can be hard to have meetings or trainings in which your entire staff is assembled. Create a forum for discussion such as an electronic message board open to all members of your department, full-time and part-time. Encourage staff to share ideas and post questions for discussion.
• Have staff from various branches work together in committees on system-wide projects so that they get used to depending on each other and sharing ideas.
• Create databases of successful program plans, bookmarks, and bibliographies so that staff members can easily share ideas and work products.
• Whenever possible, give staff the opportunity to travel together to workshops and training opportunities outside of your library system.

Create and maintain constructive relationships with your staff’s direct supervisors. Keeping an ongoing and constructive dialog with branch managers enables you to manage your department in a way that works with, and not counter to, each branch’s unique situation and needs. The suggestions below are great ways to collaborate with your staff’s supervisors:

• Attend staff meetings that involve your team at all locations when possible. Not invited? Ask if you can sit in.
• Keep supervisors informed of training topics you cover and projects you have asked your staff to work on. Solicit their input on future training topics and projects that they feel would be especially helpful for their staff members.
• Solicit input from branch managers concerning the best days and times to hold meetings and trainings.
• Always remind your staff to double-check with their supervisors before confirming their attendance at a meeting or training you have scheduled.
• If you are not already doing so, offer to participate in the goal-setting and evaluative portions of the annual employee performance appraisal of each employee in your department.
• Even if you are unable to participate in the formal evaluation process, you can still observe and evaluate members of your department. Observe your staff in action and write up your observations to share with the staff member and his or her direct supervisor. For example, if you work as head of children’s services, make an effort to regularly observe your staff members conducting programming and interacting with children in their departments. Writing up observations that offer praise and helpful suggestions for your staff members and providing this information to both staff members and their supervisor are a helpful way to share your expertise in your subject area.

Get some perspective on your own position. If you think of yourself as occupying a support role for your staff out at the branches, they will understand that your main goal is to help them do their jobs better. As a result, they will be much likelier to comply with your requests and do their best to meet goals you set. Try keeping the following tips in mind:

• Encourage your staff members to let you know how you can help them do their jobs better. Ask them to let you know what they need—supplies, training, books on certain subjects, advice—and then do your best to fill these needs in a timely manner.
• Make an effort to go out and assist your staff with a big event or on a particularly busy day. You will get a better sense of how they are performing and what they might need from you to improve their work, and, just as important, they will feel your commitment to them and their endeavors.
• Know that compromise may be necessary due to the specific environments that each staff member is working in. Make sure that you are aware of the specific conditions of each branch through visits and supervisor and staff input. Be willing to modify your goals and expectations for members of your team because of differences in their working environments. This can be especially important when planning systemwide events, such as the summer reading program. If you want to make your program consistent across all branches, you need to make sure you create something that is doable at all locations—what works in theory may not work everywhere in practice. Be prepared to change your program to one that will work everywhere or to allow your staff in various locations to make modifications necessary to make the program work in their environments.

The keys to success in a coordinator or department head role, then, are maintaining perspective and clear lines of communication. You, your staff, and the folks who directly supervise them ultimately share the same goal: providing the best library service to your community. To make that happen, you need to be sure that no one is working in isolation. Keep all lines of communication open and use them often. Work with your staff and branch managers to determine the goals of your department and the best ways to meet them at each location. Be willing to listen and to compromise, to serve as well as to lead, and your efforts will result in a more rewarding library experience for you, your employees, and your patrons.