Librarians with Leadership Skills?

Abid Hussain

Many people have argued that Leadership and management are synonym terms
and both can be used for a similar task, but there is a great diference between
both terms. Abraham Zaleznik has articulated that managers “seek order and
control and are almost compulsively addicted to disposing of problems before
they understand their potential signifcance”. In other other words, the manager
used well-established techniques to accomplished the goals of an organization.
Leaders on the other side is an individual who answers any question in suspense
bearing tolerance in chaos and avoiding premature closures on important tasks.

There are more than 100 defnitions of leadership but in nutshell, a leader always
focuses on social infuence to attain the societal and organizational goals with his
leadership skills. In a broader sense, the motto of leadership is to motivate people
to develop, accept and carry out a shared vision.

Perception of leadership in libraries varies from organizations to organizations. In

small libraries they either middle managers or group leaders, while in many
organization they recruit librarians on basis of library education with practical
experiences in library afairs. But, to meet the competencies of organizational
goals, librarians are sometimes feeling misft and avoid extracurricular activities.
In modern days libraries, people are hiring smart workers to cope with all
leadership challenges.

Imperfectly, Librarians in many organization confne themselves only to library

team, they should also be evident at all levels of organization such as trust
creativity, innovation, adaptability and imagination within organization. Librarians
are true leaders and should focus more on problem solving, efciency, quality
improvement and efectiveness in the services being ofered.

Gone are the days when librarians were confned to four walls of libraries. Today’s
librarians are experiencing the leading role in the mission and vision of
organizations. Librarians in the Age of Information technology adjust themselves
in organizational climates to achieve the shared vision of that organization. For
this. they should use their infuential leadership styles. They should motivate
others to use the information for the assigned research tasks.
In the leadership phenomenon, the role of librarians is considerable. In today’s
age, people in the smart organization are hiring smart leaders with innovative
skills and ideas, same has become the case for librarians. Those who are not
willing to update their skills are no longer acceptable/suitable for organizational
goals.

A librarian should play a role as a cooperative researcher, in this case, they should
develop and manages efective services that are helpful to researchers according
to users needs. Librarians should support and collaborate the users by enhancing
their services up-to the entire satisfaction of researchers. In Academic libraries,
the librarians should cooperate the students, faculty and researchers in their
educational goals. In the preservation of information and library resources, the
role of librarians is to understand the organizational structure in order to use the
information in existing formats. Librarians should also demonstrate the values and
principles of librarianship while achieving the commitment of organization.

Librarians should aware themselves about distance education in an organization.

In this regards, He/she should develop a web-based software for outreach patrons,
utilizing this strategy will make them proactive information providers for the
beneft of their organization.

To carry out their institutions' mission, librarians should play a role as liaisons to
the faculty in order to fulfll their research needs.

In any organization, people often hire staf to lead the organization in the right
direction. Librarians will also seek leadership qualities to become a great leader.

(a) Understanding your unique role: The librarian should understand their unique
role in any organization. He/She is the only academic teacher in a building who
meets diferent people. This unique role will make him/her an invaluable resource
in literacy and research planning transition.

(b) Act with confdence: Librarians are experts in curriculum, in student grouping,
in literacy, in research, in technology integration etc, so he should be confdent
and hold their head high, He/she should be a proud member by ofering these
strength at any stage.

(c) Empowering: an empower leaders is one who enables followers, trust them
and develops followers towards their full potential. Confdent leaders support
them because he/she knows that that “raising others raises them, and bringing
down others only brings them down”. Empowering leadership in the library means
that he/she allows the staf to freely share their thought and ideas for attaining
organizational goals.

(d) Visionary Thinker

In the library perspective, if a leader needs to solve the problems of tomorrow, he/
she should think diferently from the way he/she does today. A Library leader with
visionary thinking will move boldly forward and will not look back. For this, a
librarian may set a mission and vision that allow him/her to thrive in future.

(e) Trustworthy

Leadership always rely on trust, if there is a trust defcit environment in

leadership, neither leaders will attract nor retain the followers, trustworthy
leadership in library scenario always lead an organization to the right direction.

Brian Tracy, an American-Canadian public motivational speaker has rightly said

that “leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary
people.

The writer is a library ofcer at Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, he can be

reached at abidhussain@issi.org.pk