Coaching your staff is a necessary leadership skill but not a built-in one. Most managers and supervisors learn to have required conversations with their staff just by doing them, through on-the-job training, work experience, and by having been coached with skill by their bosses before them. If you’re reluctant to speak with your library staff about work performance or work behavior issues, now is the time to get better at these “conversations that mean something.”
Coaching is most often defined as one or more pre-discipline conversations, designed to help all staff improve in their job duties and functions. It’s also useful as a career development process, a mentoring approach, and a succession planning tool. It can help those staff who need to change their attitudes and service orientations, both toward our patrons and each other.
We “get” what and who we coach. And here’s another paradoxical challenge for you as a library leader: you will have to spend more time with those staff who need to make changes in their work performance or work behaviors. You can’t hope they will discover what to do on their own. They can’t or won’t fix themselves. This session will give you the confidence, tools, and talking points to help you help them.
This 60-minute training webinar is presented by Library 2.0 and hosted by ALA author and library service, safety, and security expert, Dr. Steve Albrecht. A handout copy of the presentation slides will be available to all who participate.
About the Speaker
DR. STEVE ALBRECHT. Since 2000, Dr. Steve Albrecht has trained thousands of library employees in 28+ states, live and online, in service, safety, security, and supervision. His programs are fast, entertaining, and provide tools that can be put to use immediately in the library workspace with all types of patrons. In 2015, the ALA published his book, Library Security: Better Communication, Safer Facilities. He is currently writing the sequel, The Safe Library: Keeping Users, Staff, and Collections Secure, for Rowman & Littlefield. Steve holds a doctoral degree in Business Administration (D.B.A.), an M.A. in Security Management, a B.A. in English, and a B.S. in Psychology. He is board-certified in HR, security management, employee coaching, and threat assessment. He has written 24 books on business, security, and leadership topics. He lives with six dogs, two cats, and three chickens. (Not all in the same room, of course.)
