Dr. Steve Albrecht: “Performance Evaluations (2023): A Skill-Building Refresher for Library Leaders”

OVERVIEW:

Good bosses provide feedback, through daily coaching conversations, frequent or necessary discussions about an employee’s performance or behavior, and through the more formal performance evaluation process. What’s that you say? Your library doesn’t do employee evaluations? This needs to change and this webinar will either help you start doing them or improve upon them.

All library employees have the right to know how they are doing in their jobs, what they need to do differently, and how, if they so choose, to move to the next level in the organization. The written, discussed, and archived performance evaluation document helps with all of those and more. It serves as a historical record, a coaching subjects referral, and both a goal-setting and a goal-achieving step-by-step plan. It tells your employees what they need to Keep doing (because it’s working well and it’s good for the library, patrons, and co-workers); Stop doing (because it’s against policy, a waste of time, or non-value-added activities); and Start doing (because it will help the employee work faster, smarter, easier, and be better for the library as a whole.)

Let’s get back to talking about the value of doing regular (annual, biannual, or even quarterly) performance evaluations. Your employees can’t fix what they don’t know about.

LEARNING AGENDA: 

• Assessing your current Performance Evaluation (PE) form for improvements.
• The value of more PE meetings, more often.
• Avoiding the usual PE problems: the Halo Effect; the Recency Error; Grade Inflation; Sameness Error; evaluating what you’ve not actually seen the employee do; using labels instead of behaviors.
• How to run a smooth, successful, and drama-free Performance Evaluation meeting.
• Using the completed PE form as an ongoing coaching tool.
• Connecting your PE process to your library’s Strategic Plan.

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. This is an updated version of this webinar for 2023.

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.)