Two-Way Interview: FLJ and Helen Rimmer

This was a joint post between Fair Library Jobs and The Brave Kind Leader to share a two-way interview we conducted about our respective projects, our thoughts on recruitment in libraries and kind and brave approaches to library work. You can also read this interview at TheKindBraveLeader.

Part 1 (originally published 28 October 2023)

Fair Library Jobs (FLJ) Darren: Helen, can you tell us about your role and what some of your main professional interests are at the moment?

The Kind Brave Leader (KBL)/ Helen: Well, I've just left my role as Head of Library and Archives at the University of Westminster and I’m now solely working on The Kind Brave Leader. My main focus, and it’s been a focus of mine for quite some time, is about improving how we work in libraries. Making sure that we are kinder and a bit braver about leadership, and how we can encourage good leaders. And I don’t just mean the current leaders, I mean aspiring leaders and how we can diversify. How do we get people who are really good leaders, but who might have barriers for various reasons, like hierarchies for example, up through the library profession? 

Then we can have different people round the table, different voices, and generally make working environments better for all. I really believe that if we have diversity around our “table” then well-being and kindness will follow. All of this links together. 

KBL Helen: What inspired the founding of Fair Library Jobs and what are your main objectives?

FLJ Darren: We always pass this on to Kirsten first to answer this because she’s our Founder.

FLJ Kirsten: The main inspiration for Fair Library Jobs (FLJ) was Fair Museum Jobs who are a similar organisation that campaigns for improving recruitment practices in the museum sector. They’ve been active for a while and I kept seeing people saying things like “Oh it would be great if this was for libraries too.” It eventually got to the point where, and there’s this Josie Long quote “If you want something to exist, sometimes you just have to make it yourself”, and I hit a tipping point with that. So I put the call out and Darren and Harriet responded.

There have been conversations in librarianship for a long time about equality and diversity, but particularly in 2020 with conversations about race and discrimination. There was also a feeling that these conversations had been happening for a while, but without concrete actions to improve things. Other inspirations for FLJ included Jen Bayjoo who runs Diversity in Libraries of the North (DILON) and Jass K Thethi who runs Intersectional Glam. However, to a large extent, I have to admit I had personal reasons behind setting up FLJ. I’ve applied for a lot of jobs. A lot. And I’ve had some really negative experiences and some experiences that could have been better. I’m conscious of how much time and effort applying and interviewing for jobs can take and the impact it can have on people’s well-being. So it was all these things I’ve mentioned coming together.

We ended up speaking to Fair Museum Jobs and used their manifesto as a basis for our own - with their permission! And created our FLJ manifesto with our own goals for improving equity, respect and transparency in recruitment in the library sector. 

FLJ Harriet:  I’d worked in museums and archives previous to libraries and was aware of Fair Museum Jobs, Jass’s work with Intersectional GLAM, and knew Jen Bayjoo and how she set up DILON. Similarly to Kirsten, I’d also had a lot of negative experiences applying for roles in the library sector and I was thinking “Well Jen has just set up DILON, there’s space for a Fair Museum Jobs but for libraries”. It was around the time, maybe the first time, when people thought Twitter was “ending” and a few of us temporarily migrated over to Discord and I saw Kirsten's post in one of the library groups about setting up Fair Library Jobs and asking who else wanted to help her out and me and Darren replied. I thought “Wow, this is great” and I had been thinking along similar lines and when Kirsten posted I thought yep I want to do this too.  

FLJ Darren: I have a similar story too. I also applied for a lot of jobs in libraries and had some really good experiences and some really bad experiences. Those experiences went from jobs that I applied for, those that maybe progressed to interviews, and those that ended up in offers and accepting or being declined for roles. If you apply for enough roles you get to see the diversity across the sector and see what recruitment looks like. Whereas sometimes you only see it from your own organisation, but if you apply for enough jobs you
get a real sense of what’s out there. 

Personally, I was interested in FLJ because I’m involved in a couple of different things, like Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference (CALC), and one of the critiques I have about critical library practice is it’s often very outward-facing. It’s about collections, it’s about users etc. Sometimes we’re not as good at turning that gaze back in on ourselves. I’m really interested in power structures and power relations in libraries as a workplace. They are institutions, they are collections, they are services, but they are also workplaces where real people are working. FLJ was a place for me to work in this area.

In terms of how we’re set up and what we do, it’s been about the ability to be able to advocate and represent the needs of other people. When you are a job applicant you are in a very powerless position. You don’t have a lot of power over the process, you can’t always raise complaints or flag issues because you are applying for a job. You think “if I raise a complaint I won’t get this job and I need this job”.  It’s a really positive thing that we can act as an advocate whether it’s for individuals or that unspoken applicant out there. I was really interested in being able to do that because it’s something that wasn’t in the library sector before. 

KBL Helen: Yes, that’s really great and chimes well with the Kind Brave Leader trying to change the workplace and not just everything else. You hit the nail on the head. We look out a lot.  

FLJ Darren: Yes and I don’t think we can say we’re working to become equitable services if, actually, the people that are staffing those services and not being treated fairly and are not, you know, happy and well in themselves.

“I don’t think we can say we’re working to become equitable services if, actually, the people that are staffing those services and not being treated fairly and are not, you know, happy and well in themselves.”

FLJ Harriet: I feel like us three are quite vocal in a lot of ways. There’s definitely been times at work when you have those conversations with people and say “Yeah, this isn’t okay” and they go “Oh yeah, maybe this isn’t okay.” Now we can raise these issues more widely and FLJ gives us that platform.

FLJ Harriet: How have you applied your work on kindness and braveness to how you recruit staff in your workplace in your previous role? 

KBL Helen: At Westminster we did a lot of work right from when I started about changing our recruitment process - very iterative - just like you all, said I, personally, had applied for jobs at different places, been through lots of different ups and downs and things. We started with the job description first of all. We removed unnecessary qualifications, tried to make the language less like you had to already be working in a university or a library to understand it. We did have to fight up against the panels who look at jobs and have some quite hard conversations about them, but those conversations worked,and those job descriptions came through.

We then had a student from the Employ Autism scheme come and work with us. I was actually on maternity leave at this point so kudos has to go to Daniella, Eleri, Amy, and the people who are around at that time. From that we started to look at our actual interview process. So they've applied for the job, what happens next? We don't have much control over the application part, but we have had conversations later about that, but what we do have control over is the advert. So we make that as clear as possible with information and, for example, using some of your manifesto and your good practice trying to make it as good as possible.

Then also looking at these interview packs, we sat down with the student, who became actually a full time member of staff in a totally different team, and talked to him about good practice, as well as Employ Autism, and we were like, well, if some of the issues are about how people approach the interview, so how do they understand what needs to happen at an interview they might not have had an interview. Well, actually, a lot of people won't have had an interview. A lot of people won't have had interviews at university. A lot of people won't have been to university. So we scaled it up and we thought “Why don't we just do this for everybody?” So our interview packs have photos of the panel in them, and a little blurb about the people, because there's nothing worse than thinking how many people are going to be in the room with you, let alone you know, what do they look like? You can research them a bit if you want. All of that's up to the person doing it.

We also have a bit about what to expect at the interview, so you will arrive ,we will ask questions, we'll take notes, all of that stuff that, yes, people might say at the beginning of the interview. However, if you're sitting there nervous, you might not quite get that. We also have photos of the route. If it's an in person interview,  we’ll have photos of the entrance to the building, you then have to go to security, here's security, you know, and working your way through because again, how many times have we turned up at interviews and thought “Where's this building?” you know, let alone anything else.

The big thing is that we give the interview questions in advance.This was probably one of the more controversial parts. People did sort of worry that we were giving away too much information. Questions like “Well, what what if they prepare everything in advance?” It's like “Well, why not?” One of the things we say in it is we aren't there to catch you out. We want to see your best you. We’re all experienced interviewers, you can tell if someone's reading off a piece of paper and just a script that someone else has written. I think that's a key thing is it's flipped it. The pressure is now on the people interviewing as much as the people being interviewed. In that we have to really pay attention because we have to ask good follow up questions. We have to really think about it. One of the things we did do is people were producing presentations so they were turning up with 20 min worth of material, we did have to say, we're only expecting 5 minutes for that question, because otherwise the interviews were getting a bit too long.

We learned some lessons along the way. Something we did, for example, for customer service roles is we did have a couple of questions which were more of a scenario that we asked on the spot, but we warned people we would be doing that, and gave them as much pre information as possible. What we found is that the people who prepared, be it, they might just have some bullet points, or they might have more evidence, if we were asking about social media they'd brought some printouts, or they'd, brought an ipad. It's really helping them prepare, but not wasting their time either.

What it's done is it's levelled the playing field. Everybody is coming with the same information. Some people choose not to prepare, but 99% of the time those people are not the people who get the jobs because they're not actually keen for the role.

It was really brave. It was a kind thing to do, but also a brave thing to do, because we were pushing.

What we were able to do is that it was within the library's sort of gift to do the interview pack - all we did was send the interview pack to recruitment, and said, “Can you send this out with the interview?” That's the other thing. You have to prepare it all in advance. So you have to know who your panel is, which also means, we had to set the interview date which we would set before the advert went out. The number of times I've been called for an interview and it's been way down the line and do you think you don't know when you're gonna meet? I actually had an interview in the summer, and that happened. They were waiting to tell me when the date was because the panel wasn’t ready. It's a bit chaotic, doesn't bode well, and I think it reflects on the organisation. 

From that we also have a document of interview questions, a bank which we're able to use that then saves time. We do revise them, but it means that we've got a set of grade 3 questions that we can pick and choose from. Then each team within the library, because obviously, that's the other thing with libraries, each team is approaching it in a very equal way. The kindness and the bravery were two things there and we got some amazing applicants through doing it, and feedback was often along the lines of “It doesn't matter if I get the job I feel like you're a compassionate place to work that you're living your values.”

That’s the thing people forget is everything you're saying, and everything I'm saying is a real reflection. You want workplaces that do these things well and don’t do naughty things.

FLJ Darren: There is a perception, I think it's fading away but not quickly enough, that recruitment, and interviews particularly, that they have to be a bit stressful, they have to be a bit difficult, and that you are trying to catch people out. As if you're setting traps for them by asking trick questions. It's a very old fashioned way of thinking, and the idea that you can't provide information to people, because they will cheat. It's not a memory test and that’s okay. It's very rare that you are instantly, in library work, anyway, put on the spot with a question where you have to answer immediately without any time to prep or anything. It's an odd thing.

KBL Helen: I think the other part is that if I stayed in my previous role, I don't think we had a problem within the library, but, and this is something something I will advocate for everybody, is that gap between having the interview and being told the result. I applied for some jobs over the summer, and the difference in that has been the most stressful, almost, because it's totally out of your control.Why don't people just say, for example, “We're talking to finance.” So someone I know was successful in a job but had to wait a week because the library director was discussing with Finance what the budget was because they wanted to go higher up scale, but didn't communicate that. She was crying, she thought she hadn’t got the job, she thought she’d done really well at the interview. The question is “What are you gaining?” She really wanted the job, but she could've talked herself out of it, and you could lose a great candidate. That’s the last part, it’s all part of the chain, just tell people where they are and if you're the second and that’s why there’s a delay just tell people.

FLJ Kirsten: I think that's a big thing and I think often people will read into it because you kind of know that the person who's successful is probably being told. The longer you get silence the the less optimistic you feel. I've been in a situation where I wasn't told. I knew what day the interviews were on. I was the backup candidate, but they didn't tell me that. I knew the interviews were on the Thursday. They told me I'd find out if I had an interview on the Thursday, and I was like “How? I have work! How are you expecting this to work?” Then I got a really sweet email from the hiring manager later, saying, “You were a really good candidate. We had an incredibly strong pool. I'm really sorry.” It was clearly the bureaucratic system causing the problem. Individuals within the system do care and were aware it was difficult, and were being respectful and taking that time. 

FLJ Darren: I think one of the themes that comes through this is about being human and being a person and treating people like humans, not cogs. One of the things I think I've had is you’ve got HR and they have a really really important functional role. They have a role in this which is to make sure contracts are issued, make sure that the salary scale is agreed, send out all the official stuff. I think sometimes there’s this temptation think “Oh, well, HR tell people whether they've been successful or unsuccessful”

and they'll do that through ticking boxes which then sends out an automated email. Just because they are sending that doesn't mean that you can't give people a ring or send them that email. To say to them [candidates], “You’ll hear this from HR, but I wanted to let you know personally”. Often you’ll get this as a successful applicant but not as an unsuccessful applicant and I think about who really needs that more sensitive hand holding.

I learned from my manager, the last question is “How do you want to be contacted? Do you want a phone call? Do you want an email? Do you want your feedback straight away or later?” I will say “I've got feedback for you, let me know when you want it” and little things like that that can make a big difference. If I'm expecting a phone call from somebody, that means that I'm looking at my phone every half an hour for the next 3 or 4 days, and that's a nightmare, and every missed call, which is probably actually a nuisance call about a car accident that I didn't have. 

KBL Helen: Totally agree. Yeah, we'll get there. As you say it's about putting the human side in and putting yourself in the shoes of the people who are applying, and I think it's easy to just get HR to send that email. It’s an easy thing to do, but you can also maybe get HR to send out a bit more information like the number of times you have second or third choices who are really good. You might want to say to them “Look, please apply again” or “We have this job coming up” and you have to be careful because you can’t promise anything. I had a recruitment consultant and he said “Oh I wanted to tell you over the phone you were unsuccessful.” and I was like “No, no, I wanted that in an email. I didn't want that conversation.” As you say it’s up to the individual another person might want that feedback over the phone. That might be how they want to receive it.

I also always say to people when they're waiting, I'm like, “Remember, it's the most important thing in your world at the moment. It's not the most important thing to the person recruiting.” And that's not actually okay.

…it's about putting the human side in and putting yourself in the shoes of the people who are applying

KBL Helen: We sort of touched on my next question, but I'll ask it anyway. How do you perceive the role of kindness and recruitment practices? Are there any library specific challenges or opportunities that you think particularly call for a kindness approach?

FLJ Kirsten: One of the the challenges can be where there are, and it depends on the workplace and the role,  with entry level roles I think there can be a really high level of candidates and therefore there’s a limit to the number of people you can see, so how to do that fairly is very difficult.

If you are at the point where you're applying to lots of entry or level roles you're likely to be experiencing quite a lot of rejections, and sometimes rejections where it's not that you weren’t good enough it was just there were five people that could have done the job and one nudged out. It’s a hard situation for anyone to be in. So, firstly recognising that that’s really stressful and hard and therefore thinking about how you, inevitably employers are going to have to reject people, but thinking about doing that in the kindest possible way. That touches on everything you’ve just been talking about Helen. So, how would they want the decision to be communicated? 

I think offering feedback is a big one, because often if people are rejected and don't know why, that can be really difficult. In terms of having a better chance next time, having doubts about what happened, if something happened that shouldn’t have happened, whether there was some discrimination there. If you don’t know why you’ve been rejected you don’t know. Providing meaningful feedback is part of that. We talk about being transparent and upfront, genuinely how people will be assessed so people can tell whether they’ve got a good chance or not.

In terms of opportunities I think there is, kind of culturally, though I don’t want to do the whole “Oh librarians, they’re such lovely people” because they are but also…. well often libraries or library departments that are within bigger organisations are to some extent values driven, or at least theoretically, and therefore that kindness - there will some kind of institutional KPI around diversity that can then be kind of leveraged and also the idea about caring about reputation as well because within the library community that's another potential driver.

FLJ Darren: We talk about in our manifesto these three core principles being transparency, equity and respect and I think these are specific ways of being kind. It can sound a bit agro’ when we use them but I do think it’s about being kind to people, because it’s about taking the time to think about everyone’s needs.

The other bit of your work Helen, the braveness bit, there are challenges in braveness when it comes to recruitment practice. I think that there is a culture in libraries, particularly in academic libraries, of being sort of small c conservative about things. People don't like to be the first place to do something a lot of the time, unless there is somebody quite senior who’s driving it, and they make it something they do. People tend to prefer to let somebody else be first and then copy it, which can be really good if there is somebody doing that, but can make it quite difficult if there isn't - so that’s a challenge. Some people who will push forward a lot of this stuff haven't made it to the levels of, say, management yet where they have the clout to make things happen, and I think that's an opportunity eventually, if they can get there that it can drive forward more change, because they'll have that lived experience that that will make them want to do that.

At the moment I think it's quite difficult to make that happen as it stands. There is an issue with braveness in libraries and often as a sector we can be a bit passive sometimes and when somebody says “Oh wait, HR say we can’t do that” just just accept that and don’t push back and say “Well, why not?” To interrogate that a little bit more, and sometimes we can be a bit fearful of pushing for what we want sometimes, because, yeah, we don't want to upset HR or another department that doesn’t do this already. 

FLJ Kirsten: I think I’d add to that one of the challenges is libraries are sort of one sector but also sit in lots of different sectors so there can be specific challenges in specific sectors like workplace cultures and institutional barriers, so the NHS for example. The stuff around pay bands is always based on the Agenda for Change and there’s going to be less scope for individual managers to change that. Universally the NHS does some things very well like show the salary, whereas, law firms don’t because of how lawyers are recruited so that can be part of the challenge as well. 

FLJ Darren:  What are some areas in the library world that you think would particularly benefit from a kindness or braveness perspective? Are there any problematic areas? 

KBL Helen: Leadership. I think it’s absolutely leadership. I don’t think, bravery is always valued by leaders at the top. There’s about a handful of us who are a few years ahead of you and we were able to get in and push, but we are also sometimes looked at by our peers as being a bit mouthy, you know, rocking the boat. 

“I think people are kind, but over the years people haven’t been brave. We’re looking at 30, 40, 50 years, of a lack of bravery in our leadership, and that means there are systemic behaviours  going on that are not tackled.”

However, to be fair I think people are kind, but over the years people haven’t been brave. We’re looking at 30, 40, 50 years, of a lack of bravery in our leadership, and that means there are systemic behaviours  going on that are not tackled. That are going on. There's systemic things to do with, for example, recruitment where people say “Well, that's just how we've always done it. Why would we change it?” The problem is we need to tackle it all and we need to be brave and tackle an awful lot of things, and part of that is allowing people to voice their concerns. I think, as leaders, we need to be brave, and this is what I hope to empower people to do. It might be the aspiring leaders that I'm really working with, but really equipping people in a way to be brave.

When I'm brave, in my old role, and I'm asking my team to be brave, for example, doing recruitment. We're all brave. We're all doing it. That wasn't really rocking boats elsewhere, but there's other things that I then need other people above me to be brave for. Often, if we're thinking about psychological safety, for example, these people don't have the skin in the game. They're like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, we've got your back”, but they're not there, and they're not at the forefront, and they're not doing it. Eventually people have to decide; are they brave enough to rock the boat and to change systems they've succeeded in as well. I think this is something that comes up, for example, with the working from home and post covid ways of working. Actually, the people who are calling for everybody to be working in offices are people who have succeeded because of that. That then really narrows it down. We've got to be really brave in pushing back, and not everyone is. Not everyone's prepared to put their head above the parapet, not everyone's prepared to have those conversations. If you’re not connected through things like Twitter and LinkedIn and part of those networks you may also feel that you’re on your own. How do we as a library world, that people might be, as you say, working in law firms and be a sole librarian, how can we support them to know that actually what they’re saying is okay?

That's the thing I've realised that you're tugging at a bit of string and it's just unraveling a big ball of toxic behavior. It's gone on and on and on, and what you think is a little thing like sending interview questions out actually starts to shift stuff. It's about equipping people so they can find their voice. Even people in their first entry level job, allow people to have those voices, and that will help people be braver as they go up. It’s a big thing and it’s a big thing to tackle the difficult things. People have said to me, like when we took away qualifications on job descriptions, “But I worked hard for my degree” and you did, but did you need it? Do you really need it? Or do we actually need people who are really good at customer service? Or do we need, for example, a site manager, do we need someone really good at running a site?  That might be somebody who's worked in retail for the last 20 years and never gone to university. That will be the person who actually transforms what we're doing.Let’s try and recruit them. It doesn’t mean your MA is worthless, but is it the thing that’s going to get you a job? Some of it is also looking at the Masters and how do we make them more valuable? I was looking at a couple recently and they don’t have leadership in there. They don’t have management skills. How are we supposed to get people to feel confident, to feel networked? How are we supposed to get the best leaders up to the top if we're not even giving people the option to think of it as a career path?

The other part of that, to do with leadership, is people get promoted a lot beyond their capabilities. For example they’re a very good cataloger and they become a manager, and then they become a leader. Then they go for a library director post, but it might be they're seen as a safe pair of hands. They fit the library stereotype, you know all of that, but actually they're not a very good leader. The best leader might be, like I say the person who's never been to university, got no qualifications, but absolutely will bring their people with them, and will make really good change for their users as well as their workplace, and so on. We need different pathways as well. We need leadership pathways, but also pathways where the only way to move forward isn't necessarily to manage people that there needs to be some value in the other parts of our jobs. If we can find that then we'll have highly paid people doing library jobs that are library jobs and highly paid people doing leadership jobs who are good leaders. So good librarians don’t necessarily have to go into leadership when it's not really their thing.

I truly believe in the power of aligning roles with individual strengths for the overall well-being of an organisation. When people are in positions that harness their unique abilities and strengths, it not only benefits them but also has a positive impact on everyone around them. I've noticed that some library directors may find certain aspects of their roles challenging, particularly when it comes to public speaking and advocacy. Given the evolving landscape of library services, it's crucial for directors to be well-equipped in these areas. There's always room for growth, and that's where specialised training can make a difference. I'd be delighted to offer my expertise to help current and aspiring directors become more effective advocates for change!

FLJ Darren: I was having a conversation with someone just today about that very thing. They want to progress, but they don’t want to go into management. Then you’re stuck. I moved into a management role. I really enjoy it, it’s really good and I like the problem-solving element of it, but I do miss the frontline stuff a lot. I really miss doing that aspect of the job. Fortunately, because I work in a relatively small institution, I still get to do it. Yet you're promoted on the basis of having been a good librarian and move on from there.  

KBL Helen: And obviously some of us are good at that, but yeah there are a lot of people where it's not their skill set. It also may be the wrong organisation, and people get promoted internally and actually they would thrive in a different type of organisation, maybe smaller, maybe flatter.

FLJ Darren: On that point about bravery as well I think there is an element, maybe it's part of the makeup of libraries or librarians, or people that work there, of perfectionism as well. About not wanting to be brave and to try new things until you know that it's absolutely, one hundred percent gonna work and there's gonna be no problems. Or we can't change this about recruitment because I'm not able to change this other thing. Well, you work with what you can. I sort of see it in my research side of my role; how many times do I see people say “we've run a pilot project of this”, and we've run this, and it's this very limited thing. I sense sometimes that there is a bit of a fear to really jump into something.  Because of fear,  sometimes rightly, of fear about blame, about what that feels like, or if you do that one thing wrong, they're just gonna abolish the library completely, and it will be gone forever if you make a mistake. I get an element that there can sometimes be a blame culture, because when you attempt to say “I want to try this thing” you get that conversation of “Oh, we tried that 10 years ago, and it was a disaster”. It goes down in the history of the institution about when you tried to do something and it didn't work so you can't ever do it again and the fear of blame that that brings.

KBL Helen: That goes back to that psychological safety. We talk about it, but actually, are people able to do it because in the end it’s down to the people at the top to do it? Institutional memories are horrific for a lot of things, because people don't move, either. I think that's the other thing, a lot of people stay in an organisation for a long time  and that then brings that “Well, we tried that 10 years ago”, you know different time, different places, different people.

One of my goals is trying to help leaders and teams see the safety in failure. Fail well and sometimes failing small is better than failing massively. I saw it a lot when I closed the library for Covid, which was absolutely the right thing to do, but a lot of my peers weren't doing it. So I wrote a blog post about it and some of my peers got in touch, and they were like “I want to do this. I want to go and have these conversations with my Vice Chancellor. It's the right thing to do. We do need to close, but how do I do it?” And we have a chat. Other peers, I heard from people closer to the ground that their library directors were saying things to them like, “Yeah, but you don't understand. I've got my seat at the table. I might lose it.” I know someone who did raise and did use my blogpost for raising it and he was basically ignored by the Chief Operating Officer for six months. He was brave and willing to put his head on the line, but other people were looking after themselves a bit.

I did a lot of research into the barriers for compassion and one of them is as people get higher up organisations, are they getting more selfish? Actually, to get higher do you often have to put yourself first? And when push comes to shove are you prepared to risk your status for the greater good? Obviously there's things that you would not risk. Most of us will go “Yeah, I need to pay my mortgage or my rent”, but there are times like “there’s a global pandemic and we’re in central London. Actually, no, I'm not asking my staff to come in.” There were times when I was prepared to do it. I was fine. Westminster was behind me. I just happened to be the first person who said anything. It is about being prepared to have those conversations, and being prepared to sometimes forget about yourself. Remember, your privilege is that you are at that table already. It is tricky though. 

 So yeah, it's tricky, though.

Part 2 (originally published 4 November 2024)

TheKindBraveLeader (KBL) Helen: I’ll combine a few of my questions here. So what are the challenges? How can we encourage libraries and recruiters to communicate their values? And how do we encourage people to overcome their challenges and finally any success stories you want to share.

FairLibraryJobs (FLJ) Harriet: Kirsten and Darren have recruiting experience, but I haven’t had much time on the other side of the table. This might be slightly off topic, but something that I’m thinking about from this whole discussion is that FLJ want to embody being kind and brave as well. I think some people, especially when we started, saw us a bit like yeah we’re gonna yell at you and tell you off for poor practice and a lot of the time it’s more that we just want to raise it. Sometimes, until you say “This is not good practice” you think “Oh yeah, we've just been in this cycle for so long and it hasn’t really hasn't clicked with me.” I think there’s a lot of space we try and provide, and do provide, for people to respond to us in a way that’s like “Oh yeah, okay - we get it”. 

As well as thinking about being kind on the recruitment side when we go out and say these things like “You need to show the salary” and we have stuff to back this up with that comes from the manifesto of why showing the salary is so important. Some people don’t like that. Some people do react badly and they can do that in their own space and time and think about it. Push back can be a challenge to us and the work that we do but we’re not here wagging our finger trying to tell you off we’re just saying “You know what, this isn’t okay, for these reasons, and we need to do something about this”. We do get cases where people reply to us really positively and it’s really nice when people are human and open up and say “We’ve thought this too but HR will not move on this and we’re part of a huge organisation.” Then that’s us being kind responding and saying “We totally get it.”

And in regards to what you said before Helen, that no one is teaching leadership or management on these librarian courses. I didn’t do leadership. I went to Sheffield Uni around 2017 to do the Librarianship course and we did have a module on management. The thing is there were a lot of good things and modules I enjoyed at Sheffield and maybe this is everywhere, but it often feels like the good things are from an individual who is really pushing to do something amazing, it’s not part of the greater body. So when that person leaves, that module goes, or it’s different or all that amazing experience and talent goes. Yet, we did have a management module and I did that thing where I raised my head up because we were given a management text, and the text we were given in this room full of aspiring librarians was “If people don’t like change, make their current situation worse and force them to change”. That was in a business management textbook and we were given that as part of our reading. So I just said something along the lines of “Well this is garbage for so many reasons” and again there was that look from the lecturer like please don’t bring this up, we don’t have time for this, don’t talk about this. There were other confused faces and the atmosphere of well we’ve been given this text to read and this is what the lecture is and that hierarchical structure of things.

Maybe there needs to be something like ditch management and focus on leadership or be more critical of what’s going on because there’s always room to be critical about things in a healthy, brave, and kind way. 

FLJ Kirsten: I was going to share my favourite success story. One of the things we’ve heard that’s been the most meaningful to me is that someone cited our manifesto when they were applying for a job and needed to ask for accommodations for their disability for the interview. Maybe they would have been able to make that ask anyway and it would have gone through. Yet, the existence of our manifesto made them feel more confident to be able to do that and gave them an external back up, that this was a legitimate thing to ask for. Even if we’ve done this for just one person that really matters to me. That’s something I’m really proud of actually. 

FLJ Darren: On that point about communicating values and what that means because it’s important to us that we do that. I think when I’m recruiting, because I’ve had to do a fair amount over the past couple of years, one of the difficulties there is in expressing your values is that your values aren’t necessarily the same as your institution’s values. I have a particular set of values, what I’m interested in, what I care about, in libraries and in library work and I think they do align really well with my organisation and I was going to say that I’m very lucky in that regard. However, I don’t think it is luck because I actively chose here because I want to work here and I continue because of that. So that can be an issue. Are you talking about your values as a manager, or the values of your department or organisation? And what matters most? Probably, on a day to day basis, it’s about what your manager is like that really affects how your work life is.

One of the other things sometimes when we talk about values is it can be quite generic and quite fuzzy on what they actually mean. We’ve all seen that if you've worked in any kind of organisation you have a sort of strapline or mission statement that can often be a little banal in terms of what they actually mean and what they are saying about you. So I don’t think it’s very easy to do that and I don’t think it’s an obvious thing. When you are recruiting somebody and you want them to apply, you’re selling yourself. You do want to put a positive spin on things and you want people to apply, you don’t want to bad mouth your organisation, but sometimes I think what isn’t said can be quite telling as well. I’ve tended to ask a question like this at the end of an interview, which is “What is really important to you as an organisation?” It can be quite telling about what people day in response to that and did they seem surprised by being asked that sort of question? Do they just talk about the student experience or collections or what the library environment is like? Do they mention they’re a good place to work and people are happy there? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Do they talk about how people interact together in that workplace, is it close, is it at a distance, is it really professional or a more relaxed environment?

I think that’s how you can get values across, but you almost need to be asked about it.

KBL Helen: I once asked at an interview how they looked after people's work life balance, and they laughed at me and said, “I don't know because we don't have any.” I didn't take the job.

FLJ Darren: That’s a total flip because how many time have we been asked “How do you manage your time or your diary? How do you manage multiple work streams at the same time?” Maybe that’s a flip to say “Well, what do you do? How do you make sure that I get to leave at 5 o’clock when I should be leaving and don’t work past my hours?”

KBL Helen: For me, that’s really important. I’m a really big believer in boundaries as part of your well-being. This was a few years ago so hopefully things have changed a bit. I also once asked “How would people see success in this job?” and basically the answer they gave me was “Someone who would do my job (the manager’s) when I’m not here” and I was like “That’s not really what I was looking for.” That’s probably the other thing, to equip people with good questions to ask at the end of interviews. We’re exchanging some here, but if you’re new to the sector these could be useful.

FLJ Harriet: What do you find the most challenging aspect of the Kind Brave Leader so far? Have you met much resistance in your journey?

KBL Helen: Interestingly, yes I have. Robin Banerjee, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global and Civic Engagement, and Professor of Developmental Psychology where I did my PG Cert, says something along the lines of “By making kindness your mission You are making yourself a hostage to fortune.” Saying you’re kind means people expect you to be almost above everybody like I have to be kind all the time. So kind that I'm almost some sort of Biblical figure of kindness. Actually, it's still a journey for me. I can recognise it. I understand it. Yet, a big part of my kindness is uncovering those difficult things and challenging them. Then the problem is if you're challenging, people think you're not being kind because you're not being nice, maybe, but you are being kind, because for me it's quite, almost strategic. We have to uncover why this is happening because otherwise we'll never get to a place where well-being is good and kindness is good, and that's definitely the brave part of it. People have thrown it back at me for things like flexible working requests. For instance, if someone were to ask for an extreme level of flexibility that would jeopardise the operations or the well-being of others—like working just 5 minutes a day —that's where the conversation needs to be redirected. It's not about dismissing their needs, but about finding a compromise that considers the collective well-being and operational requirements. I have to think of the well-being of everybody, and if you're just doing 5 minutes one day it's not going to be very good for everyone's well-being. That's an extreme example, it isn't what people ask for, but it's trying to navigate things like that.

The hardest thing about kind leadership is navigating the fairness with the kindness, because you need to try to make things fair for people, and that sometimes means actually being quite… not unkind. You’re going to do it in a kind way, but sometimes it means saying no. I think clarity is really kind and sometimes being really clear could also challenge people. 

I've had to be more resilient in it myself. I’ve had to learn to go “No, that’s a them problem, that’s their thing that I can’t deal with'. That's for them to deal with, why they’re upset about whatever it is”. So yes it can be weaponised and it’s tricky because sometimes you are going to take that personally as it’s such a core value. Now I have such a deep understanding of it, it’s almost like “I’ve got to have this difficult conversation with you and that is the compassionate thing to do'', but they say “You’re not being kind”, except I am it’s just I’m actually asking you to do some work or I’m challenging some kind of behaviour or something.

That has been the challenge. The throwing it back at me. I promise I am being kind. I am doing my best. Oh and the psychological safety, I think that's been a challenge. Building that in and trying to have people’s backs and trying to make sure people have my back when I’m doing these things.

FLJ Darren: I'd like to follow up on that because when you talk about kindness and well-being at work, I know from talking to you, I'm reading this stuff that you've written about, I know what that actually means. Do you ever find that people think that you mean doing ten-minute Yoga Sessions, or something like that. Or that kind of almost performative well-being because what you're talking about has a lot more depth for me than what I often see when the word well-being is thrown about in organisational settings. How do you experience that? And how do you push back against that?

KBL Helen: It's interesting, because sometimes some of what I'm saying is a bit mindfulness will help people. It's proven that people who practise mindfulness are likely to be more compassionate so there's a place for it, but that's not the reason people put it into well-being programs. It’s is definitely something that I struggle with. It's almost like wellness as opposed to well-being. That’s something I really want to advocate for is how we can get a deeper understanding of it across the profession and across our education, and the world. Also, how can I? I’m working on a blog post on it at the moment, but how can we get it so that people advocate upwards for that deeper well being because it is challenging some really endemic things. You're finding this with the recruitment and the impact, as Kirsten said about the impact of it on well-being is, you've got to ask some difficult things along the way. People have said to me  “Well, I understand well-being”, and it's like “Do you?” So someone might send emails out of hours and yeah you might have something in your footer that says that you send it now and don’t expect a response, but the person receiving it, because you’re in a position of power, thinks they have to act on it now. That unravels a whole load of well-being. Trying to get leaders to model the behaviour is a big part of my agenda. Realising that sometimes things like, for example, I've designed a management training leadership course, but part of how I think it would work is by getting a group of people working in the same organisation to band together. It’s as much about them learning about management as them learning the same language and learning that they understand each other, and they understand each other's strengths. For example, it might be, I have no attention to detail. If I'm working in a team and people understand that actually, if something's really detailed, I need someone else to have really read it, but other people love that. That's their strength to go down into the detail. Also I've got another strength that they might not have. It’s starting to understand each other better is also a big part of well-being. I just want people to understand it deeply.

KBL Helen: Where do you see FLJ in the next five years? What are your long-term goals, and how can individuals or organisations collaborate with you or support FLJ in its aims?

FLJ Kirsten: Five years seems a really long time cos we’ve been going almost two years.

KBL Helen: You’ve done a lot in two years!

FLJ Kirsten: We have mainly used Twitter, now X, and that’s not gonna be there in five years. Probably. Who knows? My ideal would be that we continue to campaign and adapt the manifesto. We’ve built off the work of FMJ [Fair Museum Jobs] and we built off our own personal experience, but moving towards a more evidence-based approach, and in the broadest possible way, not necessarily formal research, talking to people and learning more about their experiences. Thinking about the research that’s coming out of the Neurospicy Libraries Project and being able to consider those kind of viewpoints, and where we might want to go next, and where our current gaps are. I think it would be really nice to be, as we're currently doing, doing more championing of best practice. I think there's a lot of stuff where people are like “We’ve talked about it” but they’re not quite brave enough to say push back to HR. Also encouraging people where they’ve provided, for example, questions in advance and write that up and having tool kits for positive change. That would be really nice. Though that’s us kind of signposting to things other people have produced.

In terms of long term goals there's also an element of some success we’re not going to see. I do think there’s been a cultural change with fairness in recruitment and it has become quite a big discussion point. ALN had an event on it. Organisations are going through internal processes to look at it. It's kind of impossible to know how much credit we can take for that. So coming to a new workplace, they’ve got an inclusive recruitment strand in their EDI project and that kind of stuff I would have never have known about if I wasn’t working here. So hopefully there’s less stuff we have to call out that’s just obviously bad and more really innovative, positive, things. Realistically, there’s always going to be stuff that's not great.

What I’d also like to do is continue collaboration across sectors and particularly there are certain places where university libraries are kind of spearheading positive recruitment practices within a university that could potentially be adapted. As an academic library member of UCU there are all kinds of precarity and issues. I think there is scope there in the academic sector to really be looking at recruitment as well. Obviously no one's got the energy for it, because they're in the UCU. That would be really nice as well.

Oh and Fair Publishing Roles popped up, it’s been a bit quiet, but it would be really nice to see other sectors and the fair jobs family expand.

FLJ Harriet: So my answer was gonna be different in that wouldn’t it be nice if we didn't have to exist! Wouldn’t that be nice! Obviously, everything's not gonna get sorted, but in a similar vein to what Kirsten was saying, wouldn’t it be nice to not have to call out the basics. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to a point where putting the salary on the job advert is just as normal as putting words, like the job title, like anything. And that we could do more in different areas. We have had lots of feedback from people that what we do is important across the board. You could apply our manifesto to so many other areas. It would be nice to see the Fair Jobs group expand, it would be nice to see things become completely outdated not to list salary, or working hours, or whatever. It would be nice to evolve to that point. 

FLJ Darren: Yeah, I do agree. It would be  nice not to have to do the basics and not have to remind people about those.  I guess the only things I would add are there were a lot of jobs that came through last year. It was a bumper year for library recruitment. There were lots of jobs out there, which inevitably meant we had a lot more to talk about. It comes in waves as well over the years. At the moment there isn’t as many. Some things I think we are seeing less of, and that's good. I do hope that that gives us a bit more scope to do other things.

We started this campaign off with our manifesto and I think we’re all in agreement; the manifesto covers a minimum of what we think should be there and then anything you do beyond that is great, and we love that, like Kirsten and Harriet were saying it would be great if we can do that other stuff.

Personally, I’d  be really interested in stuff to do with qualifications and not just the library qualification. I wrote in a couple of blog posts (Part 1 and Part 2) before about how we treat vocational qualifications versus academic ones, cos we often just ask for A levels as if that's the only thing that exists. I’m interested that the apprenticeship is coming out soon, and people have been talking about this for a long time. I'm really keen to to see how that works and if people are gonna treat it as comparable to all the other sorts of qualifications.

We've been looking at, well I haven’t been Kirsten has, things around employment of people with criminal records and what work could be going on in that area.

Also onboarding and sort of induction processes. We don't touch anything like that at the moment, and it's such an important thing. I’d be really keen to see what people are doing to make that a good process for people because that is such a high stress time. I’ve had to do a few of them and I know I could improve my practice.  I'd really like to see what other people are doing as well.  So I think there's lots of areas that we're interested in, that are linked to what we're doing, that I think it'd be good to be able to share experiences or do our own research. Five years sounds really exciting, but when I think we’ve been around two years that has flown by. Maybe five years isn’t so long!

FLJ Kirsten: It’s coming up for two. I think our first meeting was November and we officially launched in January.

KBL Helen: I mean that’s a big impact you’ve had in that time isn’t it? Speaking with other library directors you also have impacted at the top. I’ve heard people say “Oh I didn’t want it called out. I made sure that job was alright.” You’re doing that in a nice way.

We shared the manifesto at Westminster and what I found quite interesting is it’s almost like a language. Some people took it, they understood it, and I never had to worry what they were putting out, because I knew it clicked with them and they understood it. But I knew other people who were like “Yeah, yeah, I’ve read that” then I would see a job, even adverts possibly, go out if I wasn’t around. I’d be like “No, no, you haven’t read it” and I think that’s something to bear in mind isn’t it? We need to sort of almost get the language with everything we’re talking about across. Just revisit it. You’re not going to understand it all the time, you’re not going to remember everything about it. 

FLJ Darren:  I think it’s sometimes remembering that, you know we put in descriptions and spent a lot of time at the start writing that and not just having a set of “You must do this” but explaining what the reasoning behind this was.

When we raise things about adverts that we see, the classic example is it’s a part time job and you’ve not said what the days and hours are. You’ve said it’s twenty two hours a week, but you haven’t indicated the days. Are they spread over three or four or five days? Is it mornings? Afternoons? And often it’s a high likelihood for that role, so if it’s a customer service role, you’re probably rota-ed. You probably know exactly what the rota is for that person, but you’ve not included it. And yes somebody can email and ask. That often then means they have to talk about, you know, “I’m a single mother, I’ve got 2 children. I have to do school drop offs.” There’s always that risk that you don’t know who you’re sharing this information with. They could be thinking “Ah that’s a problem person, that person isn’t going to be able to do it”. They might not, but you are having to expose people to that. Something simple like stating “It’s to be agreed” or stating the hours and days saves people that time and energy and effort of doing that. It takes away some of that risk.  

What we tried to do with the manifesto is say well, this is the reason behind this; there’s a human behind this. If you just see it as a bullet point it’s just another thing to do. Sometimes it’s that empathy and not that people don’t care or are heartless but really like what would it be like if you were in that situation, you were applying for a job and you didn’t know this?
Also, managers are more likely to be male, less likely to have caring responsibilities, they're also far more likely to work full time and not have to face those same issues.

FLJ Kirsten: Sorry to go back to the question of where we’d like to be in five years time, kind of flippantly, I’d like someone to be paying for the work. Paying for the work to improve recruitment. I don’t necessarily mean giving us money, although that would be nice, I mean meaningfully investing resources in those processes. I think there is a general issue that equality, diversity and inclusion work is done by the people who care about it and who are often marginalised themselves. Then it can be an extra burden of work. We know this. It would be really great to see more organisations saying “Okay we need expertise in this and we need to pay someone” or to invest in training for our workforce or support collaborative efforts. So yes, meaningfully put resources behind it.

In some ways, you know, we have a nice time, we’ve got time to do it, but actually like Harriet says about not wanting to exist, running any voluntary organisation for seven years on the trot there’s a real risk of burnout.

KBL Helen: Yep, definitely. I don’t want to be having to mentor you through some burnout. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about paying for stuff. There’s a real problem with valuing people’s time and I think that’s a library problem. We're very collaborative and quite good at doing things, but sometimes when you say things like, for example, at conferences “Yeah, we should play them.” and the response is “But they’re only giving up an hour of their time.” However, they’ve had time to think about and do this or at least give them the chance to say.

FLJ Darren: I think sometimes, I won't name names, there's been some organisations as well that have sought to engage with us without having done the bare minimum of work themselves as well. We've sometimes got requests of “Oh, could you talk us through your manifesto? Can you talk us through X, Y, Z and how we can improve our processes?” Well, here’s the link. It’s there. It sets out what we think. Come back to us with specific questions or issues, or things you agree with and feel really passionately about or disagree with. Kirsten, I don’t know how you’ve felt about that? There’s a bit of me that’s always like “Oh you want me to talk to you? Yay! Okay I’ll do that.” 

FLJ Kirsten: We are really keen for people to engage with us. We love talking about this, but also as Darren says, it needs to be reciprocal. We don’t want to go in if they haven’t shown enough effort that we can be in good faith and that it will result in action, well that’s a waste of our time. 

FLJ Darren: Our last question is the flip of this. What are the next steps for you Helen and The Kind Brave Leader? 

KBL Helen: So I’ve gone freelance so I can go out and advocate, but also train. I think what I’ve realised is what I need to do to really make a difference, people need to pay me for it following on from our conversation, is I can make a difference to organisations, to teams, to individuals about how they can be braver and they can kinder and improve the well-being of their teams, everybody, and users to an extent. It’s obvious if you have a happy team you’ll have happy users. There’s going to be a connection. I feel like there’s a few things I can offer. I can offer management training, I can offer teamwork, I can do bespoke things or bigger things. The first thing I’m going to do on Monday is launch the empowerment element, which is an email that’s going to go to everyone’s email boxes, well if you’re a paid subscriber, each day for 30 days. It’ll contain positive affirmations, reflections and a workbook about reflecting. That’s just to start me off, in the long term I want to do things around resilience. So people can access it individually and sign up for a course on resilience.

Resilience is really interesting because it’s really important that we have resilient teams, but resilience can be weaponized. I’ve heard people say “Oh you’re not resilient. That’s why this is getting to you” and no, actually, you are resilient. You’ve done everything, but actually this is a shit situation you’re in. We’ll make this less sweary. Part of resilience training is to help people understand that sometimes it’s not them. They are resilient. They’ve got all the tools, but actually sometimes things are beyond any level of resilience training. Boundary workshops as well I’m going to work on. I’m trying to put some wellbeing stuff and training things together and hopefully get out there. I’m going to do a coaching qualification and a strengthscope accreditation. So that I can go in and get organisations to think about their strengths and also think about that systems approach. So you take away the individuals almost. You are still looking at individuals, but what is going wrong with the systems? This links up with your work because it’s not necessarily individuals who are being unkind or anything like that. It’s that the systems aren’t working for them or the wider organisation. There are all sorts of different ways of looking at the interactions between people and some things will involve them, some coaching, maybe for someone, and it might be some training for someone. However, quite often, it's about sitting down and having conversations and working out what those connections are with people.

To sum it up, it is to help leaders and aspiring leaders create kind, well, and brave workplaces. I should almost add the well-being there. But I’m not going to become a yoga teacher, but I do know a very good one that I can provide!