Potential for Leadership

When I began my journey in the MLIS program I would not have considered myself a leader. That is because at the time I believed that as a leader you were the person who did everything and that just did not sound very appealing to me if I am being honest. Now that I am ending that journey, I do not feel the same way. I now know, because of the courses I have taken and opportunities I have had, that being a leader is a lot more than being the person who does everything.

One course specifically – Management in Information Organizations – taught me that being a leader means getting to know the people whom you are leading. By knowing who you are leading you can make everyone's jobs easier in the long run. This is because you know how to communicate and delegate appropriately. I have already and will continue to apply that information to real-world settings in which I am in charge. I am currently the supervisor of two full-time staff members. Once I started to ask them questions about how they like to communicate and which tasks they feel like they struggle and succeed in I was able to shift the way I was communicating and assigning tasks. It has only been a few months since the change and my department already is showing improvements in morale and work completed. I will continue to be flexible and observant in the leadership role I will have in the future because of this.

I also would like to be someone that others can come to when they need help in processes that I am familiar with. One of my most profound professional accomplishments thus far is assisting in the implementation process of one ILS to another at the library where I work. At the time of the implementation, I was the circulation manager and I was tasked with assuring that all circulation functions (check-in, check-out, patron notices, etc..) functioned properly. In the future, I would like to help lead others through the process. I feel as if it would be a waste of experience if I could not use my knowledge to make someone's job easier. Another opportunity I was given recently was to be on the conference planning committee for the 2024 OLA conference. As the student representative, I was someone that others could ask for help on small tasks but I was also assigned the task of creating the conference programs. I had the freedom to create them however I wanted and that was a bit daunting since I am not a designer in any form. Once the conference had ended I felt a sense of gratitude that I was allowed to even be a part of the committee. In the future, I would love to continue to be active in OLA but to also help other MLIS students find ways to be active members.

Most importantly in the future, I want to be someone that leads by example. Some of the best leaders I have witnessed in my career so far have possessed a lot of amazing qualities that I hope to share one day. They have been confident, resilient, flexible, decisive, and humble. I hope to be able to show others that sometimes the best way you can lead people is by showing them that you never really stop learning and that sometimes as a leader you fail. The most influential leaders in my life are those who have failed, acknowledged that they failed, and let that be a lesson rather than a barrier.