Webinars on Demand List

Creating More Joy & Resilience in the Library

Considerable research shows that those with more joy, laughter, and well-being in their life are more resilient, productive and effective at work, and they live more fulfilling lives. This session is designed to increase fun, creativity, and joy. It also distinguishes between long-term well-being and toxic positivity. Through stories, activities, and experimentation, participants will learn the research and strategies to increase happiness and well-being within themselves, within the library culture, and with others. You'll walk away with practical ideas for well-being in the workplace and in your own life.

Outcomes: After this workshop, participants will have:

• an increased knowledge of the research on positive psychology

• experiences with techniques proven to increase joy

• a plan to use techniques to increase joy and well-being in themselves

• Ideas for spreading these techniques in the library and the community

Up or Out: Smarter Ways to Get Library Employees Back on Track, or End the Ride

Perhaps the most difficult task for a library supervisor or manager is dealing with employee behavioral problems in a respectful, legal, and timely fashion. Maybe it’s a new employee still in the probationary period that is not living up to their great resume and interview. Maybe the person is a good employee who has slipped into sloppy habits, such as arriving late and gossiping at service desks.

Maybe the problem behaviors are difficult to pin down, such as a tone of voice or nonverbal behaviors. Or maybe a longtime employee’s bad behaviors were disregarded by previous supervisors and can no longer be ignored.

The good news is that there are time-tested systems for anticipating problems, keeping employees on track, and handling difficult conversations. Documentation, precise communication, and setting agreements with deadlines and consequences are key to successful outcomes, including, if necessary, a parting of ways.

Learn how to reduce the drama for both employees and supervisors and address specific issues before they become serious.

Takeaways:

•Hire for emotional maturity and the right skill sets.

•Ensure workplace and individual job expectations are communicated and understood.

•Make feedback concrete and specific.

•Plan and practice for employee meetings to ensure feedback is unambiguous, with deadlines and consequences.

Yikes! Communication Apprehension is Everywhere! Navigating Leadership and Work

Through this workshop, we will examine how communication apprehension is a phenomenon impacting the library workplace. Together, we will examine how communication apprehension is associated with either real or anticipated one-on-one or group communication. During our time together, we will work on developing an understanding of the types of communication apprehension and gain insight into strategies for managing communication anxiety. Rather than seeking to eliminate your communication apprehension, we will focus on developing transferable skills, including your communication competency as a team member and leader in the library.

Leave with ways to:

• Understand communication apprehension as a leader and team member.
• Apply communication apprehension knowledge to library settings.
• Increase communication skills and reduce communication apprehension.

Mental Health: How Libraries Can Empower Themselves to Respond

Libraries have become mental health hubs among their communities, encountering a diverse range of patrons from mild to serious mental illness. While interactions can range from well-intentioned engagements to incidents involving aggression or violence, a traditional library education does not formally equip you with addressing their needs or reporting structures. Daily exposure without adequate training makes library staff feel unprepared. The integration of mental health training allows libraries to respond with compassion and understanding. Discover how to proactively enhance your readiness by recognizing mental health needs and integrating proper responses, fostering a healthier work environment. 

From this webinar, you will learn:

•    Understanding mental illness prevalence in libraries
•    How to equip yourself through skill development and identification
•    Develop strategies and training for patron sensitivity
•    Effective communication skills for collaborating patron needs

Community-Led Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Your strategic plan can be a powerful tool to rally staff at all levels around a shared direction. Or… it can sit gathering dust, entirely forgotten until it is time to write the next one. How can you make sure your library’s plan will stay vibrant? Centering community is the key. Learn how to orient your strategic planning process around community so that it can lead to meaningful progress towards inspiring shared goals.

After this webinar, you will:

• Understand how to conduct a community-led planning process

• Identify strategies for building your organization’s capacity to center community

• Develop a theory of change to take you from understanding to action

• Be aware of key models for implementing and evaluating organizational change

Mastering Uncomfortable Conversations with Library Visitors

More people are showing up at libraries AOA, meaning Angry on Arrival. Maybe they didn't want to wait in line to talk with a reference librarian during finals. Maybe they are ticked off because the event–which they did not buy tickets for–was sold out, and they were turned away at the door. Maybe they don't like your books, your programming, your services, or the art on the wall.

Maybe they don't like policies related to the pandemic, ones you have no control over. Maybe they have a cause or political position and won't be happy until the library leadership accepts all of their terms, unconditionally. Maybe they don't want to lower their voice, take their support peacock outside, stop yelling at other customers, stop cutting up magazines, stop hogging a terminal after timeout, or rein in their rampant young folks.

Starting with the assumption that most people are good people doing the best they know how. Topics include doing your homework (do you have the facts?), tweaking policies, improving your responses, how the library's physical environment can be a help or hindrance, and where to draw the line, plus some ways to de-escalate and lower the drama quotient.

Following this webinar, you will know how to:

• Better maintain a positive "performance state" regardless of the other person's behavior.
• Have more strategies and tactics to bring to your encounters with library visitors who are not  having a good day.
• Help create the environment in your library that lowers drama and supports positive staff and visitor interactions.

Librarian Evolution: Libraries Thrive When We Change

Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” It has never been a better time to be a librarian, if we recognize and act on our power to help the people in our communities make their lives better through learning and literacy. To do that, our identity, our education and our work must change.

Join Gina Millsap, CEO of the Library Journal/Gale 2016 Library of the Year, as she shares how librarians will evolve and lead their libraries to become essential assets in their communities.

Through this webinar you will learn:

• how to think differently about libraries and our role in our communities,
• the importance of BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), and
• how you can help your library and colleagues evolve.

Making Each Other Look Good: The Library Board and the Library Director

In an ideal world, board and director are on the same page regarding values, vision, and goals. All too often, that relationship breaks down. Communication fails among board members; expectations of the director are not conveyed or are conveyed poorly. The director fails to notify the board of key issues or projects. How can board members and directors build a stronger and more positive communication infrastructure? While this webinar focuses mostly on board and directors, any staff member interested in the larger dynamics of this relationship may find the session illuminating.

This webinar focuses on observable communication behaviors, appropriate roles, scopes of responsibility, library evaluation, board evaluations, and director evaluations.

From this webinar, you will learn:

• Communication behavior is both a predictor of successful performance, and can be observed and verified.
• Board, director and staff have distinct roles tied to both values and time frames.
• Boards evaluate director performance. Boards should also evaluate their own.

Positive Reinforcement: Motivation That Works for Library Workspaces

Most people work for more than just the money. They want to feel good about the job they do and how they are treated in their workplace. They want to be appreciated, which means more than a yearly acknowledgement at a staff day event or a card and a cake on their birthday. Neglected employees can become cynical and apathetic, and your better employees might leave, even when offered a raise.

Positive reinforcement is not the same as empty compliments. It’s a proven, three-step process – catch them, tell them, reinforce the good behavior – of focusing on an employee’s successes rather than their mistakes. It’s based on timely, sincere, and specific praise and gratitude and is the best method in the supervisor’s toolkit for improving productivity and workplace relationships.

Topics include how and when to use positive reinforcement, the better ratios for praise versus criticism, and when praise is not enough.

Following this webinar, you will know how to:

•    Improve the quality of interactions with library employees.
•    Apply positive reinforcement to relationships with library customers and co-workers.
•    Become more influential with leadership inside and outside of the library.

Sponsorship Advice and Ideas for Libraries

Want to start a new project but don’t have money in the library budget? A library sponsorship may be the answer. Libraries can be a place for public-private partnerships, although clear expectations should be in place. Carrie Rogers-Whitehead secured sponsorships from Google, Coca Cola and others during her time as a librarian, and now in her new role she’s on the other side as a sponsor. She’ll share practical tips, strategies and mistakes she made along the way.

Through this webinar, you will learn:

• What sponsors want from libraries
• How you can find sponsors
• What libraries can want from sponsors
• Preparing a pitch deck and different types of sponsorships
• Legal and financial considerations of sponsorships

Stress Management for Library Staff: Real Tools for Work and Life Balance

We certainly live in interesting times. Whether it’s from stress on or off the job, there is no shortage of situations, people, or conflicts that can attack your mind and body from the inside out. This 60-minute webinar session will provide you with strategies to help you cope with what’s on your “Bug List.”

Using the BREADS stress management tool, Dr. Steve Albrecht will discuss getting better balance, boundaries, and control. He’ll also conduct a brief focused relaxation exercise you can use later.

Learning Objectives for this webinar include:

• Is All Stress Bad For You?
• The Business Impact of Stress
• The Personal Side of Stress

• Mind & Body Reactions
• The BREADS Stress “Cure”: Breathing - Relaxation - Exercise - Attitude - Diet - Sleep
• A Focused Relaxation Technique
• Stress and Your Body
• Making Your Bug List
• The List of Seven Choices
• Cutting Out Toxic People

How to Write Effective Survey Questions to Get Useful Data

Is your library planning upcoming services, programs, or events? They'll be more successful if you know what sorts of things the people in your service area truly want and need. Great marketers and planners don’t guess what people want, and they don’t presume to already know. They ask!

Still, doing a “simple survey” isn’t all that simple. If you don’t know exactly how to write and ask the questions, you may find out later that you didn’t get any actionable data. Marketer and wordsmith Kathy Dempsey can prepare you to avoid survey pitfalls. Listen to learn these tactics:

• Every word you choose matters.
• Beware of open-ended questions.
• Always avoid library lingo.
• Never ask about “interest.”
• Write, test, tweak, repeat.
• What makes people take surveys?

This webinar will also touch on how to distribute surveys to get good response rates.