One of our profession’s most popular pastimes is beating up on the boss. Are library leaders just lousy at leadership and management, or is there something particularly anti-authority about people who work in libraryland? Maybe it’s time to show the boss a little love. Every librarian writer, whether a regular columnist, blogger, or just occasional essayist, thrives on readership. Among my past columns are a few quite popular reads, but most split between nice, meh, and who cares. The top-of-the-chart outliers are most always the ones where I take library leaders to the woodshed. A column on micromanagers ranked at the top of LJ’s most read articles for multiple weeks. It garnered more comments than just about anything else I’ve written. Excepting a few commenters who cynically claimed library workers were better off being micromanaged, the stories about horrific micromanaging bosses poured forth. The reaction makes it tempting to just churn out columns on everything that make library leaders awful bosses. Guaranteed readership.

Formula for Charting

Tapping into readers’ desire for content that confirms their existing biases could be a formula for future success. I’m planning more columns that would easily fulfill library workers’ passion for reading and commiserating about bad bosses. These future columns should secure my place at the top of LJ’s “most read article” chart:

• How to Survive Your Toxic Library Leader
• Top Ten Things Library Workers Hate About Their Bosses (listicles always do well so a listicle on bad bosses is a dream column)
• Why Every Library Leadership Workshop/Academy/Program is a Waste of Time That Fails to Turn Horrible Managers into Even Halfway Decent Leaders
• Just… All Library Bosses Are A-holes

In addition to generating plenty of comments, pro and con (well, mostly pro), that micromanaging column also inspired other librarians to speak out against their micromanaging bosses. Apparently this one generated quite a bit of discussion in the public library sector. Why? Is it something about this particular topic, micromanaging, that resonated so strongly with librarians or was it, as I believe, deep contact with the anti-administration raw nerve that permeates the American workplace? According to the Global State of the Workplace Report, half of all American workers have quit a job to escape the boss. Is the library workplace truly a morass of low morale, as this article would have us believe, or is there hope that our profession has its share of well-liked and possibly even beloved library leaders?

Another Core Value

If library leaders are truly as bad as the stories library workers share about them, then, as a profession, we need to take this problem seriously. Every profession and industry has its share of toxic leaders. Is it possible that librarianship is somehow even worse? The presence of toxicity in library organizations is certainly not the sole domain of its leaders and managers. Library staff are known to quit jobs just to get away from problem coworkers. Friction between staff and administration is a phenomenon that seems as much a part of this profession as any of its cherished core values. I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve worked at one time or another, no matter the library or my position. Is there a chance we can do better? We must, and it needs to start with our leadership.

Choose to Improve

Just as with self-awareness, leaders may think their current leadership style connects with staff, but they can be cluelessly unaware of how badly they may be failing to do so. Here are several suggestions for ways to start doing better:

• I’m calling on all library leaders and managers to read Zenger and Folkman’s “Are You Sure You’re Not a Bad Boss?” and check off the boxes for those “fatal flaws” that must be owned.
• Being a better boss means paying attention to what workers want. My second required read is “The Three Things Employees Really Want.” Delivering on these three, allowing greater autonomy, building a community of respect, and creating a workplace of purpose, give staff a reason to come to work and feel good about what they do and who they do it with.
• Though not without flaws, consider conducting a 360 review. It offers leaders and managers an opportunity to obtain direct, anonymous feedback from staff. A do-it-yourself review will require effort to identify good questions and establish the survey, but abundant resources for doing so are available on the Internet.
• Pay more attention to existing data on boss behaviors that lead to poor relations with employees. While it may be difficult to admit to faults that drive staff away, any leader or manager can make a commitment to avoid these behaviors (e.g., take credit for staff ideas; set confusing expectations).
• Humility goes a long way. Consider learning more about servant leadership and adopting some of its principles to give workers more ownership, autonomy, and responsibility.

One thing I feel comfortable generalizing about all bosses is that they can all get better in some way. Pick a flaw. Be honest and choose one thing to improve on in the next few months. Start somewhere. Avoiding the responsibility to continuously improve as a leader will only lead to more organizational dysfunction.

Empathy and Appreciation

Creating a better library organization starts with the leader, but staff have some responsibility here too. The problem, as I’ve experienced it, is that library workers have a tough time seeing how organizations work from a perspective other than their own. Put simply, we all have a tendency to think the boss is a jerk and that we could do a better job running the library. Sometimes it’s true, but it’s also possible the boss is actually getting it right and workers fail to appreciate their leader’s good qualities. Having been on both sides of this fence, I know it’s easy to be critical. There’s no risk in second guessing what the boss does or criticizing perceived flaws. It’s much tougher to have empathy for what leaders and managers do, particularly those hard decisions to make the unpopular yet necessary choice. The boss may be less than remarkable, but as long as they avoid toxicity and demonstrate a commitment to improving their leadership, the result should contribute to a good workplace. As one of those who left a comment on my micromanager column wrote, “I will never again take a good boss for granted.” Though I began by poking some fun at how much library workers dislike the boss, this is no laughing matter. When library organizations are dysfunctional, the ultimate loser is the community member who wants and deserves the best possible library experience. Toxic bosses and disgruntled, disengaged employees is a formula for a user experience disaster. That makes it critical for our profession to figure out if there is a culture of poor leadership that afflicts our service quality and effectiveness. If it is true that librarianship suffers an epidemic of poor leadership and misguided management, then it requires our attention. Despite the availability of more leadership and management programs than can be counted, we may need to take even more radical action to fix a plague of bad leadership. Now I’d like to hear from library workers who truly like or admire their boss. What is it they do to gain your trust and support? We need to know because if our profession is to develop better leaders, library workers need to do more than gripe about what’s wrong in the administrative suite. They need to let current and aspiring leaders know what works, what’s right, and what leadership and management behaviors lead to a workplace populated by engaged, motivated, autonomously driven staff. Our future could depend on it. I hope you’ll reinforce my belief that our profession does indeed have some well-liked, well-respected, even admired bosses by sharing your story as a comment to this column.