Using career planning ideas to inform coaching and mentoring

Recently, as a result of a project a group of us are involved with at work we have been thinking about setting up coaching/mentoring / shadowing services for Library staff.  I’d already attended a staff development session at work on using coaching skills to unlock potential which got me quite excited about the idea and, as luck would have it, another session was being run by the same trainer on career planning. So on April 2^nd (forgive me for the huge lapse in time in writing this up!) I attended in the hope that it might help provide some ideas of how we can make these services more effective.

The workshop:

It was a small group - just 5 attendees, including myself. This meant that it was quite an intimate atmosphere and we were able to share stories, advice, and discuss the topics in some detail. We started off the day by looking at ‘pinnacles and foothill’ moments of our working past and identifying what was energising and satisfying about the pinnacles and draining and unsatisfying about the foothills. The idea being that if we looked at these events we could pick and choose the scenarios we wanted to avoid or repeat.

The workshop was very closely aligned with the changes both within our organisation and in higher education in general, for example, there was significant discussion about various work processes altering, getting used to working with new departments, and how student fees and expectations might impact on the institution and our role within it. Identifying these changes led us to establish what new skills would be needed and determining how we would be able to ensure we developed these. This is where I could see the coaching fitting in quite nicely as it would specifically target these areas.

As another exercise, we were asked to fill in a ‘career wheel’ to establish how balanced each aspect of our work life was; this was quite similar in some respects to some of the exercises I completed a while ago in What Color is your parachute. My answers, using both approaches, indicated that my ‘perfect' job at the moment would be very similar to what I am doing now - a job with lots of variety and autonomy; one that involves training and helping people,  but in in an environment with prettier surroundings, and the ability to work from home a couple of days a week. 

One of the areas we were asked to consider was whether our personal plans and interests overlapped with these changing needs within the organisation.  I think this is a very important question to consider as it’s healthy not to have too much of a disconnect between the two. While the current economic climate is unlikely to provide a job that ticks every single box, it’s a useful exercise to be able to recognise the perfect role just in case it does turn up one day.

Do the all the aspects of your work life balance out?

The end of the day focused on networking using social media (I ended up doing training sessions on LinkedIn and Twitter after some of the conversations that took place here, which was a handy bit of stealth advocacy for the Library) and branding which I’m not so keen on as a concept, perhaps because I don’t generally trust brands and nor do I want to be a product.

Conclusions:

Ultimately, it was a worthwhile day. It didn’t teach me anything new about myself or my career path, apart from perhaps to emphasise how important some green space and natural light is to me; however, I could see that plenty of the exercises we completed would work in a coaching or mentoring setting. If we do decide to go ahead with it, it could become a great way of helping people work out what’s available to them and how they can get there. As someone who didn’t do a graduate traineeship nor came into contact with people from a range of careers growing up, something like this would have been very useful for me earlier on.

What do you think? Do your values and interests match your job? Would you recognise ‘the perfect job’ if it dropped in your inbox tomorrow? Do you already have it – in which case, how do you know it is? Does it even matter, as long as it pays the bills and keeps a roof over your head? I'd be very interested to read your comments.

LIKE 42: Elevator speeches OR you’re stuck in a lift when…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when you get a chance encounter with the very person you want to meet you won’t be looking your best or able to come out with that witty, concise statement that gets the person you’ve met wanting to know more – until they’ve walked away from you that is.

LIKE 42 was set to change all that and prepare us (the attendees of London Information and Knowledge Exchange events) for such an occurrence. I first heard about elevator speeches at the SLA Conference in Chicago and wanted to find out a bit more so I was very pleased when the monthly events’ organisers took on my suggestion to cover the topic.

An elevator speech is based on the premise that one day, in a serendipitous fashion, you will find yourself in a lift with the head/director/ultimate of the powers that be and are able to grab their attention for the 30 seconds or so that it takes to reach your destination to persuade them that you (or your team/product) are worth knowing more about.

The Willis Tower in Chicago has an extremely quick lift which makes your ears pop - this makes erudite conversations quite tricky.

Suzanne Wheatley from Sue Hill Recruitment, led the session in a breezy, engaging and entertaining manner in the hour before our dinner arrived. After introducing the topic, we had to practise our handshakes. Everyone hates a limp or bone-crushing handshake so we were told to go around the room and shake four people’s hands. There were a few lingerers but nothing too bad as I guess we were all on best handshake behaviour. After a staring competition to emphasise the importance of eye contact, we were then asked to say some tongue twisters. These were to help us speak clearly, at varying speeds and without gabbling and stumbling over words. I think it worked. I can sometimes speak too quietly or too quickly but reading out the tongue twisters helped me understand what it actually feels like to take pauses, breathe and enunciate properly.

Our final task before practising our speech was to write it. We could choose to talk about ourselves, a team or system which needed promoting, or LIKE. As I’ve been trying to ‘sell’ Talis Aspire (reading list management software) at work with varied success rates I chose to focus on this. To create a successful elevator pitch, we were told, it must include the following:

• an aim or problem we could solve
•  a unique selling point or the benefits of the solution
•  a closing question so the conversation can continue at a later date.

When practising our speeches I completely ran out of time and forgot to ask my question – much practise is obviously needed! However, I now realise that not only do I need to cut out the waffle I need to get some hard facts or statistics to back up my arguments. It has definitely given me something to work with.

Thank you Suzanne and LIKE. Suzanne has also written her own post about the event.

Changes keep changing...and then off to market

It's that time of year again when at work we have our staff development days.


Monday 19th December started off with a speech from our principal thanking us for all our hard work for the previous term and encouraging us not to lose heart as the government makes its chops and changes.We then listened to a keynote speech delivered by Professor Bill Lucas entitled: Making more even in challenging times. My colleague, Rachel Preece expands on this in her blog so I won't go into too much detail, albeit to say I found it interesting and I could immediately recognise some of the reactions to change that people can have. I think I manage change pretty well but to do so I have to take some semblance of control over it rather than it be something that is done to me - not always easy or realistic but worth trying. I'm also beginning to learn when to pick my fights and when to roll over! Bill emphasised that we should also take time to process too and this is something I am guilty of not doing. I have achieved some things in my life which I should be proud of as they took time, effort and an ability to overcome some quite serious obstacles but instead of celebrating these achievements I just move right on to the next thing. I really want to change this as it will only lead to stress and dissatisfaction. Lastly, I liked his presentation style. Despite being in a theatre with rather a large amount of people, he managed to include interactivity without it descending into a shambles - something I'm always interested in seeing how other people do.

The rest of the team then split up and went to various training sessions whereupon I was left to don a stall at the 'Marketplace'. For the last couple of years at my workplace, on staff development day, a Learning Exchange or Marketplace takes place. At this Learning Exchange a few dedicated teachers (Learning Coaches)  who are passionate about improving teaching and learning share their knowledge, tips and tricks with everybody who cares to walk past their stall. This year, I was asked to take part. I was a little apprehensive at first as I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, however, it turned out my old background in 'assisted sales' would prove useful.

Attending this event helped to raise awareness of the Learning Resources Centre across college as our name was on all the marketing material which was circulated. It also raised awareness amongst all the members of teaching staff who came to visit us. They were interested to know what we could offer and were occasionally surprised at the range of resources on offer.

It was a very good opportunity to raise awareness of what we do and what we can offer not only to the majority of the academic staff who passed the stall but also to the Learning Coaches who will pass on their enthusiasm to others. It also gave me the opportunity to put a few faces to names and meet people who I don't regularly come into contact with.

Cpd23 - Thing 21 - Promoting yourself

Thing 21 is getting us to focus on our strengths and how we promote ourselves.

I generally suffer from crises of self-confidence whenever I have to promote myself, despite knowing I can usually do whatever is being asked of me. Writing my Chartership CV has helped me to identify my strengths as it requires you to write about them separately before writing out the details of employment and education. The downside is that I now have a CV four pages long so need to rectify this quickly!

I have been for a couple of interviews in the past year, where I perhaps wasn't the most obvious candidate but knew I could do the job well. Each time I have come second, so I am now doing my best to strengthen areas of weakness. It still hasn't put me off applying for jobs that I like the sound of even if I don't 100% meet the criteria, as you never know. However, preparing for interviews generally makes me sick for about a week prior so I am not sure that doing this is the best thing, short-term anyway, for my health!

Having been embarrassed once in the past by not preparing enough, I make sure never to make that mistake again. I now read all the reports available, find out stakeholders perceptions and generally make sure I know my stuff about the organisation, both good and bad. Try not to mention the bad though - I did once and was told this was the reason I didn't get the job - oops!

Having started delivering staff and student training and information literacy sessions in my workplace, I have discovered that I enjoy doing it. I hope this will feature in a job I have in the future. I also really enjoy the chance to ,research,develop and/or create things but unfortunately there is now little time for this. I would like to do more of this in the future. Now and again working form home would be lovely too. If anyone knows what type of job I would suit in the information sector then please get in touch!

Cpd23 - Thing 20 - The Library Routes Project

Thing 20 is about our careers. I added a brief post of my route to the Library Routes project for Thing 10, but hadn't really spent a lot of time thinking about it. Looking through other people's posts makes me realise that the journalism and careers advise sectors are really missing out, as it seems that at one time or another we have all tried to follow one of these paths! (Just for the record - I wanted to be a journalist).

I wish I had thought more seriously about what I was going to do when I was younger and that I had tried to get more relevant experience. While at college and uni, I worked at various places including factories, a fast-food outlet and a frozen foods retailer. Despite not being closely linked with the type of career I want they have taught me two things, 1 - I am capable of offering good customer service to angry, drunken and hungry people so anyone else is a doddle and 2 - if I'm having a bad day at work it could always be worse!
Jo Alcock, at LibraryCamp, stated her intention to research what libraries can learn from retail and having now a background in both I am finding it all quite interesting.

In my home town, there wasn't a great deal of aspiration and success usually meant you'd been given a council house. I think this is why I wasn't really sure where I was going because there was little advice or inspiration on offer, however, the more I am introduced to the great array of things people do the more excited I become about the possibilities. I now make the most of every opportunity I am given, whether it be training, a meeting, a project and regularly volunteer for things even if I can't ascertain their immediate worth because you never know where it might lead. This attitude has stopped my current job from becoming stale and so far it has increased my skills in elearning, presenting, training and improved my knowledge of issues in the information and educational sector as well as it becoming much easier to talk to people at various hierarchical levels.

My next step is to start looking through job descriptions I may have discounted in the past for being too far above my skill or experience level and try to fill in some of those gaps.

Library Camp 2011

On Friday 7th October I made my way up to Birmingham after work to attend Library Camp on the Saturday. Meghan Jones and I managed to get lost at 11.30 pm but eventually we made it to our lodgings and to the camp the next day. As many of you know by know - it wasn't in a library and there was no camping involved, however it was full of people passionate about libraries (note I don't say librarians!)

It was a fantastic day and I met lots of great people, many of whom I'd already connected with on Twitter. Due to the amount of people, I didn't get to speak to everyone I wanted but did manage to have conversations with a fair few which I hope will continue. I'm just going to cover the main things which stood out for me:

@Sarahgb(theoriginal)

The Venue: was a fantastic place with rooms large enough to hold the conversations in and to keep mingling without being trapped in a corner. I think the sessions worked better where the chairs were in a circle so discussions could happen more naturally.

The Organisation: all occurred far better than I was expecting. Because all the ideas had been pitched at the beginning, people could decide what to go to. Occasionally, they clashed but I think this is always going to happen at whatever type of conference you attend, unless repeat sessions occur. I guess at next year's session, more people will want to propose discussions and there will need to be a fair way of deciding who gets what, for example, not letting people pitch for several. I also think that sessions should be pitched prior to the event via the wiki so more time could be spent on the day discussing the topics.

Session 1: Transliteracy: bridging the transition from school and further education to higher education - led by Jo Alcock and Jean Allen


I found all of the sessions fascinating and have taken away ideas from all of them. A lot of people referred to Further Education (16-18) as school, presumably because they were used to 6th forms. Once I realised this I felt I understood things much better! The session reminded me to not assume that everyone has a PC and to speak the language of academics. I was interested to hear that the University of Brighton and UWE have an information literacy module for teachers. I think this would be a good resource to put in our intranet pages for teaching and learning. I'm also going to look at the research report by Jane Secker and Emma Coonan have completed looking at information literacy.

Session 2: Cutting services while maintaining them 

I though this was incredibly relevant considering the cuts to the sector. The session focused mainly on public libraries but it did give me some useful tips, for example, to check what students are saying about our service on social networking sites and find ways of demonstrating professional activities before they become too watered down.

Session 3: What libraries can learn from retail - led by Jo Alcock and Anna Martin.

 Many of the details of the session came from this post on Jo's blog. I have already ordered the books mentioned and I'm looking forward to reading them. My institution has already put into practice many of the suggestions mentioned but there are some simple things we can still do, for example, leave the returns trolley out and deliver some training on how to spot different characters. Jo Alcock is going be researching this area and I think I will pay close attention!

Session 4: The Higher Education experience in a Further Education environment - led by me!

 Despite there being quite a few shouts of approval when I pitched, there weren't a great many attended, however, this did mean it was much easier to chat (I think they all attended the embedding session which I really wanted to go to as well but thought it would not to turn up to my own!). I wanted to find out how people were creating the Higher Education experience for HE students in an FE setting and people had a variety of experiences to share. For example, some institutions are focusing on open source databases rather than subscription ones for their HE students, some had different opening hours for students depending on whether they were HE or FE and there was much discussion over licensing agreements and the different types of study spaces available to each group. The overall consensus was that it was difficult to please two very different types of stakeholders! I've got a lot to do regarding this subject and no doubt you will hear from again regarding it.

Session 5: Challenges facing academic libraries and collaboration with other sectors - led by Liz Jolly

There was a lot of discussion at this session regarding cross community collaboration under one roof, the Hive at Worcester, is an example of this practice. While I can see it saves money and may increase the interactivity amongst the community, I am a little wary of it - are students paying £9000 a year really going to accept sharing their resources with a member of the public, even if they have paid their council tax? I'm concerned that all this amalgamation might lead to the watering down of services, however, I'm willing to be proved wrong on this matter if it's all good for society!

Overall, Library Camp was definitely worth attending to. I was able to take part in some illuminating conversation and being in a room with so many passionate people has helped to increase my motivation just at a time when it was needed - so thank you Library Camp organisers and attendees. I hope to see, hear and read more of you in the future!

Like 29 - Connecting Information with Innovation

On Thursday I attended another of the events organised by  LIKE (London Information Knowledge Exchange). The speaker was John Davies. and he was talking about TFPL’s recent report “Connecting Information with Innovation” (http://www.tfpl.com/news/news.cfm?pid=284). The survey examined knowledge and information management skills and roles across a range of participating organisations. As one of the report’s authors, he was explaining the implications for 21st Century Information Professionals.

After he spoke of the report's findings, he asked us several questions including how our role fits into Knowledge Management, what or who gives us the authority to do what we do and what's more important as an attribute; vision, dogmatism, ability to meet deadlines etc. We were then asked to discuss each question in turn then share our findings.

Initially, I could not see how my role fit into the broader spectrum of knowledge information management, but , after discussing my role with several of the people on the 'fishcake' table and after a  few glasses of wine, the group of people I were with expressed surprise at this and called me (amongst other things) a person responsible for knowledge transfer, a squirrel and an onion with may layers! They also said it seemed like I did a heck of a lot - which is something I could have told them straightaway! So I now feel I know my place in the grand scheme of knowledge information management, which is no mean feat.

There were a number of contentious topics discussed amongst all this especially over knowledge management versus librarianship and whether definitions are important. One lady described how when writing her CV, she didn't use job titles as she believed them to be meaningless. Others agreed that job titles never seemed to represent anything. Many concurred that this was the case but unimportant in the scheme of things. Those who worked for recruitment firms, on the other hand, found that it was making their job much more difficult.

When discussing what attributes we considered as important for someone working in the KIM sector, I mentioned the long and still ongoing debate on LinkedIn where no-one can decide on a particular attribute. In my opinion, one good attribute does not a great information professional make! A mix is required -  just like a good variety of skills are required in any organisation. Surprise was expressed at there being no mention of leadership in the TFPL report as this is an attribute worth having if anything is to ever get done.

Overall I had a lovely time, met some great people and found out more about what is happening in the wider sector. It also greatly encouraged me to feel part of it.
The next session is focusing on knowledge transfer and making it stick so, considering the amount of time I spend delivering training, I will definitely be attending it.

Cpd23 - Thing 19 - Catch up and reflection

Thing 19 is catch up and reflection time.

Since I started CPD23 I have learned many new things; some of which I have implemented and others I have put on my good intentions list.

Blogging - I have actually quite enjoyed blogging but still find it faintly ridiculous that I am writing for a current total of seven followers - I feel like Snow White, except that I'm the one who's 5ft! It is good for reflection and it  encourages me to do so fairly straight away. I am going to carry on blogging even when CPD23 has finished as I will continue being part of the information profession who are continually developing and it is a useful reminder of some of the things I've been up to. I've also enjoyed reading other's blogs - I access them through Google Reader or new ones via Twitter - I still need to review my choice of blogs regularly to ensure I am reading a good selection of what's available.

Branding - I think I'm getting better at this. I now have a consistent profile across the various social media platforms I am on, however, I do need update them more regularly than I am doing.

Twitter, Google Docs and Reader, and RSS Feeds - I use all of these much much more than I did previously. Not to say I wasn't using them but just that they now feature in my everyday life and I don't have to remind myself to use them. All these tools have proved very useful and I will continue to use them. I would recommend that everyone uses them. For example, I found out about LibraryCamp through Twitter and it was sold out within the day. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to go if I didn't follow tweets. I'm going next week - if it turns out to be rubbish I'll blame Twitter for getting me carried away!

Dropbox, I am now using to store my Chartership Portfolio after the episode with my workplace server. I'm not allowed to download it at work in case people use it for sharing music files so that's the only downside to it. I also can't download Evernote at work. which is a shame because it would have proven very handy when researching web safety and digital literacy recently. I would have been able to save all my notes and relevant websites to one page which would have saved me quite a bit of time. I am currently using it to save ideas for Christmas presents and for decorating my home.

Going through my blogs I realised I had set plans to:

•  buy kittens
•  learn Spanish
•  write articles
•  and continue involvement with peers. 

Well...

Gratuitous shot of kittens as evidence!

• I'm doing the Spanish BBC Course
• I've written more blogs and one article which is yet to be published. I still want to keep plugging away at this as I'd love to see my name in print.

Lastly, I am still maintaining my involvement, as it has been the greatest benefit of doing the CPD23 course. I am now closer to my peers and have felt that I am part of the community. I look forward to seeing some of them at LibraryCamp and also the CoFHE LASEC web safety event.

Cpd 23 - Thing 17 - Prezi

Thing 17 is about Prezi and Slideshare.

I've used Prezi once and it took me so long to do I gave up on it. I first came across it last year at a Kingston University Partners' Day when a speech was given by Ian Collins from University of West England. It looked like an interesting way of presenting, and, being quite bored of PowerPoint, I thought I'd give it a try. As it happened, I had an interview coming up at a rather good University and the content of the presentation I had to deliver seemed to fit the profile of what a Prezi should be i.e. lots of connected ideas and topics. However I spent about three evenings thinking about the content and then had to spend another three evenings just trying to put it together. I could not get a handle on wizziness and seasick inducing motion. I came to the conclusion that when style starts taking longer than substance it's time to call it a day. In the end I transferred all my content to a PowerPoint but still kept the theme of connectedness.

However, saying all that, I have now seen a few Prezis and they are getting better.  I think my problem was that I as treating it like a PowerPoint i.e with a linear structure. Also, I've since found that having all the content structure of the presentation laid out before hand greatly helps. I will give it another go but it won't be for work any time soon as we  have standard PowerPoint templates for our referencing sessions and the information literacy and Moodle sessions I deliver are all practical.

Slideshare - I don't use this for work as we keep all our documents in one work area. I do use it a part of the CoFHE LASEC Committee; we keep our presentations from our events on it, which means we can easily give people a link to this rather than emailing several different PowerPoints to numerous people. It is also compatible with LinkedIn so I have added them to my profile. I find looking at other people's Slideshare accounts very useful when I am researching a topic as they are very quick to trawl through. The most recent ones I found to be of value were the JISC slides when looking for information on digital literacy. There's a wealth of information here.

Overall, this Thing has encouraged me to give Prezi another go and reminded me to look at other's slides more often, as well as update my LinkedIn page. So all in all - a worthwhile task.

And the job - sadly I was beaten by an exceptionally strong candidate - I wonder if they used Prezi...

Cpd23 - Thing 3 - Branding

I've been thinking about being a brand for the next bit of Cpd23. I don't like the idea of being a brand; I rarely even buy branded food. A blog which sums it up perfectly is Library Wanderer's. I guess I don't want to be put in a box with a label neatly placed on me, however, I also understand that everyone else seems to like boxes and labels and brands so I have to be part of the game.

So the first thing I did was check my tags on the CPD Delicious account and immediately realised they didn't match me. I work in Further Education but mainly focus on students studying Higher Education courses. This immediately puts me into two separate and sometimes opposing categories as I need to find out what is going in both sectors and how they impact on each other.I'd also like relevant people to my profession to be able to find me easily too.

Secondly, I thought about my blog name. It was 'Stroumpette's musings' which I like but no-one is going to remember it. If anyone types it into Google they are going to be inundated by Smurfs - which may be quite unexpected!  So my blog name is now The Wolfenden Report as my surname is Wolfenden, it's easy to remember because of the real Wolfenden Report, which is in my family, and I'm reporting on some of my profesional activities.

Thirdly reader, I googled myself. I found my Facebook link (my settings are tight so I'm okay - phew! - not that there's anything too embarrasing - just my red face after doing the Race for Life). My Linkedin profile and another Sarah Wolfenden who is a bridal makeup artist. There were also a couple of posts I'd created in reply to event organisers for the London Library Teachmeet and the CoFHELASEC CPD event. So all in all I don't have a huge Google presence which I don't think is the end of the world - it will make me more careful when replying to other's posts though!

The next thing I need to do is learn how to use my blog more effectively, tidy it up and make it look more professional. This should give off the image I want people to have of me. Professional, hardworking but still with a personality; 'profersonal' as it's described on the CPD23 site. I haven't decided on what to do about my photos as yet - close up so I'm recognisable, a bit of mystery so people don't form an opinion before they've met me? I guess that's what all this branding is all about - forming other people's opinions before they get the chance to do it themselves. How commercial.