Coaching in the Library

The greatest challenge to library organizations is to continuously adapt in an ever-changing, ever-more-complex environment. Library leaders need to direct the continuous redevelopment of libraries. The ability to tackle this and other institutional challenges effectively is fundamental to the success of leaders and the survival of libraries. One way to achieve this is through the use of coaching.

Coaching is the purposeful and skillful effort by one individual to help another achieve specific performance goals. Whether the coach is working with an individual or a group (the “player”), she facilitates the player’s attainment of the player’s goals. The success of this effort depends on the cooperation of both parties. The player is willing to be challenged, supported, and influenced by the coach; the coach enables this willingness throughout the stages of coaching.

People in today’s workforce at every level constantly have to work on the interface of their knowledge, skills, and experience in a changing and somewhat unpredictable environment. Coaching is not just something that engages people’s efficiency; it increases individual and organization effectiveness through changing times. Coaching has a multiplier effect. It enhances the library’s assets. The more able the individual is to apply his skills dynamically to an ever-changing environment, the more valuable he is to the organization.

Picture the new director of a library whose operating costs are rising at a higher rate than its revenues. The deficit is largely structural and will continue to grow, driven by fixed obligations inherent in how the library system is structured. It is costing more to operate the library each year than the library is receiving in revenues, but for years the library’s operating reserves have offset the deficit. Now it looks as if the new director will be forced to reduce hours and staffing as the revenue-to-expense situation worsens.

The new director believes that part of the solution lies in developing new service models that can deliver needed services at less cost. However, many obstacles exist to creating these new service models: Some staff is resistant to change. Managers and supervisors are overly concerned with appeasing staff and have lost sight of community needs. The senior managers have never developed team leadership. Some managers will be retiring soon, but there is no apparent “bench” of aspiring leaders to follow them. Staff and the community have been unaware that operating costs are outstripping revenues.

Coaching for this organization would begin with the director, followed by sessions with the director and executive team together. It would include an organizational assessment and strategy for developing the organization according to its needs: the need to develop new service models; to resolve the structural budget deficit; to engage staff; to develop succession leaders; and to help staff through change transitions, including their own career and work-life balance transitions.

This library would benefit from multidimensional coaching to:

• Support the library director in clarifying and prioritizing executive direction
• Build executive, management, and team leadership capacity
• Facilitate the process of service modeling and sustainable budget development
• Develop new leaders and a leadership bench
• Develop coaching behaviors in the library director, managers, and supervisors
• Sustain effective individual and group performance

Whether the coaching is for individuals or groups, it has the overarching purpose to improve organizational effectiveness. Just as libraries have a strategic plan of service, they need to take a strategic approach to organizational development. Coaching strategically helps organizations respond to the reality of their situation. It is a process that requires time and multiple interactions.

But coaching isn’t only for library leaders; it is for everyone. The work of libraries today calls for a much more diverse array of knowledge, skills, and abilities than ever before. The expectation is for more flexibility. People who work in libraries must constantly learn and adapt to new technologies and working in collaboration with others. They are constantly being called on to do what they were not expected to do before.

At the same time that technology is changing the work of librarie­s, other factors are impacting the volatility of the workplace. Individuals are facing challenging work-life decisions. Many who planned to leave the workforce are staying because of the economic downturn. The care of children, the elderly, and the disabled are straining workers’ capacity to work full-time and to make ends meet.

The 2009 International Coach Federation (IFC) Global Client Coaching Study reports that 36% of coaching clients put work-life balance as one of the top three motivators for seeking coaching. Meanwhile, some who were recruited into the profession with the promise there would be jobs as the boomer generation retired are leaving by the side exits for other careers. Considering these conditions, the need for coaching in libraries is ever-present and increasing.

Libraries are not alone in facing these challenges. The coaching industry is one of the fastest growing in the world. The ICF, with over 16,000 members in over 90 countries, has seen a 645% increase in membership since 1999.  Coaching has become more accessible to more people. Where once coaching was for the business elite, its benefits are now well known and dispersed across industries and throughout organizations, penetrating into all levels of the workplace.