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Being leader of the School Libraries Group has been the privilege of my life, and I leave it behind reluctantly, but in safe hands...
INSIGHT
School Libraries Group
Some Leadership lessons learnt from my SIG
S it comes towards the end of the year, I come towards the end of my six years as Chair of the School Libraries Group.
Six years is an unusually long time for a SIG Chair, but there were special circumstances which made a long stretch necessary. Not that I found it burdensome at all – I have loved every single minute of being Chair of this fabulous group.
So what lessons have I learned about Leadership in these six years? Although I have a Masters in Leadership and Management for Learning, that was theory, and I had then to put theory into practice. There is a difference, as I learned during my course, between Leadership and Management. Management involves organisational skills –I believe that I transitioned from management of the group during my first months, into leadership later on.
If you look up ‘leadership styles’ on the internet, you will find that anything between 4 and 11 styles are mentioned, all with different names (though mostly covering the same areas). I would like to highlight a classic theorist, Lewin, who identified four main leadership styles – Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-faire and Transformational. I have identified my working style as Democratic, or Participative Leadership, with elements of Transformational. Lewin’s research led him to identify these four behaviours stemming from a Democratic style of leadership:
1. All policies were a matter of group discussion and decision;
2. General steps are shared to a group, December 2022
a common goal was identified, and if technical advice were needed the leader suggested a few alternatives;
3. The members were free to work with anyone in small task groups, and division of labour in that group was left to the task leader;
4. The leader was objective in praise, and acted as a regular member of the group in spirit, without doing too much of the work or dominating the discussion.
In our SIG, we have actively recruited Committee Members who are already strong leaders. I don’t claim to know more than any of them, and I always deferred to other members of the committee who are more skilled in an area than I am. I have stuck with the group decision even when (as has sometimes happened) it was not the decision that I myself would have chosen. But I have respected my committee too much not to abide by the majority.
By and large I believe that this leadership style is the best one working in a committee situation. The Authoritarian approach – do what I say – may work in certain corporate situations, but in a roomful of fellow professional volunteers, that doesn’t generally work well. However, I also feel that I have had elements of a Transformational Leader, as seeing the bigger picture for school libraries, and working with other agencies and groups on the Great School Libraries team, means that the vision I have has had to expand beyond my own school and beyond the Committee, to all of school libraries in the UK.
Being a Chair of a successful and
Caroline Roche is Chair CILIPSLG and Co-Chair Great School Libraries Campaign. Caroline was made an Honorary Fellow of CILIP in October 2022 for her services to school libraries.
large SIG is challenging and hard work. Without the full support of my Headmaster, who allowed me time to work both in and out of school, I couldn’t have managed any of the tasks that we accomplished during my time as Chair. And this is very much ‘we’ – anything that has been done has been done by ‘us’. A leader who forgets that is in danger of being an autocrat – surely the worst type of leadership. Being leader of the School Libraries Group has been the privilege of my life, and I leave it behind reluctantly, but in safe hands, with Nick Cavender who has shadowed me as Vice-Chair for a year, and who will take SLG into the future. I shall miss the wonderful group of people that I have worked with, but I am really grateful for the lessons they have taught me about myself as a leader, and how they have enabled me to grow as a person. IP
References
Blog: 4 Leadership Styles in Business: Leadership Style Quiz | UAGC | University of Arizona Global Campus Accessed 8/11/2002
Lewin, Kurt, Patterns of aggressive behaviour in experimen- tally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10:2 (1939:May) p.271
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