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Leadership roles, especially at the start of a professional career, can often seem impossibly distant, and the path to reach them is not always obvious...
INSIGHT
President’s View
Searching for 125 leaders of the future
N the previous issue of Information Professional, I talked a little about the importance of refl ecting on our own profession and our sense of pride in what CILIP has accomplished in the past 125 years of advocacy and professional development, but I also hinted at one of our major goals for 2023 – celebrating the emerging leaders of today’s information world. I was able to expand on this when I attended the CILIP Roadshow at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth in January, an event which was a particular joy to me because Aberystwyth is where my professional career began.
I realise one of the fastest ways to make yourself sound old is to say “I was a student back in x,” but I graduated from the Aberystwyth Department of Information Studies back in 2012, and I would never have imagined then that I’d be writing as the CILIP President in 2023. Leadership roles, especially at the start of a professional career, can often seem impossibly distant, and the path to reach them is not always obvious – while some people always seem to know exactly where they intend to go and precisely how to get there, for others the route into leadership can begin simply by adopting an extra responsibility, or stepping in to “hold the ship steady” in someone else’s absence, only to discover a previously unanticipated talent.
There is, then, a value in trying to ‘demystify’ leadership, in making it more obvious that leadership is not inherently a skill that manifests only with age and experience, but one which can be nurtured and developed at any stage of your career.
March 2023 Elsewhere in this issue you can fi nd
refl ections from current leaders like Amina Shah, Kirsty Lingstadt and Jennie Rose Halperin, which I’d really encourage you to read, and moving forward, we want to celebrate the emerging leaders of tomorrow, too – not just because their own achievements already deserve recognition on their own merits, but because I fi rmly believe that demonstrating developing leadership inspires other leaders too. As I mentioned, 2023 is the 125th anniversary of our Royal Charter, and our achievements in the last century and a quarter deserve to be celebrated – but the information profession has never just been about looking backwards. Although refl ecting on what we have learned is a vital part of CPD, we are also a profession that constantly looks forwards, scanning the horizon, identifying areas for growth, and building our skills in anticipation of future needs.
So, as part of the celebrations marking the 125th year since the Royal Charter was fi rst granted, CILIP will be celebrating the successes still to come, through something you’ve hopefully already heard about: The CILIP 125 List. Put simply, we aim to identify 125 future leaders: information professionals who are already making a diff erence to their services, their users, and their communities.
To do that, we need your input and nominations – your help to identify the emerging leaders in your sector of the information profession so that the CILIP 125 List can be both a celebration and a showcase of the range of inspiring, passionate people that are already helping forge the future of our profession. Nominees need to be CILIP
John Trevor-Allen is President of CILIP.
members in the fi rst seven years of their professional career, as well as currently working in, and making a positive contribution to users in the sector. You can fi nd full details and make nominations at
www.cilip.org.uk/125, until 5pm on 25 April.
We’ll be announcing the members of the CILIP 125 List at this year’s CILIP Conference in Birmingham – matching the theme of Leadership that the conference centres around as we seek to bring our emerging and existing leaders together. As CILIP President, I have the great honour to be leading the panel that will assess the nominations to determine the members of the CILIP 125 List, each of whom will receive a specially created medal in recognition both of their achievements so far, and those still to come: I’m excited to see the nominations! IP
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