What is management?
Management comes down to the fundamental skills that make the operational side of thing work within an organisation. By this I mean the budgets, planning of projects and resources, organisation and controlling of future stock (Kotter, 2013). It sounds pretty prosaic (maybe I wrote it that way for dramatic effect) but holds an important role within an organisation.
What is managed within the library context?
Teacher Librarians manage their library space, both physically and digitally, the resources within these such as furniture, ICT, books, magazines etc., and staff and students (Lamb, 2015). Much of this is complex on its own however added to this are the expectations and chaos of also being a teacher can make this a challenging role with much to manage.
What is leadership?
Leadership builds on the strategies that are used by managers to excite and motivate others to work towards planned visions of the future (Kotter, 2013). Leaders take the step further than a manager and not only deal with what is in front of them to achieve expected outcomes, leaders plan the vision of next practice and use tools at their disposal to move beyond the expected to what could be (better).
Who is a leader in the library context?
A leader within the library is, or could be, the Teacher Librarian themselves. Could be if they prove themselves beyond simple management skills. This leadership is best demonstrated with Teacher Librarians with the coaching they do, which is different from the staff management they perform to upskill staff through professional development opportunities (AITSL, 2017, July 24). Teacher Librarians lead from the middle though as many do not occupy formal positions within the organisational structure and more likely to influence colleagues on roughly a similar level (Farrell, 2014). This can have its advantages as it is a less intimidating way of sharing and guiding others.
What is the best type of leadership for a Teacher Librarian?
In my opinion I would suggest that servant leadership is the natural leadership style of anyone in this role. The nature of servant leaders is to collaborate, build relationships and work towards successful outcomes of others (Potter, 2015-2017). The Teacher Librarian has a natural empathy and expectation in their role as the hub of information services and a specialist teacher within the school organisation to collaborate across normal boundaries found in schools such as subject differences to build staff to reach new capabilities in the information sphere (Cox & Korodaj, 2019). Similarly, the Teacher Librarian connects with all students through interactions in the library spaces and within lesson content they have likely collaborated on with teachers.
References
AITSL. (2017, July 24). Are you a teacher that also leads? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/lq4Zt_k6cq4
Cox, E. & Korodaj, L. (2019). Leading from the sweet spot: Embedding the library and the teacher librarian in your school community. Access, 33(4), 14-25.
Farrell, M. (2014). Leading from the middle. Journal of Library Administration, 54(8), 691-699. https:doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2014.965099
Kotter, J. (2013, August 15). The key differences between leading and managing [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SEfgCqnMl5E
Lamb, A. (2015). A Century of Change: The Evolution of School Library Resources, 1915–2015. Knowledge Quest, 43(4), 62-70.
Potter, J. (2015-2017). The servant-leader in the library: a case study and journey towards self-transcendence. The international journal of servant-leadership, 11(1), 437-460.
