Systems and strategies for developing leadership skills of academic librarians

All professional librarians carry leadership roles in their libraries. The leadership capacity of librarians at all levels in an academic library is a key factor that can determine the library’s performance, effectiveness, innovation, agility and adaptability in the changing higher-education landscape. How do librarians build leadership skills? What can library directors do to help their staff develop leadership skills? From anecdotes of practitioners as well as empirical research, we understand that librarians develop leadership capacity through day-to-day life and work. Whether and how librarians grow with these daily experiences depend a lot on the individuals’ motivation to learn. However, to facilitate workplace learning and staff motivation to learn, library directors can look at their organizational context to find leverage. One approach that library decision-makers can consider is devising leadership development systems and strategies for their librarians. A systemic approach means that the various kinds of support for leadership development in the library are coordinated and reinforcing rather than fragmented or contradicting; while development strategies ensure the organizational effort is a sustaining plan rather than being a short-term operation. This paper describes four organizational areas that affect how leadership development happens in academic libraries: 1. organizational structure, 2. work culture, 3. tactics and resources that support staff development, 4. personnel policies It suggests practices that can facilitate a conducive organizational environment for librarians to cultivate leadership skills. In particular, it proposes to library decision-makers to adopt a systemic and strategic approach, to consider leadership development as long-term planning and coordinated design, with consideration for the development needs of individual librarians as well as the library