As chair of professional development at the Virginia Academic Library Consortium, a group of ten university libraries in Central Virginia that share resources, Patricia Sobczak was looking towards the future. Libraries today are a very different animal than they were even a decade ago. She needed leaders to help push the libraries in the consortium forward.
“Leadership isn’t a title but an attitude,” she says. “It’s believing you can make a difference, step up and lead a project, or lead a presentation.” She wanted library representatives to understand that you can lead from anywhere you may be sitting.
Floricane’s John Sarvay took a deep dive with members of the group in January during a workshop focused on leadership and effective influencing. With a focus on their work, “he made everyone feel comfortable and open to the questions he was asking. It was a supportive environment.” People, she felt, were able to share things that they may not have expressed in a large group under different circumstances — they shared moments of disappointment or challenges they weren’t sure how to overcome. It was risky, but, she says, there was no “gotcha” moment.
A facilitated debrief of conductor Benjamin Zander’s TED talk helped participants see ways to translate creativity into their daily work, and how to take the lead even when they aren’t the designated leader on their team. The group explored Floricane’s own Manifesto — built around a series of beliefs that guide Floricane’s work, such as Conflict is change waiting to happen and The work of a leader is to bring voices from the margins to the center — and discussed ways in which these beliefs applied to the library setting.
“People left feeling like they had real tools they could take with them,” says Sobczak.
Written by Brandon Fox, a richmond-based freelance writer.