4th Carnegie LIASA Leadership Academy 15 March 2011

Organizational Leadership was the topic of the day.  The presenter was John Moalusi.  From this workshop we were drawn to the following:

• the need to redefine library science and make ourselves visible to the world
• come up with strategies to deploy information to the people
• as leaders, librarians need to recreate the world of library science
• understand that leaders always do the right thing, they live by conviction and they are guided by  social dynamics
• we learnt that managers go by the book, they do not change anything i.e policies/procedures
• leaders create followers but also, they develop other leaders
• leaders observe and allow others to speak and lead
• as librarians we need to become leaders and take our services to the people
• library managers should blend their management role with a touch of leadership otherwise they may destroy the library institutions

These theories were coupled by group exercises whereby groups had to give examples in the form of a case study per group to reflect the difference between managers and leaders.  We learned to distinguish between social and personal competences.