Please see the notes from last week's open discussion. As a follow up, please share scheduling tips, team building exercises, and mentoring and coaching tips employed at your location that foster teamwork and staff support for the grouping concept.
Open Discussion: What can you do as leaders in the organization to make the groupings work better?
Group 1: Give Sr. LAs and LAs empowerment, authority and training. Have 2 Librarian IIs or assistant managers, or appoint a person in charge at the 3rd location in a grouping. Hold group meetings. Have more cross-training and reinforce through scheduling.
Group 2: Ask for more staff input and cross training. Share expectations and communicate any changes as well as a clear chain of command. Encourage teamwork. Address PR issues immediately. Use team builder exercises.
Group 3: Move staff only when necessary. Use blog to communicate. Have regular group meetings or conference calls once a month. Have group parties. Switch staff to other groupings if there are issues. Make a “who’s in charge” list.
Group 4: Hold monthly meetings to address staff concerns and communicate information. Train staff to deal with familiarity between locations. Have a supervisor at “closed” locations.
Group 5: Have more communication in the form of blog postings and emails. Hold networking lunches with assistant and branch managers. Make plans for staff projects to get finished. Conduct more formal training for paraprofessionals. Tap into people’s leadership abilities. Create cheat sheets or quick guides on what to do if a particular situation arises. Bring back staff development day. Have more coaching, mentoring, and team building exercises. Make staff aware of their authority. Designate a leader by establishing a clear chain of command. Share a list of suspended customers between locations and post to the NL blog with a description of the person.
Mary Wagoner
