The Role Of Managers/Supervisors In The Success Of The Library Functioning

“Many libraries operate in a placid-clustered environment, which is where goals are primarily long term, but the organization must quickly adjust the goals when external factors warrant”. Management/supervisory roles add value to the organization’s goals by successfully making sure their branch provides external factors to enhance the support to operate efficiently with a purpose. Many enter library school with the mere fact that they just want to be a good librarian. Management is the furthest thought from their mind.

As a librarian we begin to realize that we take on many managerial roles in supporting the success of the library. In our daily career, we do not think about the basic management skills, such as planning, operations, building teams and decision-making and how each is implemented into the role of being a manager/supervisor. Being a manager/supervisor contributes to the purpose of the library by providing guidance, support, staff development, and management as well as ensuring their employees succeed in the system. Managers must position their selves as leaders so that they can advocate the goals of the organization along with managing their staff. Leading a multigenerational workforce can face multiple issues that impact libraries as an organization to operate efficiently and with purpose, such as staffing, motivating, and building teams. “Every library would like to have a staff of the best and brightest people with a strong service orientation, which achieving that goal will take time, effort, and planning”.

Unlike any other organization, the procedure to providing staffing for the library can consist of eight steps: determining needs, designing each job, recruiting, selecting, providing orientation/training, giving appropriate evaluations, coaching/discipling, and handling resignations/terminations. Staffing is an essential key to the success of being a manger/supervisor. Being able to manage individuals is a challenge, however it is a pillar to ensuring a library is operating efficiently. Having good staff is key to providing quality service to the users as well as making sure the library’s strategic goals are in place. When managers need to fulfil a position, there are some elements of the staffing process that they should take into consideration, such as organizational goals, job design, job success criterion, job specifications, and selection that will impact the library’s overall goal. Picking the right staff, along with keeping each staff member motivated will ensure to keep the operation of the library running efficiently. Motivation is a key element for not only managers, but for all staff. Everyone is different and their motives stem from diverse needs of their lives.

“Motivation has its roots in the personal beliefs, attitudes, and experiences that induce a particular behavior pattern in a person”. Therefore, the approach to motivation of staff members will vary for a manager. “Seventy-six percent of the managers believed that they must adjust their approach to motivating each individual employee”. The role of the manager is to provide the proper support to his or her employees. This proper support adds value to the organization and helps the employee generate high performance in the workplace. When a manager lacks motivation, it will reflect in their employees. This lack of motivation can overall have a negative impact on the library functioning successfully. The manager establishes behavioral standards for the staff to follow regarding the organization’s purpose. These standards serve as a habituation for the employee’s behaviors and actions. “When an employee behaves compatibly with organizational goals, that behavior usually results in the person receiving some form of reward (reinforcement) and when the behavior is anti-organizational, the manager chooses to use negative reinforcement (punishment), reevaluate both the stimulus and the person, or terminate. “The performance management system fosters ongoing two-way communication between employees and managers; supports the development of clear, consistent, and measurable goals linked directly to the organization’s core values and competencies; helps to articulate and support training needs and career development; and establishes the criteria for making reward and recognition decisions”. This system leads to open communication between employees and managers, which in overall makes a good team for the library.

“Today’s managers/leaders must build, support, and maintain effective and productive teams if their organizations are to succeed”. Emphasizing the value of teams can push staff members towards working collectively to support the library’s overall mission statement and goals. Building teams require managers/supervisors to have developed and set forth standards that create a vision for the future of the organization, which include factors such as integrity and influence. “You must have influence over people to motivate their desire to learn and develop, plus a key factor in influencing behavior is integrity, which builds trust”. Management is an activity essential to organized endeavors that perform certain functions to obtain the effective acquisition, allocating, and utilization of human efforts and physical resources for the purpose of accompanying some goal.

In conclusion, managers/supervisor’s values play an important role in how they impact libraries as an organization that requires guidelines to operate efficiently and with the purpose through staffing, motivating, and building teams. Staffing, motivating, and building teams are intertwined and successful depend on one another to contribute to the success of the library functioning with one goal in mind.