Most organizations would be uncomfortable admitting that promotions sometimes depend on how much an employee resembles the people who already hold power. So we rarely say it that way. Instead, we talk about executive presence, communication skills, professionalism, leadership potential, or culture fit. Someone is described as polished and ready for the next step. Someone else needs to work on their interpersonal skills. One employee is viewed as confident while another, commu

Every organization has at least one. The person who arrives at a meeting with genuinely good ideas, who cares about getting things right, and who, without quite meaning to, ends up talking for most of the hour. They are not malicious. Sometimes they are among the most capable people in the room. But the effect on everyone else is the same regardless of intent: less room to think out loud, less room to disagree, and eventually, less reason to show up at all. I have experienced

Organizations often talk about psychological safety as though it is primarily a matter of encouraging people to speak up. But telling employees that their opinions are welcome is not enough. Neither is putting psychological safety into a policy, conducting an annual survey, or asking employees to rate how safe they feel. Psychological safety is revealed in what happens when someone actually speaks. Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey describe psychological safety as a shared

Most people who become toxic managers probably do not think of themselves that way. They may believe they are being attentive, maintaining standards, protecting the organization, or helping employees succeed. Toxicity does not always arrive as shouting, intimidation, favoritism, or obvious abuse. Sometimes it develops through ordinary management practices repeated often enough that they begin to shape how people experience their work. A manager checks on a project one more ti

Some leaders say they want honesty, but what they consistently reward is reassurance. They invite employees to speak openly, then become defensive when someone disagrees. They describe certain employees as loyal because those employees affirm their decisions, praise their leadership, and rarely introduce information that might make them uncomfortable. Those who raise concerns are gradually characterized as negative, difficult, or insufficiently supportive. When an employee fi

We’ve written before about poor communication in the hiring process, about building trust through two-way organizational communication, and about the hidden costs of dismissive communication. Each of those posts circled a related but distinct problem. This one goes to the heart of it: what happens when a staff member asks a direct question, one that would resolve real uncertainty, and the manager simply will not answer it. Not "won't answer it clearly." Won't answer it at all

Before We Ask Applicants to Edit Most people who have served on a search committee know the feeling. You open an application packet and find a lengthy CV, a dense cover letter, and page after page of publications, presentations, grants, certificates, committee appointments, and projects. Somewhere in all of that material may be exactly the experience the committee is looking for, but it can take time to find it. The first reaction may be frustration. Why did the applicant inc

In Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar reflects on the shrinking timeline of grief. Seneca, he writes, believed grief should not last longer than seven years. Nâzım Hikmet imagined twentieth-century grief lasting at most a year. By the twenty-first century, Akbar suggests, grief may have been reduced to only a few hours before it is supplanted by necessity. As I reflected on one of our previous blog posts,The Permission to Stop (or at Least to Do Things Differently): Leading Libraries Throu

recently attended the ACRL President's Program at the American Library Association Annual Conference. The session was titled "Leading Academic Libraries through VUCA in Higher Education," and it left me thinking about a few things that have been lingering with me for a while. VUCA, for those unfamiliar with the framework, stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. It originated in military strategy and has since found a comfortable home in leadership disco

We all make mistakes. If we have even a modicum of self-awareness, we acknowledge those mistakes and, ideally, learn from them. But there are times when we don't recognize or acknowledge the errors, and so real learning never has a chance to take root. And sometimes, we find ourselves working within genuinely challenging environments where the mistakes aren't even our fault. It is precisely in those moments when self-awareness becomes most critical. When someone calls you on

Being undervalued at work does not always arrive as one dramatic moment. More often, it accumulates quietly. It shows up when your ideas are ignored until someone else repeats them. It appears when your labor is expected but not acknowledged. It becomes visible when your expertise is treated as useful only when it solves an immediate problem, but not valuable enough to shape strategy, policy, budgets, contracts, curriculum, or institutional direction. For academic librarians,

In academic libraries and higher education, the words collaboration and cooperation are often used interchangeably. On the surface, both suggest that people are working together. But in toxic workplaces, especially those marked by siloed units, strained relationships, unclear authority, or uneven workloads, the difference between the two matters deeply. Cooperation is often transactional. One department provides information when asked. A colleague attends a meeting but does n

[Author's note: Although “university” is used throughout this post, the “heart” metaphor is used equally in all types of institutions of higher education, colleges, community colleges, and universities. “University” in this context, therefore, refers to all these institutions.] In my last post, I argued that if we are going to keep calling the library the heart of the university, we ought to treat it like one: with constancy, with care, and with the kind of long-term investme

Few metaphors in higher education have more staying power than this one: the library is the heart of the university. It appears in campaign literature, convocation speeches, and strategic plans. University presidents invoke it with evident sincerity. Donors respond to it. Students, at some level, believe it. And the people who work in libraries have heard it so many times that it has become both a source of pride and, if we are being candid, a quiet source of unease. Because

Why "coordinator" can mean real authority, accountability, and a pathway to leadership. There is persistent skepticism about the coordinator title in many professional environments, including libraries. The critique is usually that coordinators are given responsibility without authority. They are expected to lead, but with no real power to hold people accountable, shape expectations, or make consequential decisions. The title, in this reading, is a way of assigning labor with

In Holding Change, adrienne maree brown invites us to approach transformation not as a crisis to survive, but as an opportunity to deepen our values, relationships, and capacity for collective action. This perspective is crucial in academic libraries facing sustained budget reductions. Too often, budget cuts are treated as inevitable, technocratic events. But they are also political. They reflect institutional priorities, power dynamics, and whose labor and learning are deeme

There’s a unique frustration many academic library leaders know too well: you advocate for your department—student workers, temporary staff, frontline librarians—and the reply you get from senior leadership is a flat, dismissive, “Sorry to hear that.” No solution. No next steps. No recognition of the urgency or weight of what you’ve just shared. In that moment, a truth crystallizes: apologies are easy. Solutions are not.And in academic libraries—where we’re often expected to

It seems fitting to write a post about trust and honesty in leadership, especially as we are in the midst of the election cycle in the U.S., and we are bombarded with commercials and other material about the candidates for office in each state and nationally. In libraries and academic institutions, among the things we do is try to help our community members combat mis- and disinformation. In doing so, we hope to help them understand who is - or who is not telling the truth a

In academic libraries, much of the critical work happens behind the scenes. While librarians engage in highly visible activities like teaching, reference services, and public-facing events, a significant portion of their labor remains invisible. This hidden labor—essential for maintaining library services, digital collections, and academic resources—often goes unrecognized, leading to underappreciation and burnout among library staff. The Intersection of Visible and Hidden Wo

Libraries thrive on collaboration. Yet too often, our ability to work well together falters not because of skill gaps, but because of how we communicate. Words, tone, timing, and unspoken assumptions can create friction that undermines trust. To counter this, many library leaders are experimenting with tools and frameworks that put communication, empathy, and psychological safety at the center of workplace culture. Communication Agreements: Talking About How We Talk Kabel Nat