On the afternoon of SLA’s Leadership Summit’s first day, there were various seminars designed to impart leadership skills to attendees. First were three concurrent sessions, one for beginning leaders, led by Bill Fisher, one for mid-career leaders, led by Sharyn Ladner, and one for experienced leaders, led by Richard Hulser. Attendees self-selected their level of experience. I peeked into all three rooms, which were about equally full, with perhaps the mid-career one slightly larger. I had wondered about how the self-selection would work, and at first blush, it seemed to have worked well. In conversations later, however, I learned that several librarians thought they’d chosen the wrong one.

From listening in (though only sampling, I must confess) and talking with attendees, I think there’s a basic confusion about whether SLA wants to train unit leaders in how SLA works or association members in how to assume leadership positions in their organizations. SLA probably wants to do both but right now the message is unclear.

The next session, Leadership Skills Specific to SLA, on the other hand, was very clear. Susan DiMattia talked eloquently about what being an SLA leader was all about. The word that’s been prevalent all day is Networking. This is the major benefit to SLA. Susan urged us to use networking as a rationale for going to SLA meetings but cautioned against implying to management that networking was fun. She suggested we keep examples of how networking was key to solving problems at work and advancing the cause of employers.

Following was Terri Brooks who invited four chapter and division leaders to talk about how their units were mentoring new leaders. Linda Broussard then talked about how to communicate with headquarters. Duh. Send email and pick up the phone.

I went directly from that meeting to the open Board meeting, which started late. They considered a proposal to rename committees and decided not to at this point in time.