I’ve done a lot of travelling recently. All over North Carolina (naturally), South Carolina, Ohio, Italy, and Malta. I met locals from these places, as well as fellow travelers from the UK, France, Israel, Australia and Spain. Language barriers and cultural differences sometimes led to misperceptions and misunderstandings, but these experiences reminded me of a few good practices that can improve our work lives.
“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
- Attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This month I'm honored to share a guest blog post by Cathy De Rosa. Cathy is a mentor, friend and one of the smartest people I know. I hope you enjoy her thoughts on understanding great leadership.
Recently I began mentoring a talented librarian in the early-middle stage of her career. During our first meeting, I began to pick up on her professional values, beliefs and perspectives. Some of these rang with deep conviction; others were shared with less certainty; and still others sounded downright tentative, ending with the rising lilt of a question. It occurred to me that the mix of values, beliefs and perspectives she was sharing had been accumulated from a variety of sources. Some - those shared with conviction - were clearly personal value
Although librarians and vendors have shared a symbiotic relationship for as long as libraries have existed, there seems to be an unhealthy and unnecessary level of time and energy spent tussling with and complaining about vendors. Having worked on both sides of the library/vendor ecosystem, I wanted to try and share some perspectives learnt through experience. What follows are some best practices for working with vendors.