PLA 2012: Warren Graham

I attended Warren Graham's presentation at PLA purely out of curiosity because the rave reviews I've heard from colleagues regarding his keynote at the 2009 Tri-County Summit do not jive with my impression of him after having read his book and I wanted to reconcile the two once and for all.

So, am I reconciled? No. But I can understand why so many of my colleagues and friends enjoyed him - he has a strong talent for pointing out our (library employees) foibles in a mostly respectful manner (not unlike the celebrity roasts that are shown on cable).

After hearing his presentation I realized a couple of things ... please take them with a grain or two of salt:

1. Sometimes I think many of the difficult situations front line library staff experience with customers is due to a difference in mental models. Library employees see ourselves and our libraries one way and our customers see us and our libraries another way. Is one right? Is one wrong? Perhaps that's the wrong question. I believe our customers' mental models are the most justified ... based on Joan Frye Williams' and George Needham's PLA presentation which I'll link up here as soon as I post it. Basically, I believe we need to meet our customers at their mental models rather than trying to have them meet ours.
   
2. My hackles raised ever so slightly when Graham said that most of us (library employees) are passive and do not stand up for what we believe it. Then I started to really think about if this is true for myself and why that might be. I think I'm much better than I used to be. When I first started working in libraries and I felt very strongly about something - I would stand up for it but ineffectively - because I would let my emotions run the show instead of my reasoning (if anyone is familiar with the rider and elephant metaphor - here ya go). It's been my experience that there is an aversion to employees expressing strong emotions in the work place and I'm not quite sure how this came about but I think this aversion is related to why Graham sees us as passive. I think there's a fear that we'll be reprimanded if we do stand up for what we believe in and in doing so overly express how we feel and not just what we think. Maybe there's a training topic there - how to express ourselves passionately yet respectfully in the work place - especially when we're angry which is a completely healthy emotion.
   

What are your thoughts on this? Have you had similar experiences? Similar impressions? Different experiences? Different impressions?

Julie Z.