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| Public library staff from Allegany, Frederick, Garrett, and Washington counties made connections with each other with the help of Julie Gaver on February 19th at the LaVale Library. |
Workshop Details
Making the connection: Strategies for building better customer relationships
Presenter: Julie Gaver
Description:
From the website:
"This fun and highly interactive session provides attendees with opportunities to increase their comfort and confidence for networking, establish rapport with others, enhance their listening and conversational skills, and understand good social etiquette."
5 comments:
Julie Gaver's Making the Connection workshop was an excellent opportunity for me to break out of my shell in order to become more comfortable and confident handling the high level of interaction with patrons that we face on a daily basis at the circulation desk. I am naturally shy, but I really enjoyed the questions that Julie gave us to ask one another. Doing that activity showed how easily we can relate to people that we don’t know and that we do have common interests with almost everyone we meet. The activities that we did during the workshop directly relate to the situations we find ourselves in at the library, and with what I learned from the workshop I can do my best to make the patrons I am helping feel like their concerns matter and that I am happy to help them.
I don’t think there is anything that I would change from this workshop. Julie’s enthusiasm made time fly by and made me compelled to apply what I learned. On the job I have made sure to give patrons eye contact throughout my conversations with them and appear genuinely happen to help them.
This is the third workshop by Julie Gaver that I have attended, and I really like her positive approach and practical lessons. During the session, she promoted the idea of keeping a "Best Thing of the Day" journal, which really struck a cord with me. It makes sense that this practice will encourage me to focus on positive things that happen each day. It's only been a few days, but already, I find myself asking, "Is this it? Is this my best thing of the day?" when anything good happens. I have little doubt that this habit of paying more attention to positive experiences will help me feel better and, consequently, have better interactions with patrons.
Without doubt, however, the biggest take-away has already been mentioned by Rebeccah. I know the power of making eye contact with people, but I am often guilty of avoiding it, consciously and unconsciously. Looking a patron or co-worker in the eye means taking the time and effort to really acknowledge them, and that is something that is harder than it sounds. Much of the time, I just don't want to, if I am being completely honest. Julie's workshop helped me to see that eye contact is a small price for making someone feel like they matter. That's a lesson I won't soon forget.
I took this workshop in the hopes of improving my ability to make "small talk". It seems like our interactions with patrons are often the same from one to the other: "How may I help you," or "Have a nice day" being the most common phrases. It's nice when you are able to connect with patrons individually, making them truly feel like they matter. While this sounds simple in theory, in practice it is actually quite difficult. This workshop really helped me with this by making me realize that it's possible to find things in common with almost anybody. The emphasis on eye contact was helpful, too. Even though I feel like I've always been pretty good at eye contact, this workshop brought home the importance of maintaining eye contact during conversation. I now find myself looking for a person's eye color when I talk to them! :)
This is my 2nd Julie Gaver workshop and I enjoyed this one as much as the first. The activities she plans are not only a lot of fun but very helpful. Eye contact: I may talk a lot but making and keeping eye contact is sometimes hard for me because after a minute or two I start laughing. I've been practicing for the past few days and it's getting easier although it's still in my head that somebody will ask : what are YOU looking at? What a great idea of keeping a Best Thing of the Day journal. I started this over the weekend at home and already some of the things I've written down make me laugh. All in all a very worthwhile workshop to attend.
Thank you for the wonderful feedback everyone. I'm so happy to hear that there were parts of the workshop that resonated with you. Keep practicing and being mindful of being "other-people" centered. I'm proud to work with you all and honored to call you a valued client. Best, Julie PS - you were the "best part of that day."
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