Personal Effectiveness and Professionalism

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Personal Effectiveness and Professionalism

• Professor Sheila Corrall
• Chair in Librarianship Information Management
• Head of Library Management Public Policy
  Research Group

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Personal Effectiveness and Professionalism
E is for Effectiveness Aston University
November 2004

• Presentation outline
• Definitions of key terms
• Changes in the professional landscape
• Continuing professional development needs
• Competency models and skills toolkits
• Sources and options for professional learning

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Definitions

• Personal . . .
• Belonging to or affecting a particular person
  rather than anyone else.
• Effectiveness . . .
• Success in producing a desired or intended
  result.
• Professionalism. . .
• The competence or skill expected of a
  professional.
• Oxford Dictionary of English. 2nd ed. 2003

Personal Effectiveness and Professionalism
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In a work context . . .
Personal Effectiveness is often conceived as a
set of competences, capabilities or qualities, eg

• Concern with impact
• Diagnostic use of concepts
• Efficiency orientation
• Proactivity
• Conceptualisation
• Self-confidence

• Use of oral presentations
• Managing group processes
• Use of socialised power
• Perceptual objectivity
• Self-control
• Stamina and adaptability

Boyatzis, R.E. The Competent Manager A Model
for Effective Performance. Wiley, 1982.
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Professionalism is a broader concept

• Profession . . .
• A calling requiring specialized knowledge and
  often long and intensive preparation including
  instruction in skills and methods as well as in
  the scientific, historical, or scholarly
  principles underlying such skills and methods,
  maintaining by force of organization and
  concerted opinion high standards of achievement
  and conduct, and committing its members to
  continued study and to a kind of work which has
  for its prime purpose the rendering of a public
  service.
• Websters Third New International Dictionary,
  1966.

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Professions and Professionals

• Defining characteristics
• Body of knowledge
• Code of conduct
• Framework of qualifications
• Maintenance of competence
• Independence of judgement
• Relationship of trust
• Responsibility to colleagues

• Continuing
• Professional
• Development
• Personal
• Responsibility
• self-appraisal
• target-setting
• planned learning

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Professionals and Organisations

• Lifespan of initial professional education is
  shortening as the pace of change accelerates
• Knowledge is becoming more volatile with the
  depth and breadth of its boundaries expanding
• Expansion is leading to increasing specialism and
  web of intra- and inter-professional
  relationships
• Boundaries among specialists and between
  professionals and managers are blurring
• Professionals are working in new flatter
  structures with devolved responsibilities and
  team working
• Information-intensive professions are adopting
  Evidence-Based Policy-making and Practice

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Key Professional Development Needs

• Specialist information-related knowledge, skills
  are necessary, but not sufficient for
  professional competence
• Information work at every level involves
  management of something, eg collections, budgets,
  projects, time, etc
• Research suggests the most significant skills
  gaps and shortages are in business and personal
  competencies, especially strategic management and
  critical thinking
• Information professionals also need to understand
  how different disciplines use information and
  technologies
• Library staff need to work across traditional
  boundaries and be proactive in collaborating with
  other specialists
• Battin 2001, Skelton Abel 2001, Fisher 2002,
  isNTO 2003

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All professionals need a complex mix of
specialist, generic and contextual knowledge,
skills, behaviours and values
Survival Skills (needed by all professionals)
Essential Enablers (both generic and
context-specific skills/knowledge)
Interpersonal
Organisational
Professional
CPD
Technical
Managerial
Personal
Professional Knowledge Base will evolve and
expand over time
Core Competence (necessary, but not sufficient)
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Professional Partnerships
Overlapping Boundaries
Teaching Learning
Research Consultancy
Project Roles
Libraries Information Services
Information Literacy
Team Work
Electronic Library
Study Skills
Information Technology
Learning Development
Learning Technology
Increasing Specialisms
Expanding Knowledge Base
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Broadening and Deepening Professional
CompetenceMore Comprehensiveness at Higher
Capacity
more
Professional specialisms
depth
Subject knowledge
technical capacity
breadth
Business understanding
Information formats
Service offerings
less
functional comprehensiveness
User population
more
less
Adapted from Revolutionizing Science and
Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure. NSF,
2003
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Personal Development Planning Tools

• LTSN-ICS
• Key skills Communication, IT, Working with
  others, Application of number, Improving own
  learning
• Personal skills Self-mgmt, Organisational mgmt,
  Interacting with others, Decisions, Intellectual
• Professional skills Info res, Info service and
  org mgmt, Info systems, Environment

• HIMSS Learning Framework
• Managing activities
• Managing finance
• Managing people
• Managing information
• Managing projects
• Strategic management
• Leadership
• Specialist skills and knowledge
• 31 questions
• 4 levels

Other models of professional development have 5
or 6 levels (eg see Eraut 1994)
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www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/ILS/recordingilsskills.html
Recording Skills Development for Information and
Library Skills
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www.tfpl.com/skills_development/skills_toolkit.cfm
Knowledge and Information Skills Toolkit
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www.himss-lfo.bham.ac.uk/intro.asp
Career Development to Senior Management
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Sources of Professional Learning
mentors
supporters of learning
tutors
managers
purveyors of experience
interpreters of knowledge
People
insights into routine
readings for courses
keeping things going
Experience
Publications
briefings on issues
putting things right
solutions to problems
doing new things
lessons from failure
learning from innovation
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Personal Development Options

• Challenging assignments
• Cross-functional projects
• Mentoring relationships
• Networking activities
• External secondments
• Speaking at conferences
• Reading, thinking and writing about professional
  initiatives or issues
• UCR Award

• Carrying out research or consultancy work
• Undertaking further study eg MBA, MEd
• University of Sheffield Masters-level modules
• Educational Informatics
• Information Literacy Research NEW for 2005-06
• or MPhil / PhD

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• Any Questions?
• Prof Sheila Corrall
• Department of Information Studies
• Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street
• Sheffield S1 4DP
• s.m.corrall_at_sheffield.ac.uk