Building Leadership Skills: Community Engagement

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Building Leadership Skills Community Engagement

• Instructor
• Gail Griffith
• gailg_at_carr.org
• An Infopeople Workshop
• Winter, 2009

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This Workshop Is Brought to Youby the Infopeople
Project
Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project
supported by the California State Library. It
provides a wide variety of training to California
libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered
around the state and are open registration on a
first-come, first-served basis. For a complete
list of workshops, and for other information
about the project, go to the Infopeople website
at infopeople.org.
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Introductions

• Name
• Library
• Position
• A number
• On a scale of 1-5, how engaged would you say your
  library is with its community? (1 low, 5 high)

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Workshop Overview

• What is an engaged library?
• aligning library services with community
  priorities
• Make yourself and your library visible
• image and the power of language
• Identify and connect with communities and
  stakeholders
• how connected are you?
• What kind of partnership are you looking for?
• Pragmatic partnering
• reaching out and saying yes
• partnership planning

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Questions for the Group

• How does your library already engage with its
  community, and what are the benefits?
• Whose job is it to help the library engage?
• How might engagement look different in a public,
  academic, school, or special library?

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Examples of Engaged Libraries

• Education Howard County, MD
• Community Issues Johnson County, KS
• Museum/Theatre Partners Charlotte-Mecklenburg,
  NC
• Community Centers Chicago, IL
• Others you know about?

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What does your library have to crow about?
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Words That Work
The goal use strong, powerful language without
falling into library jargon or flavor of the
week phrases!

• Weak
• Good, nice, worthwhile

• Strong
• Critical, essential,
• vital

Words that Work Its Not What You Say, Its
What People Hear, by Dr. Frank Luntz (2007)
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Which is stronger?

• Process

• Results

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How Connected are You?
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What other partnership opportunities do you see?
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Pragmatic Partnering

• What are you looking for in a partnership?
• levels of involvement
• formal v. informal
• short-term v. long-term
• Are partnerships born or made?

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Generating Energy for Partnering

• Round One
• Person 1 is a potential partner whose task is to
  suggest ideas for projects to the other group
  members.
• Person 2 and 3 must say No (followed by
  whatever reason you like) to every idea that is
  mentioned.
• Keep generating (and reacting to) ideas until
  time is called.

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Round Two

• Person 2 is now the potential partner whose task
  is to suggest ideas for projects to the other two
  group members.
• Person 1 and 3 must say Yes, but.. (followed by
  whatever reason you like) to every idea that is
  mentioned.
• Keep generating (and reacting to) ideas until
  time is called.

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Round Three

• Person 3 is now the potential partner whose task
  is to suggest ideas for projects to the other two
  group members.
• Person 1 and 2 must repeat the idea they heard
  before saying Yes, and(followed by a statement
  that builds on the suggestion) to every idea that
  is mentioned.
• Keep generating (and reacting to) ideas until
  time is called.

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Exercise 4 Creating a Partnership Plan

• Small groups
• Choose a community partner from the map you
  developed earlier
• Develop an initial partnership plan using the
  Exercise questions
• What powerful phrase will you use to describe
  your partnership or project?

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Exercise 5 The Elevator Speech

• As individual develop your speech using
  powerful words
• In groups of 4 Practice with timer
• Listen and give feedback
• Pick one speech to share with the group

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Workshop Evaluation