Fostering Librarian Leadership Through Mentoring

The aim of effective mentorship is to promote the development of the learner (Daloz, 2004). This article highlights my own leadership journey, sharing how mentoring has given my professional life direction, taught me passion, and how mentoring has fostered the development of my leadership skills. I emphasize several of my mentoring experiences and conclude by sharing deductions I have drawn as a direct result of these experiences. Finding a Professional Direction I began my library career in 1981 as a paraprofessional at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. I chose this job hot as a career path, but because the position provided free tuition benefits that would help me accomplish the most important life goal I had at that time, obtaining a bachelor's degree. I realized within the first 3 months of the job that a career as a professional librarian was not only highly desirable, but also a perfect match for my quest to work in an educational setting, my aspiration to serve others, and my requirement of working in a profession that actively supported lifelong learning. Without realizing what was happening, I was being mentored! My supervisors, coworkers, and other librarians in my organization all encouraged me to consider librarianship as a profession. I now realize that I was provided, through their informal mentoring, additional opportunities that would eventually spark my interest in becoming a librarian and eventually, in becoming a library leader. Learning That Mentoring Is a Passionate Cycle of Support Upon the acceptance of my first professional position, I once again was provided significant learning and leadership opportunities through informal mentoring. These experiences included encouragement to professionally publish, opportunities to continue my formal education, advice on how to become involved with local and national library associations, and administrative support to attend leadership training seminars. These positive experiences helped me realize that the only limitations to my career, and to the development of my leadership skills, were those that I choose to accept. I knew from their actions that my informal mentors were passionate about out profession and passionate about ensuring that the leadership for our profession prosper. I experienced how mentoring can make a difference in another person's life, and experienced how an informal mentoring network creates a passionate cycle of support. My informal mentors freely shared stories from their own mentoring experiences, and instilled in me the desire to continue the cycle of support when I was ready to take the next very important step. As I developed from a neophyte librarian to a middle-management librarian, I made the effort to continue the cycle of informal mentoring by encouraging my library student workers to consider a professional career in librarianship. As my skills developed and my reputation grew as a leader in local and national library associations, I continued the cycle of informal mentoring by encouraging and providing opportunities for the newly hired librarians at the institutions where I was employed. In addition to learning that effective mentoring is about creating a passionate and continuous circle of networking support, I also began learning informally about effective leadership skills by watching my mentors. I observed that good leaders constantly challenge themselves and found opportunities for self-improvement and was impressed that they acknowledged their leadership weaknesses and took time to participate in training that would help them improve these weaknesses. I noticed that leaders are good listeners and that no matter how poorly my mentors were treated, they always treated others with professionalism and respect. More importantly, I saw how my mentors were great leaders because they took the time to make personal and professional connections with people. …