{"id":416,"date":"2008-02-15T22:24:58","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T13:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/15\/aurora-leadership-institute-one-year-on-looking-outward\/"},"modified":"2008-02-15T22:24:58","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T13:24:58","slug":"aurora-leadership-institute-one-year-on-looking-outward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/15\/aurora-leadership-institute-one-year-on-looking-outward\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Leadership Institute one year on – looking outward."},"content":{"rendered":"

This time last year I recorded my thoughts about Leadership before I attended the five day Aurora Leadership Institute<\/a> , designed to “assist future leaders in the library and associated cultural and information industry to maximise their leadership skills and potential”. Leadership Thoughts<\/a>. (Looking back, I see I also speculated about it in November 2006<\/a> when my application was accepted ). It’s been one year, so time to reflect on the experience.<\/p>\n

The next post is about what I got out of Aurora personally. This post is more external – what I think about Leadership now and how I fit into it.<\/p>\n

Since Aurora, I’ve had a pretty amazing year professionally – trips interstate<\/a>, speaking gigs<\/a>, creative<\/a> and interesting<\/a> projects, a new position<\/a> and many opportunities to have interesting discussions<\/a> with established and up-and-coming library<\/a> leaders.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve watched as my Aurora classmates from last year have moved to more appropriate jobs, done very creative things in their existing jobs, published, acted in secondments with huge responsibility and arranged events and seminars for the profession.<\/p>\n

Would it have happened without Aurora ?<\/p>\n

Maybe we would have done all this stuff anyway, but I’m 100% certain that we would have done it differently.<\/p>\n

I would have been less mindful. Less able to see what was effective. Less able to understand and consider the strategic impact. Less able to accept that what I was doing was leadership.<\/p>\n

Aurora has taught me that one can truly lead from any position. I now place a higher value on mentorship than I did – and understand how I can be a mentor. Before Aurora I thought I was too lowly, too new in the game to think of mentoring anyone else. Now I realise that it’s not about being extremely wise and venerable and passing information on in some kind of master\/novice relationship.<\/p>\n

Mentoring can be about encouraging others, providing opportunities for them to shine, acknowledging fantastic efforts, spotting the dreams they might have and reinforcing that they are on the right path, or suggesting new ones… and even being brave enough to step out of my comfort zone and have a word when I think that someone may be damaging their career.<\/p>\n

At Aurora we spent time with mentors who are leaders in our field. I now understand that they have no superpowers and are very human and very individual. This has made what they do seem more within the reach of us regular folk. It also makes what they do seem all the more remarkable – without magic fairy dust they are able to keep large organisations functioning or contribute substantially to our professional organisation – super effectively using the same 24 hours that we are all allocated for each day.<\/p>\n

Instead of magic fairy dust, they all seemed to have a strong and certain commitment to what they do. They all seemed to masterfully work out what was the most important thing for them to do at any one time, and then focus on doing that. They were all comfortable in the role of leader. They all obviously actively engaged with the world outside their institutions, and bought that knowledge back to strengthen their home institution.<\/p>\n

After Aurora I understand how crucial it is to keep an eye on the future and on trends. I won’t know whether what I am doing now is the most effective use of my time if I don’t have a context or vision about how relevant it is to the future. What I am doing today is shaping that future, so I really need to know where I am going.<\/p>\n

Back a year ago, I wondered whether<\/p>\n

Aurora will persuade me that their are rewards for moving up the food chain and losing that contact with the ground?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In some ways it has. I understand much more about how teams work and how strengths can complement each other. I am reassured that I don’t have to be good at every aspect of my job (Yes, before Aurora I did think that I had to be). I understand now that it can be about selecting the right people around me and actively looking for people with strengths that complement mine. I understand now that it’s up to me how out of touch I become with the ground, whether or not I move up the food chain.<\/p>\n

After all that, I still feel like I am only “half baked” from the Aurora experience, and like there is much more growth to come as a result of those five days last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time last year I recorded my thoughts about Leadership before I attended the five day Aurora Leadership Institute , designed to “assist future leaders in the library and associated cultural and information industry to maximise their leadership skills and potential”. Leadership Thoughts. (Looking back, I see I also speculated about it in November 2006…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BXdd-6I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}