Resonant Leadership

"When the best leader's work is done the people say, "We did it ourselves'."  Lao-Tzu

"Management is about coping with complexity ... Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change ... What leaders really do is prepare organizations for change and help them (people) cope as they struggle through it."  John 

"The most important personal traits a leader can bring to any kind of change effort are imagination, conviction, passion, and confidence in others." Rosabeth Moss Kanter

"The leader's job, after all, is not to provide energy but to release it from others." Frances Hesselbein, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute and past Chief Executive Office of the Girl Scouts of America

Leadership as a process of encouraging and inspiring others in our lives.

Maureen Sullivan has

more than twenty five years of experience as a consultant on organization development, strategic planning, leadership development, introducing and managing organizational change, organization and work redesign, establishment of staff development and learning programs for today's workplace, creating a work environment that supports diversity, revision of position classification and compensation systems, and the identification and development of competencies

.

Although she resides in Maryland, Maureen welcomes the chance to come to Massachusetts to lead many leadership and library-related management workshops, symposiums and trainings. Once again she returns to MLA and Resonant Leadership.

Maureen's advice: Spend more time listening than speaking – repeat what you have heard and paraphrase. Good leaders know themselves, they know understand and appreciate their followers. Recognize leadership to be a relationship with with those followers. Leaders are authentic and they look toward the future. They are resilient and they engage others in creating and moving toward a vision. You must remain open to learning to be an effective leader. Select three of your strengths – things that you do well and work on those.

Maureen's workshops are always potent and useful. There are many resources on the web that cite her articles and philosophies. In this particular workshop we focused on Resonant Leadership and the principles of the authors of books, Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope, and Compassion by Richard E. Boyatzis and Annie McKee and Becoming a Resonant Leader: Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness by Richard E. Boyatzis, Fran Johnston, and Annie McKee. Their mentor and colleague is none other than Warren Bennis, author of "The Seven Ages of the Leader."

Maureen stresses these practices for leadership development at your library:
1. Focus on leadership development as a key initiative within the library. Make it a clear priority.
2. Connect and align the leadership development program with the larger change initiatives in the library.
3. Take a broad view of who will have the ability to lead. Be careful not to prejudge potential too early.
4. Create opportunities for potential leaders to interact with effective, more experienced leaders.
5. Identify meaning and challenging projects and assignments that will challenge and stretch potential leaders.
6. Ensure that the current formal leaders in the library are held accountable for effective leadership. Insist that their leadership practice matches the espoused leadership philosophy and values of the library.
7. Make the process as transparent as possible.
8. Recognize the different stages in leadership development.
9. Remain alert to complex and challenging situations. Put managers and potential leaders in those situations.
10. Make your leadership development program one that is based upon an action-learning model.
11. Establish a mentoring program.
12. Expect current leaders to take an active role. Develop their own teachable point of view, i.e. their view of what it takes to be successful in their organization and what it takes to lead others. Create a dynamic story to convey this.
13. Lastly, create a learning culture within the library.