Happy August! In my part of the world, the Susquehanna Valley in south central Pennsylvania, I can feel the ever-so-slight indications that summer’s intensity is waning. Perhaps it is the slow creep of sunset toward a more reasonable evening time. Or the occasional cooler temperatures appearing more frequently (or is that wishful thinking?). We’ve crossed the halfway point between summer and fall and that tug of transition and change from the natural world is pulling, calling to us toward discovery and curiosity about what the new season may bring.
Adjusting Our Expectations
In the midst of working with clients, celebrating milestones with family, and adventuring with friends, thoughts of you and what we’re building at Fosgail have never been far from my mind. Putting the newsletter on hiatus for a few months has given me some much needed perspective on what this newsletter is about and why it’s important.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve made several attempts to set goals for myself with regard to writing and sharing content with you. Inevitably, something will happen: I will underestimate my availability, or how long it will take me to complete a task, or something else will shift or change. And that often means that the goals I set are no longer viable. At least not as I had intended when I set them.
While this is an incredibly frustrating experience, and can sometimes lead to feelings of failure and harsh self-criticism, I’m starting to look at it as a little opportunity or invitation to reconsider and adjust. Reconsider the goals I’ve set to see if there’s a way to make them more appropriate or relevant; and adjust what I expect of myself, my context, and the potential outcomes.
Rewriting and revising goals is a familiar practice, one that I honed with Integrated Library Planning. Learning how expectations influence this practice is a new insight for me.
Expectation is powerful. It has the ability to inspire us, to energize us, to motivate us. When it positively aligns with our experience of reality, it’s a catalyst for transformation. When reality and expectation do not meet, it sends shock waves through our system. Depending on the weight and importance of our expectations, these could be small little tremors to seismic jolts that we feel in our core.
These are the topics I’m looking forward to exploring with you this quarter because I suspect I’m not the only one experiencing the gap between what I expected and what is happening. Here’s what’s ahead in August and September:
- A deeper look at how goals and expectation work together and play off of each other
- A consideration of expectation during times of transition
- Discovering practices to adjust expectation in ways that can improve our mindset and well-being in times of stress and challenge at work
- Working together to review and reset goals that carry us into a new academic year or through the remainder of the calendar year
I’ll have more specifics to share in next week’s newsletter about the events and opportunities we’re planning. Many of our events will be hosted in the Fosgail Community. You can watch for information there and on our newly redesigned website.
Before we look ahead, though, I want to close out something I started earlier this year.
Revisiting Attendant Leadership
In my last newsletter, I was about to make the shift from introducing the two dimensions of Attendant Leadership to its five expressions. And then I left you hanging!
To resolve this tension, I would like to offer you our first white paper: “The Value of Leadership Development for Theological Librarians.” Attendant Leadership featured prominently in a presentation I made to the Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries in March, and subsequently in my published remarks in the Spring issue of their Bulletin. I’m now excited to share it with you.
While the title of the paper is addressed to theological librarians, I believe it contains experiences and insights that are relevant to other types of librarians, as well as those in other fields.
Access the White Paper
This won’t be the last you’ll hear of Attendant Leadership. However, it does signal the end of the shortened series about it. We’ll come back to these ideas again, I trust. Thank you for remaining on the journey with me.