Failing in the Right Direction

What happens at your library when something doesn’t go according to plan? Do you or your colleagues find yourselves:

• Apologizing and promising not to let that happen again?
• Pointing out the circumstances that were beyond your control?
• Worrying about how this setback might affect your budget or your career?
• Wishing that other people had done more to support you?
• Or just feeling generally down and discouraged?

We hear a lot about the need for innovation and risk taking in the workplace but not so much about the flip side of that coin: failure. Failure happens. Some even say that there is no creativity without failure. In fact, many success stories – Thomas Edison, Vera Wang, Jay-Z, Dr. Seuss – are prefaced by accounts of repeated failures. Even so, the library environment has not been especially tolerant of imperfect outcomes. If we want to continue to change and grow, we’ll need to rethink how we deal with failure.

Though we can’t totally avoid failing, we can learn to fail more constructively. In this lively one-hour webinar, we will explore how to:

• Set clear parameters for what constitutes success,
• Inspire support and participation even when success cannot be guaranteed,
• Keep minor glitches from escalating,
• Isolate and correct what went wrong without shaming or blaming,
• Understand when to let go and when to regroup and keep trying,
• Extract valuable information from unsuccessful ventures,
• Care for ourselves and others when things don’t work out as well as we’d hoped, and
• Avoid repeating old mistakes while retaining the nerve to make new ones!

If you are a member of the library community who has ever planned, supervised, funded, participated in, or stood by helplessly during an honest effort that fell short, this webinar will offer you both practical techniques and reassuring perspectives.

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Presentation Material

Speaker's slides

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Keywords: Communication and interpersonal skills, Professional development and efficiency, Supervision and management