Many years ago, I was invited to give an online presentation. These were the days before Zoom, when it was more common for webinars to be broadcast almost like TV shows. In fact, the organization that had organized this particular webinar had an actual TV studio, complete with a living-room like set and multiple cameras, from which its programs emanated. As odd as it may sound in 2025, I was actually flown to another state to deliver a web-based presentation.

Anyway, when I arrived at the studio they showed me around and explained how everything was going to work, and then I was ushered into a room where a professional makeup artist was waiting to perform the unenviable (and ultimately fruitless) task of trying to make me look good on camera. When she was done (or, more likely, had given up) I was left to myself to wait for showtime.

As I waited, I wandered around the studio a bit, a paper collar sticking up from under my shirt to protect it from the still-fresh makeup that had been applied to my face and neck. As I turned the corner around the edge of the set, a technician came scurrying around the same corner from the other direction and we almost collided. I apologized for being underfoot, and he looked a bit scandalized. “Oh no,” he said. “You’re the talent. It’s my job to stay out of your way.” For a brief moment I wondered if he was giving me a hard time, but it was immediately clear that he was being completely sincere.

I’ve thought about this interaction many, many times in the years since. Because up until that day, I had always privately flattered myself that in the extremely unlikely event that I ever became rich and famous, I was much too grounded and centered and basically decent to ever turn into one of those screeching, clueless, demanding rock stars that you see and hear about – the ones who become so addicted to their privilege, and have so come to believe that their privilege is a natural outgrowth of who they really are, that they can no longer stand not to have everything they want, the moment they want it.

Good leaders don’t pretend that they aren’t in leadership positions – but they also don’t let themselves fall prey to vanity and hype

What I realized, in the moment that the studio technician said to me “Oh no, you’re the talent – it’s my job to stay out of your way,” was that if I were treated like that all day, every day, it would be an embarrassingly short time before I turned into a complete monster.

Now: why am I sharing this experience in a newsletter about library leadership – a job category that offers (believe me) very little in the way of fawning sycophancy or even significant job perks (though heaven knows there are some)?

I’m sharing it because as you rise in an organizational hierarchy, you gain increasing amounts of organizational privilege – and even if people aren’t bringing you drinks or fluffing your pillows or constantly telling you how marvelous you are, they are nevertheless treating you differently than they would if you were not in a position of power over them. When you’ve risen to a leadership position you may have noticed that your jokes became just a bit funnier, or that when you spoke up and voiced an opinion in a meeting, the conversation tended to peter out, or that you got more compliments on the quality of your work and your management style (or even your clothes) than you used to.

If you think back on your career, chances are good that you can remember dealing with some difficult leaders who were difficult, in significant part, because they had experienced this kind of organizational privilege and had inhaled rather than resisted it. They let themselves come to believe that they deserved to be treated the way people were treating them because they had power over them. The more organizational power you gain, the more important it becomes to avoid letting yourself slip into that way of thinking.

Now, to be clear: “resisting” this treatment doesn’t mean being ungracious about it or adopting an air of false modesty (which can be really irritating in its own way) or declining to make decisions. Good leaders don’t pretend that they’re not in leadership positions. And we should also be clear that the phrase “check your privilege” can itself be abused by those who are looking for a way to avoid dealing with issues or used as an attack against leaders they don’t like – good leaders also don’t let themselves be pushed around by those they’re supposed to be leading. But you do need to be self-aware, and you need to do the hard work of maintaining that self-awareness over time.

What does that look like? Here are a few specific tips that my experience has suggested can be helpful:

Don’t be the first to express an opinion. In a meeting or an email discussion, let others express their opinions before you speak up, because once you weigh in there will be some who then become reluctant to say something different. Don’t fool yourself: when you’re in a leadership position, yours is not just one more voice in the general scrum of ideas. It’s a voice that comes freighted with extra organizational weight, no matter how hard you try to make space for others’.

Go to other people’s offices rather than summoning them to yours. This may sound like a very minor thing, but when you’re in leadership, small gestures can have an outsized impact. Asking someone to come to your office is a power move (and there may be times when you do so for exactly that reason). Going to someone else’s office conveys humility. And getting in the habit of seeking people out rather than summoning them can help inoculate you against internalizing an undue sense of privilege.

Don’t keep people waiting if you can possibly avoid it. Closely related to the point above is the principle that you can always tell who has the most power in an organization by looking at who is able to keep whom waiting. Don’t let yourself accidentally convey a lack of consideration for others’ time just because you can get away with it. If you must keep someone waiting, apologize – make it clear that you were not engaging in a power move.

Be gracious in receiving compliments, but be very careful not to take credit for others’ work. When you’re in a leadership position you’ll get a lot of compliments as well as a lot of criticism. When someone compliments you, don’t argue; thank them for their kindness and let the conversation move on (asking them something about their own work is one gracious way to shift the subject). But when someone compliments you on something about the library that actually arose from the work of others, make sure you tell them whose work they’re really complimenting. The more you praise your people behind their backs, the better. When you praise them to their faces they may not believe you, but when they hear from someone else that you praised them when they weren’t around they’re more likely to believe the praise was real and sincere.