I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the quality of dependability, about various ways it does and doesn’t manifest itself in library leaders, why it’s important, and how leaders can demonstrate it. I’ve decided to produce five(!) posts on this topic, starting with this overview, and then proceeding to examine four particular manifestations of dependability, each getting its own post.

Let’s start by thinking about what it means to be dependable, and why dependability is so important for leaders.

I realize that this may seem like an obvious, even tautological point, one that hardly needs to be belabored in even a single blog post – let alone five. Does anyone really believe that dependability isn’t essential to effective leadership? 

Actually, yes. There are leaders who are so driven by fear of conflict that they allow their personal conflict-avoidance to whipsaw them between competing demands. These leaders often make the mistake of believing that if they can just mollify whoever happens to be in front of them at a given moment, they will be able to make everyone in the library love them. In fact, of course, by trying to appease whoever they happen to be speaking with, they actually end up making everyone in the organization miserable.

Dependability is an absolutely core principle of library leadership.

There are also leaders who actively (though not necessarily consciously) cultivate their undependability as a strategy for keeping the people they lead off-balance. If library employees can’t assume that policies will be followed consistently and fairly, but instead have to monitor the whims of the library’s leader (and do whatever they can to cater to his or her preferences, prejudices, and momentary desires), this puts the leader in an exceptional position of power. It also, of course, contributes to chaos and frustration in the organization – but for some leaders, that feels like a relatively small price to pay for the pleasure of watching the people they lead treat them like an emperor.

And then there are leaders who recognize and pay lip service to the principle of dependability, but simply aren’t willing to do the hard work that being dependable entails. Being dependable means more than just being willing to have difficult conversations. Sometimes it means staying up late at night to complete a promised deliverable; sometimes it means turning down an attractive invitation in order to fulfill a prior commitment made to attend a library event; sometimes it means fulfilling a promise made hastily that turned out to be a bigger commitment than expected. 

My discussion of this issue will be based on my belief – borne partly of my personal understanding of right and wrong, and partly of my experience both as a library leader and as someone who has worked under many library leaders – that dependability is an absolutely core principle of library leadership. Leaders who are not dependable are, invariably, ineffective leaders. That doesn’t mean that they never get things done; ineffective leaders can actually be very good at accomplishing tasks that don’t require good leadership. It does mean that they fail to effectively lead their people – and that the things they do accomplish almost invariably come at an outsized cost in morale and other, more tangible resources. 

My next four posts will explore the following four interconnected but distinct manifestations of dependability:

• Institutional alignment
• Consistency
• Reliability
• Backbone

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!