In the second installment in this series, I talked about the need for academic leadership to have confidence in the library leader’s full alignment with the institutional mission, pointing out the paradox that the more confidence the institution has in the library’s alignment, the more freedom the library is likely to have for independent movement — whereas the less confidence campus administrators have in the library’s alignment, the tighter the oversight the administration is likely to impose.

For this entry, I want to talk about a more internal issue: consistency. It’s important to understand that for library leaders, applying the principle of consistency doesn’t mean always doing the same thing — it means applying sound organizational principles in a consistent way.

Think about experiences you’ve had in libraries led by managers or administrators who were inconsistent in their application of organizational principles. This can take any number of forms. For example, a leader might:

• say that hiring and promotion decisions are always made according to the merits of the applicants (that’s a principle), but then give clear preference to people they like or who fit particular non-job-specific criteria;
• apply policies more loosely for members of the library administration than for other managers or line employees;
• set travel criteria designed to distribute funds fairly across the library, but routinely make exceptions for favored employees or for those who make a fuss;
• apply policies and guidelines differently based on his or her mood.

Chances are good that as you read through that brief list of hypothetical situations, you nodded grimly to yourself — many, probably most, of us have had leaders at one time or another who demonstrated this kind of inconsistency. Think about how that affected you as an employee, and also about how it led you to think about your leader. It was frustrating for you, certainly, and for others in the organization – after all, even if a leader’s inconsistency benefits you today, you can’t assume it won’t hurt you tomorrow. In the short run, some employees may be delighted by a particular manifestation of leaderly inconsistency, but even they know that in the long run it’s going to make life harder. 

But those being led are not the only ones who ultimately end up being affected negatively by the inconsistency of a leader. The leader him- or herself will suffer as well, because he or she will lose credibility, and therefore effectiveness. To put it briefly and bluntly, people won’t follow someone they can’t trust. They may submit to specific directives, and they may refrain from criticizing the leader to his or her face, but it will be very difficult to get them on board with proposed changes in strategy or vision, or even to get them consistently to follow policy, if they don’t have reason to believe that the strategy is going to persist or that the policies are real. Employees don’t trust leaders because it’s their job to trust them; employees trust leaders who demonstrate trustworthiness. The leader’s moral authority depends, fundamentally, on demonstrating a consistent commitment to principled leadership.

So what does that look like in practice? Let’s take the negative examples I listed above and try turning them into positive ones. A consistent leader will:

• be very careful not to let either irritation or delight affect the way he or she applies policies to individuals or library units;
• apply hiring and promotion criteria to all job or promotion candidates in a dispassionate way, according to clear and established criteria, resisting the temptation to put a thumb on the scale because of personal preferences or relationships;
• follow all library policies and ensure that his or her leadership team does the same (recognizing that in some cases, a policy might actually be different for administrators than it is for line employees);
• take care to ensure that budgets are distributed across the library in ways that reflect both clearly expressed library priorities and established allocation criteria, never giving preference to an individual or unit for reasons not provided for in policy.

Library leaders who demonstrate consistency in these and other ways will find that it pays huge dividends in their organization. Not everyone will like the decisions the leader makes (and no one will like all the decisions a leader makes), and not everyone will even like the leader on a personal level. But leaders who are consistent will find that their people do trust them — and for a library leader, having people’s trust is more important than having their affection.

Next week we’ll tackle the characteristic of reliability — which is closely related to consistency, but is different in some important ways.