When you’re a library dean or director, a certain amount of spotlight will naturally be directed towards you. Being gracious and natural in the spotlight is, therefore, an important skill for library leaders, and I’ll go further and say that leaders who duck the spotlight (rather than learning how to function well in it) are not fully doing their job. Sometimes there are things you can accomplish for your people and your institution when you’re in the spotlight that you can’t accomplish otherwise.

That said, one of the most valuable things a library leader can do is to redirect the spotlight, where possible, especially when the spotlight is shining on you because of an accomplishment of some kind. Back in January, I talked about the importance of looking for opportunities to put the people you lead in the spotlight, and today I want to address a variation on that theme: the importance not only of directing attention to your people when good things happen, but also of pulling attention away from them when bad things happen.

Being a library leader means accepting accountability for the things that go wrong within your scope of stewardship. If you’re the director or dean, that means you’re responsible for anything that goes wrong in the library — you may not have caused it to go wrong, and you may not be directly to blame, but the responsibility (including the responsibility to ensure the situation gets resolved) is yours. If you’re a division head or a department chair, the same is true within your division or department.

I think we all understand that. But what does it mean in practice?

It can mean several things. Important ones include:

• When an angry person comes in gunning for one of your people, put yourself in the way and stop them. Your job is to address the issue with your employee; that is not the job of someone from outside the organization (unless they have a campus job that requires it, such as in central HR).
• When someone wants to know who was responsible for a disaster, your answer should be along the lines of “Me. I’m responsible, and will work with my people to fix this problem and ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again. If you have further concerns, please bring them to me.”
• Never throw one of your people under the bus. Even when it’s obvious which of your employees caused a problem, never use that person as cover for yourself. Take responsibility for the organizational failure and then work with that employee behind the scenes in whatever way is needed to get it resolved.

Now, to be clear: none of this means that you should cover up genuine malfeasance (as opposed to simple error) on the part of one of your employees. Everyone in your library is accountable for his or her behavior and needs to be held accountable. But how that accountability is managed matters very much.

So enough about the bad stuff. How about when good things happen?

As a library leader, you will often receive praise from outside the organization. And sometimes you’ll actually deserve it. If it’s true that the library’s failures are your responsibility, it’s also true that you deserve credit for the library’s successes. However, part of being an effective leader is learning to resist the temptation to take all the credit you deserve. One important skill to learn is that of receiving praise graciously and then redirecting it gracefully.

For example: suppose a vice president stops by your office and says “Man, the library is always so filled with busy students. You’ve done a great job of creating student-friendly spaces here.” In response, you could just say “Thanks, yes — I’m really proud of what we’ve done.” Better, though, would be to say “Thanks, yes — we had an amazing committee of three librarians and three staff who worked really hard to design our spaces and they did an amazing job. I was consistently impressed with their creativity and their student-centeredness.”

Or suppose a faculty member thanks you for the library’s recent purchase of a database that will greatly enhance her department’s ability to do its work. You could smile and say “You’re welcome; I’m grateful we can be of support to you.” Or, better, you could say “You know, our head of collection development worked really hard to negotiate that license agreement and make it possible for us to purchase the database. Could I introduce you to her? I’m sure she’d love to hear what a difference it’s making for your department.”

Or suppose a powerful and influential alumnus congratulates you on the library’s recent rise in a national ranking, implying that it was due to your leadership. You could say “Yes, that recognition is very gratifying.” Or, better, you could say “You know what I think contributed significantly to our higher ranking? The workflow changes we put in place that reduced turnaround time for book requests. Our fulfillment team really went above and beyond to improve patrons’ experience with our services, and they just knocked it out of the park.”

Here’s the thing, though. This only works if you mean it — if you really are that proud of your people, and if they really did the work you’re talking about. People can smell false modesty a mile away, and redirecting the spotlight will only be really effective if you genuinely want it to shine on others rather than yourself.

Developing that kind of humility isn’t easy, though, and it takes time for all of us. In the meantime, we can fake it as best we can.