Vision & Balance: Leading and Managing in the Academic Library

For this entry in my ongoing “Two and a Half Cheers” series of posts, I’d like to take a look at the apology.

No one likes apologizing. When you do so, you’re acknowledging not only that you made a mistake, but that you made a mistake that directly impacted someone else in a negative way and that you need to own up to it and express regret. But we all know that as difficult as it can be, apologizing is sometimes essential, particularly for leaders – it’s not only how you express regret when you hurt someone and signal your desire to do better, but it also shows that you’re not going to hide your mistakes behind authority and power. Leaders can get away with bad behavior that other people can’t, and when you apologize for making a mistake you’re demonstrating that you aren’t going to take advantage of that privilege. Doing so builds trust among those you lead.

So why not three cheers for apologizing, given how important it can be, especially for leaders?

Because like so many important leadership characteristics and practices, the apology can be misused. I’ve noticed a number of ways in which this can happen. Here are three examples:

The Manipulative Apology. This is an apology designed not to express sincere regret, but rather to force the other person to say that what the apologizer did was okay. Sometimes leaders and managers are on the receiving end of manipulative apologies, when the people they manage want constant reassurance and seek it by apologizing for things that don’t require an apology. But sometimes leaders engage in this practice themselves, when they want to manipulate those they lead into reassuring them. (A good leader accepts compliments gracefully, but doesn’t depend on the people he or she leads for validation. We’ll talk more in a future post about the importance of accepting that much of what you do will not be noticed or appreciated.)

The Insincere Apology. Remember when you were a kid, and your mom or dad forced you to say “I’m sorry” even in situations where you were confident you weren’t at fault? Remember the vibe that attended your apologies in those situations? And have you noticed that the same vibe sometimes attends apologies by professional adults in the workplace? Now, to be clear: insincere apologies aren’t always the worst thing in the world. Sometimes you grit your teeth and say “I’m sorry” not because you think the situation was entirely your fault, but because that’s the lowest-cost way forward. That’s not always healthy, but it’s not always unhealthy either. But as a leader, you need to be very careful about insincerity at all times. Your people can smell insincerity and hypocrisy, especially in their leaders, and few things will more effectively undermine a leader’s authority than when the people she leads stop being confident that they can trust her to be honest. If you don’t feel you can apologize sincerely, it’s better to express something other than apology. “It’s really unfortunate that this situation unfolded the way it did; let’s talk about what we can do to move forward in a productive way,” for example, or perhaps “None of us showed our best selves during yesterday’s meeting. I’d like to do what I can to help ensure that the vibe in our meetings is more constructive going forward.”

The Non-apology. We’ve all been on the receiving end of these, from people who want to sound like they’re apologizing but are actually blaming you. The classic example is “I’m sorry you feel like I was unfair to you” or “I’m sorry you misunderstood my email.” This gambit is usually – but maybe not always – a consciously dishonest strategy designed to manipulate rather than express genuine regret for something the person actually did wrong. There isn’t much you can do to prevent others from doing this, but as a leader you can be vigilant in avoiding doing it yourself.

Takeaways and Action Items

• Apologizing in an honest and non-manipulative way is an essential skill of leadership.
• However, apologies that are not honest often do more harm than good.
• When was the last time you did something as a leader for which you felt the need to apologize? How did you handle that situation? Did you do it in a way that you feel was best for your organization and its people? Do you wish you had done it differently?

Hi, all —

I’m on a combination of overseas business travel and family vacation during the week of 14 July, so Vision & Balance is taking a brief break. I’ll be back in your inboxes on 21 July. Stay cool (and balanced) out there!

A common critique of the scholarly humanities is that it’s a system under which a very small number of tenured and tenure-track faculty turn out a large number of new PhDs every year, thus creating a constantly growing number of aspiring humanistic academics for whom there are no academic jobs available – or, at least, no tenure-track professorial jobs.

But this isn’t just a problem in academia – I think it’s a problem with American culture generally when it comes to leadership. I have long been uncomfortable with the assumption, which seems pervasive to me, that everyone should aspire to higher and higher positions of leadership – that this represents “growth,” and in fact the only meaningful manifestation of growth. That assumption is baked into statements of educational mission that proclaim the organization’s goal to turn all of its students into leaders, and into cultural rhetoric that treats leadership as the assumed goal of all self- and professional development.

Obviously, if everyone becomes a “leader” then they’ll run out of people to lead. Of course, people can lead in different ways and not everyone who has the qualities of a leader is going to use those qualities in a formal professional role as a manager or administrator. But if everyone who graduates from a university does so with the expectation that he or she is going to be a professional leader, there will be a lot of disappointed people in the workforce.

One possible response to this reality might be to say “Well, we need to create more leadership opportunities.” And maybe we do – but we’ll never create enough formal, professional leadership opportunities to accommodate everyone who wants them (or even everyone who is qualified to hold them).

What if, instead, we were to take a step back and say “Not everyone needs to aspire to leadership; it’s okay to be happy as a follower, if that’s where you’re most comfortable”?

Let’s step back from the macro question, though, and focus more on the issue of library leadership. What I want to suggest today is that just because you work in a library, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to aspire to being a library administrator or director. If that role sounds interesting and exciting to you, then great – by all means, pursue it. But if it doesn’t, don’t feel guilty. Most people who work in libraries won’t ever direct a library. And there’s no reason for them to feel like they should.

If you’ve been thinking about pursuing library leadership, but you’re not positive it’s the right thing for you, I would suggest asking yourself some questions that might help you get a better sense of whether library leadership really would be a good fit. These include:

• How much do I like meetings? We tend to assume that everyone hates meetings, but that’s actually not true. Everyone hates bad meetings, of course, but meetings themselves are not unpleasant for everyone. In fact, there are lots of people who find meetings invigorating and energizing, who love the opportunity to talk through problems and challenges in person with colleagues, and who think better through conversation than through quiet individual reflection. If that describes you, then you’re likely to enjoy one of the major features of library leadership, which is participating in (and usually leading) meetings. Which brings us to the next question:
• How much do I like running meetings? This is a very different issue: even for people who enjoy meetings, always being the one in charge of the meeting can be exhausting. If you hate running meetings, you will hate being a library leader.
• How much do I like fundraising? If you’re the leader of an academic library, chances are good that a significant chunk of your time will be spent raising funds to supplement your library’s budget. This means lots of time spent cultivating relationships with rich people – holding receptions, going out to dinner, managing advisory groups, etc. This kind of work is some people’s personal definition of heaven; for others, it’s a perfect hell. If you fall into the latter category, library leadership may not be for you.
• Am I okay with people being mad at me? One of the tough realities of leadership is that if you’re a leader, someone will almost certainly be mad at you at all times. Not necessarily because you’re doing things wrong (though of course you might be), but simply because two people in an organization will sometimes want mutually exclusive things and only one of them can win, and it will be your job as leader to pick the winner. Often, of course, you can resolve disputes with compromise or restructuring – but not always. And it’s also true that whenever you do the right thing as a leader, some people will agree with it and be happy, and others will disagree and be angry, even if it’s indisputably the right thing. Good leaders don’t enjoy making people angry – but they have to be able to accept people being angry. That can be really, really hard, and there’s no shame in saying it’s not for you.
• Can I have hard conversations? One of the worst things about being a leader is having to tell people things they really, really don’t want to hear. Things like “it’s not working out and we’re going to have to let you go,” or “I know you worked really hard on this project, but it’s become clear that we need to give it to someone else” or “you are going to have to find a way to work constructively with your colleague or else you’ll have to start looking for another position.” Being a good leader means not just being able and willing to say those things, but also being able to say them in a way that is kind and empathetic and firm and consistent. Not everyone wants to do that. Not everyone should want to do it.
• Can I control my emotions? Being an effective leader requires the ability to not get visibly upset even when someone is yelling at you or when someone is accusing you unfairly or when something disastrous has happened and everyone is looking at you to see what they should do next. To be clear: I’m not saying that leaders shouldn’t show emotion; I’m saying that leaders have to be able to control themselves, even when feeling extreme emotion. Among other things, this means being able to refrain from responding in kind when someone else is yelling or accusing; it means being able to swallow the sarcastic or cutting response to someone who is making deeply ill-informed criticisms of you or your organization, and instead respond calmly and respectfully; it means being able to think clearly when your heart is pounding and sweat is breaking out on your forehead. To some degree these skills can be learned, but, like music and art and public speaking, they come more naturally to some people than to others.
• Can I keep my mouth shut? Keeping your mouth shut is one of the most important skills of leadership – both in the context of self-control (see above) and also in the context of confidentiality. I’ll be very blunt here: if you can’t keep a secret, you can’t be a library leader. In a leadership role you’ll become privy to highly sensitive and confidential information that simply can’t be shared, or that can only be shared in a very limited way. Some of it will be institutional information that you can’t share with your library team; some of it will be personnel information that you can’t share with anyone except your human resources manager; some of it will be sensitive financial information or intellectual property.

The above is not an exhaustive list of the questions you should ask yourself when deciding whether or not to pursue leadership positions in libraries, but it hits some of the most important issues. Next week I’ll share some thoughts on characteristics and orientations that make a great leader.

First of all, thanks so much for being a part of this ongoing experiment. I started Vision & Balance last September, unsure whether there would be enough interest to sustain it and with a bit of trepidation as to whether I’d be able to come up with two meaningful posts per week on the topic of leadership and management in academic libraries. And yet here we are – it seems to be going pretty well.

However, I’ve fallen out of love with the Ghost newsletter platform and have decided to make some changes.

First of all, I’m planning to migrate V&B from Ghost to a blog platform in September. This will provide a more flexible and open space for comments and interaction between me and you.

Second, I’m going to move away from the subscription model and instead make the newsletter free to all. So for those of you who have been subscribing on either a monthly or an annual basis: please don’t renew after August; it won’t be necessary. (I’m trying to figure out how to make that change immediately in Ghost so that renewal is disabled, but one of my complaints about that platform is how difficult they make it to see how to make such changes.)

Over the next month or so I’ll be migrating the existing library of V&B posts over to a blog so that when I make the transition in September, everything will be there waiting for us.

So stay tuned! There will be more information soon. In the meantime, I plan to continue my twice-weekly posting schedule, so watch for a new article this Thursday.

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly – a risk I take twice every week here at Vision & Balance – I want to warn all of us away from a common abdication of responsibility that masquerades as intellectual humility among leaders: the tired formulation “I have no answers, only questions.” Every time I hear or read it, you can hear me muttering to himself like an old man with neighborhood kids on his lawn.

Let me start out, though, by acknowledging some obvious and important truths:

• No leader (or follower, or anyone else) has all the answers.
• No one should be embarrassed about not having answers, at least at the beginning of a problem-solving process.
• Questions are incredibly important, and it’s usually essential to start with questions.
• Some questions have no answers, or at least no single universally correct answer.

Having acknowledged these important points, why am I then criticizing the position “I have no answers, only questions”?

Because library leaders have to do more than ask questions, or encourage others to ask questions. The library is a service organization that exists to solve problems and accomplish tasks for its patrons and its sponsoring institution. Leaders who wish to do those things effectively, and in a way that nurtures and empowers library employees, will approach question-asking as a means to an end, not an end in itself, and will take responsibility for ensuring that questions lead to answers that result in problem-solving and employee nurturance.

In other words, a wise leader’s posture might be better summarized as “We have questions. Let’s work together to find good answers and apply them.”

The work of library leadership does not require you always to be right. But it does require you to do more than ask questions.

But what do you do when there isn’t a single clear “right” answer, or when there’s disagreement within the leadership team or the organization as a whole as to what the best solution is?

These are the situations in which leaders earn their leader salaries – not necessarily by being the one to make the hard call (though that will sometimes be necessary), but by doing the hard work of cooperative analysis and, in some cases, doing the very painful work of deciding who will win and who will lose (an issue discussed previously here and here).

What’s clear, though, is that an academic library leader’s work consists not only of asking good questions and keeping an open mind, but also of working through those questions and arriving at answers that move his or her library forward in support of the people and the institution the library serves. The answers will not always – will, in fact, very rarely – be perfect, and they won’t even always be right. They will sometimes be appropriate at one time but become less so as circumstances change. There’s nothing wrong with that; the work of leadership does not require you always to be right. But it does require you to do more than ask questions.

In the latest installment of my ongoing discussion of important ideas and processes that are too often denigrated in our profession (and yet that do have downsides and complications – hence “two and a half” rather than “three” cheers), today I’m going to briefly talk about a phrase that has really come to grate on me in recent years: “scarcity mindset.”

We’ve all heard this term and may have used it ourselves. What does it mean? Depends whom you ask, but the phrase is generally used in a derogatory way to refer to a person’s tendency to think in terms of competition in a context of limited resources rather than cooperation and possibility in a context of abundance. I was actually surprised to see that there’s an entry for “scarcity mentality” on the WebMD website, though here it seems to be talking mostly about a pathological mental habit rather than about a more general understanding of the world (or a part of it). According to WebMD, “if you have a scarcity mindset, you are so obsessed with what you lack that you can’t seem to focus on anything else, no matter how hard you try,” whereas “with an abundance mindset, you can see opportunities and possibilities that you might miss with a scarcity mindset, when you’re fixated on one thing.”

Of course, any mental orientation or general understanding of the world can be taken to a pathological extreme. But what I’m offering “two and a half cheers” for today is not a rigid understanding of the world as a place in which you’ll never get enough of what you need, but rather a mental awareness of the fact that in virtually every professional (and certainly library) context resources are, in fact, always strictly limited – and, in many if not most of those contexts, essential resources are not just limited but scarce. Virtually no academic library has all the staff it wants or arguably needs; no library has a big enough collections budget or enough space for the all the materials it already owns. Every year the library asks for a bigger budget, because every year the cost of being a library grows; librarians constantly weed their collections in order to make room for new acquisitions, because virtually every library’s space is genuinely insufficient.

These may seem like uncontroversial observations, but anyone who has been in a leadership or management position, and therefore charged with managing limited resources, has probably been criticized for having a “scarcity mindset” by those who want to use the resources for their own projects and don’t like being told that the resources are already tied up in other, equally important uses – or, worse, that funds are actually available but need to be reserved strategically for other possible uses.

So what should you say when someone accuses you of having a “scarcity mindset”? Here are a few possible responses, all designed not to shut down conversation or make the other person feel dumb, but rather to prevent the conversation being shut down and to dig deeper into the real issues:

• “When you say ‘scarcity mindset’ in this context, what do you mean? Do you believe the resources in this case are more abundant than they seem to me?”
• “Can you tell me more about how you believe I should be thinking about the resources in this case?”
• “If you were in my position, how would you be thinking about the allocation of these resources? Do you think we need a different strategy?”
• By ‘scarcity mindset,’ do you mean that I’m misinformed about the nature of these resources, or do you think my priorities in managing them should be different?”

Many years ago I was reading a novel in which the main character purchases a ramshackle second home in the country with the intention of fixing it up and turning it into an escape from his first home in the city. As he’s inspecting the basement, he notices something alarming: an upright post that should be anchored to the floor and supporting a transverse beam in the basement ceiling (and thus helping to support the floor above). Instead, for some reason, the post doesn’t quite reach the floor and is hanging from the beam that it was meant to support – thus not only failing to perform its intended function, but actually contributing to the problem it was meant to solve.

This mental image – that of a beam holding up a post instead of being supported by the post – has come to my mind on many occasions during my work as a library manager and a leader, when I’ve encountered workflows and practices that were created in order to facilitate tasks that were of questionable value, or found that our library had created elaborate protocols in support of programs that were intended, themselves, to provide support to the library and its staff.

For example: have you ever worked in a library that held lots of professional

development events and programs in which few employees were very interested, and then enlisted staff to try to drum up attendance at those events and programs? In this scenario, the professional development programming is supposed to be the post holding up the beam of staff morale and development, but the staff end up expending morale and bandwidth in holding up the post of professional development programming. (The solution may be to improve the programming, or to do less of it, or to rethink the library’s professional developments completely and go back to the drawing board.)

Another hypothetical: suppose your library has used book approval plans for decades, expecting the subject librarians to review weekly the books sent in their disciplines and indicate which ones should be kept and which returned. But now suppose that since the plans were instituted back in the 1980s, the librarians have mostly turned to other selection practices and tools. However, because your head of collection development has always loved approval plans and is deeply invested in them as a program, he continues to insist that the subject librarians review the books and title notifications every week. In this scenario, the approval plan is supposed to be a post holding up the beam of efficient collection development and saving time for the subject librarians – but instead, the librarians are taking time away from their other collection development duties in order to support a program that doesn’t work well for them. (In this case, the solution may be to streamline the approval program or to do away with it altogether.)

As you look around your library, you may well find situations like these, in which processes that are intended to provide support to the organization are instead being supported by ill-considered or just outdated processes and workflows. Unfortunately, identifying these is the relatively easy part; the more difficult part is working with your staff to institute what could in some cases be radical but necessary changes to their workflows. For some thoughts on how to deal with such situations, see “Dealing with Resistant Staff: Some Principles and Some Practices.”

Takeaways and Action Items

• All library workflows and programs should demonstrably support a key library function.
• Don’t be afraid to cease or radically change a workflow or program that doesn’t.
• Look around your library: are there any longstanding practices that don’t have a clear purpose in relation to the library’s mission and priorities? Are there any workflows that seem designed to support areas or practices that are actually supposed to support those workflows? Talk to the relevant managers. Chances are good that they share your frustration but don’t think it’s possible to change them.

In this two-part post, I’m going to address two of the most common organizational problems I’ve encountered over the course of my career. The first one is what I call “killing a fly with a sledgehammer.” The second will be about “posts and beams.”

To understand and address the “flies and sledgehammers” problem, you need to have internalized the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Effectiveness is a measure of the degree to which your task has been accomplished: simply put, if your approach to the task resulted in its completion, then your approach was effective. Efficiency is a measure of how much expense (time, effort, money, etc.) went into your completion of the task. In other words, if you put more time, effort, money, etc. into completing the task than was actually needed, then your approach was inefficient – even if it was effective. Effectiveness tends to be a more or less binary measure: either the task is completed or it isn’t. Efficiency, however, is a spectrum measure: one’s approach to a task will be more or less efficient.

What does this have to do with leadership in libraries? Lots. In fact, thinking about (and making judgments on) questions of both effectiveness and efficiency is one of the most fundamental things you do as a leader, and you do it pretty much every day.

As a leader, you will have people coming to you constantly with proposals: proposals for new policies, new programs, new workflows, new hires, etc. You will also have them coming to you with proposals for the elimination or alteration of policies, programs, workflows, etc. And the questions you’ll need to ask yourself and your team as you consider these proposals will center, importantly, on questions of both effectiveness (“will this work?”) and efficiency (“will the benefit be worth the cost?”). In the library where I work, my team has probably gotten tired of me framing efficiency questions with these two metaphors:

“Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

and

“Are we killing a fly with a sledgehammer here?”

Sledgehammers kill flies very effectively, of course – but they require the investment of lots of strength, much more than is needed to kill a fly.

A few library-specific scenarios in which one would be wise to consider questions such as this include:

• Staffing distribution. Do you have the right number of librarians and library staff assigned to your various functional areas, or do you have too many working on deliverables for which there is little demand, or that do relatively little to further your mission?
• Workflows. Are you doing things in an inefficient way because someone with a strong personality insists that they be done that way? Do you have inefficient workflows that are a legacy of an earlier time, when technology was different? Are people simply doing things the way they’ve always been done rather than critically examining their workflows for possible efficiency gains? When was the last time you asked a division head to review the workflows in the departments she oversees, looking for practices that reflect a clear mismatch between “squeeze” and “juice”? (Note: it’s important that workflows be reviewed by someone at least one level above the department or unit, because chances are good that the department manager or unit head is invested in the existing workflows.)
• Job requirements. Do all of your jobs require, for example, applicants to hold a bachelor’s degree? If so, why? Is it possible that, at least in some areas, you’re throwing too much expertise at work that doesn’t require that much (or assuming that a bachelor’s degree confers more relevant expertise than it does)?
• Budget allocations. Most libraries have such limited budgets these days that budget efficiency is hardly an issue; they’re trying so hard to achieve baseline effectiveness with their scarce resources that waste is not really a problem. But particularly in academic libraries, there are always large or large-ish budgets that need to be monitored closely. We need to be careful not to get so hawkish about waste that we end up (ironically) investing disproportionate effort in ferreting out tiny problems, but leaders and managers should always be asking themselves whether library funds are being spent with as little waste as possible. Are we negotiating discounts effectively? Are we buying the right content and avoiding buying the wrong content? (Do we know how to distinguish between the two?) Are we saving money where we can on less-essential things in order to spend more on essential things? (Do we have a clear and shared understanding in the organization as to what things are more and less essential?)

As I discussed in an earlier post, we do need to be careful how we think about efficiency – it is not the be-all and end-all of library work. But it’s also too easy to reflexively dismiss it. Library leaders and managers are stewards of institutional resources, and have both a professional and an ethical obligation to take good care of them. This means, among many other things, not wasting them.

Takeaways and Action Items

• Whether our tasks get accomplished is a centrally important concern; almost as important is the question of how much of our institutional resources were invest in accomplishing them.
• Efficiency is not everything; but it’s a very important thing.
• Are there any policies, programs, or workflows in your library that you suspect reflect a bad ratio of “juice” to “squeeze”? How will you redress that imbalance? Who, on your leadership or management team, can you count on to help you get there?

Today is a national holiday in the US, so I’m away on a brief vacation. Enjoy, and see you next week!

I have a confession to make: I’ve always thought of myself as a fundamentally lazy person. I mean, not pathologically lazy; when our kids lived at home I always really tried to make sure I was carrying my weight in the childcare department (my wife was a stay-at-home mom, and my cardinal rule was: both of us have full-time jobs, and that means both of us continue working side-by-side until the kids are in bed), and I work hard at my job, and I’d rather be just a little too busy than be wondering what I should do with myself. I get up early and run three miles, six days a week. But now that our nest is empty, most evenings I’m very happy to sit on the couch for most of the evening, bingeing a British crime series with my wife. I love, love, love sleeping in on weekends. And almost as much as any of those things, I love letting someone else be in charge of a meeting. I love figuring out ways to get things done with less effort.

Maybe to put it another way: I love my work, but I don’t feel any particular desire to do more of it than I need to.

With all of that in mind, as I’ve risen through the ranks of leadership and my scope of stewardship has broadened, I’ve noticed something about myself: I am always – always – on my email. I don’t know how many times I check it per day; I don’t even know how to quantify my checking of email. Email is open on my desktop during all the hours I’m at work, and I check it first thing when I get home, multiple times during the evening, and then last thing before I go to sleep at night. I monitor email throughout the weekend and on holidays and when I’m on vacation. I don’t always reply during those periods (especially not during weekends and holidays, when I need to be careful about sending the wrong message to my staff), but I still always feel the need to know what’s in my inbox, if only to reassure myself that there’s nothing in there that will blow up on me later.

My wife is a very patient person and doesn’t usually get on my case about this. However, once while we were on vacation I said something off-hand about not being a workaholic, and she kind of raised her eyebrow and said, “Are you sure about that?”. It really struck me that she said that – and it made me try to take a step back and observe my own behavior from her vantage point. And sure enough: when I did that, I could see how my behavior would look to someone else like that of a workaholic, someone who just can’t ever detach from their work.

But how could I simultaneously be a workaholic and someone who is fundamentally lazy? And what does any of this have to do with you, dear reader?

After giving this issue a fair amount of thought over the years, here are a few conclusions I’ve come to:

1. “Workaholism” doesn’t have a precise definition. For many kinds of addiction, the rule of thumb is “If the thing to which you think you might be addicted is negatively affecting one or more of your major life functions, you may have a problem.” I think that’s a pretty useful and rational principle. So instead of asking yourself “Am I a workaholic?,” maybe ask yourself “Do I find myself wishing I could work less so that I could do more _____ [fill in the blank: mountain-climbing, playing with my kids, talking to my spouse, reading non-work-related books, community service, etc.]?” If the answer is yes, then ask yourself what the top three non-work things are that you wish you were doing more of, and start with the top one. How much would you have to cut back on work in order to do that thing? Start there.
2. Your work-life balance is not just about you. If you’re single and live alone, and if you absolutely love your job, then maybe working 12-14 hours a day really does represent a good work-life balance for you. If working that much is what brings you joy, I’m not sure it’s anyone else’s place to say you’re wrong. But chances are good that you do have relationships outside of work that matter to you, and your approach to work is going to have an impact on the other people in those relationship. If you have a spouse and/or children, the potential impact on them is obvious. But how often to do you see or talk to your parents or siblings? How often do you say to friends “Sorry, I can’t go out with you tonight – too much work to do”? How often do you turn down opportunities to provide service to others because of work pressures? Even if your higher-than-usual dedication to (and genuine enjoyment of) your job makes you happy, is it taking a toll on the happiness of others you care about? If so, how much does that matter to you?
3. What example are you setting for your staff? I’ll never forget an experience I had about thirteen years ago. I was serving as the interim dean of a library at a major research institution, and enjoying the experience. I particularly enjoyed the relationship I had developed with the provost, who was very supportive and a joy to work with. Once during this period, while I was on vacation with my family, I woke up in the middle of the night and found myself unable to get back to sleep. After a while I got out of bed, grabbed my laptop, made my way to another room where I wouldn’t disturb anyone, and checked my email. I don’t remember what the issue was that grabbed my attention, but it led me to write a message to the provost. I sent the message off, closed my computer, and went back to bed. The next day the provost called me, and really gave me a dressing-down. “I don’t EVER want to see an email from you at 2:00 am again,” he said. And he was absolutely right. Imagine if I had sent that message to someone who reported to me – what would I have been saying to them? But also, the provost was concerned about my own work-life balance – he was saying “I’m your boss and I don’t want you to be working at 2:00 am.” I’ve never forgotten that experience, and I’ve tried to (maybe a bit more gently) convey the same message to those who work for me.

Ultimately, though, I don’t think there are any hard-and-fast rules about work-life balance, or any easy formulas that can help you decide whether you’re a workaholic. But if you think you might have a problem, I’d suggest that the best place to start is by talking to whoever it is you’re closest to – the friend, parent, spouse, daughter, son, sibling, or whoever it is that represents your most important relationship – and asking them what they think. You may or may not agree with or decide to act on what they say, but I bet you’ll come away with useful information.

Takeaways and Action Items

• There’s no hard-and-fast formula for defining an appropriate work-life balance.
• Your work-life balance affects others as well as you.
• Ask yourself whether your dedication to work is stopping you from doing anything else you really want to do. How much time do you wish you had for that other thing? What’s one thing you could change about your approach to work that might contribute to your ability to do that thing?