When is Listening Really Listening?
Active vs. Passive Engagement in the Art of Library Management
Whether in matter of politics or war or even love, communication is so very often at the root of problems. Much the same can be said of the issues swirling about the Johnsonville State library. It all began innocently enough: the dean, Alan Jackson, wished to make a positive show to his staff when the position of Acquisitions Department head opened up. There was some thought of bringing in an outside candidate tailor-made for the position, but Mr. Jackson felt this would dishearten the staff if every time an important position opened up it was stolen away by some outsider. No, to improve morale he had to promote from the inside, or so went his thinking. He quickly surveyed the departments of the library and settled on one Cheryl Miller, a popular reference librarian. Being so well-liked, he figured, it would certainly please everyone to see her rewarded—plus, in truth, he feared that if he didn’t select the popular candidate then the staff would grumble at the decision. So, on instinct and a bit of pressure, Alan appointed Ms. Miller to the role.
For a while, everything seemed okay. Well, it seemed okay from Mr. Jackson’s perspective. No one was coming in and utilizing his open door policy to lodge a complaint, so as far as he was concerned things were running well and smoothly. Except they weren’t.
Called before the library board, Mr. Jackson found himself under assault. One board member had kept an ear to the ground and had noticed a steady and pronounced decline in staff morale. The precise cause was unclear, and they hoped Mr. Jackson could illuminate the issue. But he was caught completely off-guard, convinced that everything was fine—no one had complained, after all. Well, almost no one.
Shortly before the meeting Mr. Jackson found himself faced with the frazzled Gabrielle Hodge, who confessed to him that the Acquisitions Department was falling apart from the inside. She laid all the blame squarely on one Evelyn Elliot, the department’s staff supervisor and, if Gabrielle was to be believed, the departmental dictator. She told Mr. Jackson about how Mrs. Elliot abused the employee review system to unduly punish anyone who dared speak out against her or offer up ideas contrary to what she desired. Even Mrs. Miller, the supposed head of the department, was terrified of crossing Mrs. Elliot.
Mr. Jackson seemed completely surprised and listened intently, nodding and showing concern, even handing Mrs. Hodge a tissue when she began to tear up at the stress of it all. She looked to him for a reply, for action, for leadership. But all he did was lean back and ask why she hadn’t gone through proper channels and raised the issue with Mrs. Miller first—there was a chain of command in place after all, and surely Mrs. Miller would be better equipped to deal with these issues. But Mrs. Hodge insisted: Mrs. Miller was powerless to act, being too afraid to invoke Mrs. Elliot’s wrath. Mr. Jackson merely shook his head and told her to raise the issue with her first, and let her come to him if she truly felt the need. With that he sent Mrs. Hodge on her way and seemingly forgot the matter ever happened—after all, surely Mrs. Miller would have come to him if there was a problem, and she hadn’t, so therefor there must not really be a problem, just one upset employee, and those sorts of problems are best left to resolve themselves. After all, Mr. Jackson prided himself in avoiding conflict and staying out of petty office politics.
There he was though, standing before the board, uncertain of what to say or do as his career crumbled around him. The board was livid—why had he not done anything about this, why was he not looking into it, how could he let a problem fester like this? He was the dean, it was his job to ensure things were running well. But Mr. Jackson had no answers to offer, and so he soon found himself cleaning out his office and moving into a forced retirement as the board looked to him to resign over what they saw as egregious mismanagement.
The position of dean did not long remain vacant as the board swiftly brought in one Loretta Padilla. Dr. Padilla immediately began looking into the issue of plummeting morale first-hand, conducting interviews of staff and patrons and an analysis of services to narrow down and determine the source of the internal crisis. She found, to some relief, that the issue was not a matter of services or patron discontent, though she realized that any issue left to linger for too long would impact the wider atmosphere of the library. Rather, she narrowed the matter down to the Acquisitions Department and, a few interviews later, to Cheryl Miller and Evelyn Elliot. She knew what she had to do: speak with them directly, get their story, and make the difficult call on how to proceed.
Such is how our story begins. The issue of listening crops up time and again here, especially with Mr. Jackson. From the start he seems to keep a certain distance from the operations on the ground and, while his ideas are good at times, he often just goes on those instincts rather than doing his due diligence and researching the issue to grasp the true and full impacts it may have. You can see this with his appointment of Cheryl Miller to head of the Acquisitions Department. On the surface it seems great: Mrs. Miller is popular, she’s good at her job as reference librarian, and promoting her would encourage others without invoking as much jealousy, thanks to her being so well-liked. But the problems in this decision are manifold. For starters, Mrs. Miller’s skills as a reference librarian are not necessarily going to transfer over to being an acquisitions librarian, let alone head of a department.
Think of it like this: a local town has a firefighter who is popular and something of a hero. So they appoint him police chief. He may be the best damn firefighter in the business, but only a few of his skills and points of knowledge are going to transfer over to police work, let alone to managing an entire police department. Likely as not he’d be forced to rely on others in the department who were more experienced to basically do his job for him, not because he wants to have to delegate everything away but simply because he has almost no idea where to even begin running an entire department of which he knows almost nothing. Mrs. Miller was put in a very similar situation and suffered a similar fate, finding herself reliant on her staff to do her job for her, and this allowed Mrs. Elliot to effectively become the real power behind the department. Had Mr. Jackson listened to Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Elliot, to the Acquisitions staff, and to the library board, he might have realized this. Perhaps they even did offer him such advice, but as seen with his dealings with Mrs. Hodge, Mr. Jackson had an issue with listening without actually hearing, giving all the signs of active listening without actually actively listening to or responding to people’s concerns or thoughts.
This then brings us to the curious case of Evelyn Miller. From her evaluations we know that she was a good employee prior to Mrs. Miller coming aboard, but after Mrs. Miller’s ascension it fell to Evelyn to begin running the department as Mrs. Miller came to rely more and more on Mrs. Elliot’s fifteen years of experience with the department. Perhaps Evelyn felt some degree of antipathy toward Mrs. Miller for being appointed with no experience in a position which she felt rightfully hers. Whatever the case, she quickly began running the department into the ground, having a clear vision of how she wanted things to go while brooking no dissension from the staff. If Mrs. Hodge is to be believed, Mrs. Elliot made it a point to lash out at staff who didn’t follow her commands, and though she officially had a policy of openness toward concerns or suggestions, those who dared raise thoughts with her that she did not approve of found themselves scorched in their evaluations. The policy was there, but as with Mr. Jackson, it bordered on being meaningless.
The real challenge of assessing Mrs. Elliot’s role in things, though, is that almost everything we know about her comes second-hand. Nothing about her is entirely certain. She may well be the tyrant that Mrs. Hodge claimed, or she may simply be terrible at communicating, sincerely wanting to listen to ideas but then being suspicious of people who she felt were challenging her own tenuous authority and thus marking them down for every little mistake. Or, perhaps these staff members truly were making mistakes. The precise reality of her case remains unclear, but then, this is precisely the reason that Dr. Padilla made it a point to listen directly to those involved rather than going merely on this claims of staff members.
The issue of listening even reaches back to Mrs. Miller, since while it is never explicitly stated it can be assumed that Mrs. Hodge and others did attempt to speak with Mrs. Miller but found themselves getting nowhere. Much like Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Miller listened to these concerns but didn’t engage with them or deal with them actively, instead just pushing back and hoping they’d resolve themselves. Indeed, she even fails to notify Mr. Jackson about the state of the department, just as Mr. Jackson failed to inform the board of the state of the library. Plenty more assumptions could be made, but as with Mrs. Elliot we only know a small slice of the truth, and that is why, once again, Dr. Padilla makes it a point to speak with her first hand to try and assess the situation and how to proceed.
Dr. Padilla serves as the constant contrast, showing what others should be doing and how to effectively diagnose and tackle issues. From the start she actively engages with the issue rather than pushing it down the ranks or hoping it’ll take care of itself. She actively goes out and speaks with people and solicits their concerns, letting everyone know that she’ll do everything she can to listen to concerns and solve problems when they arise. She readily admits that she won’t be able to fix everything, but adds that she can’t even attempt to solve a problem she isn’t aware of.
So often in communications the core problem is finding issues before they explode. People will often try to endure a situation until they simply can’t handle it anymore, at which point things can quickly snowball into a disaster. We see this with Mrs. Hodge who had clearly been struggle with these problems for quite some time but only came to Mr. Jackson when she truly felt she could not deal with it any longer. By that point Mr. Jackson had a disaster on his hands, something he couldn’t possibly hope to solve quickly or easily. Had Mrs. Hodge come forward earlier or, preferably, if Mr. Jackson had been actively involved as Dr. Padilla seems to be, he could have caught the issue early on while it was still small and manageable, sitting down the involved parties and coming to an equitable, agreeable solution.
That is perhaps the key take away of these communications problems, that a dean or director needs to be actively engaged with and aware of the staff and overall environment of the library so that problems can be caught early. Fortunately for Johnsonville State, this seems to be precisely the approach that Dr. Padilla is taking.
This still leaves the issue of what, precisely, to do about it all. To truly make the best possible decision we’d need to hear from Mrs. Elliot and Mrs. Miller and get their position on things as well as their character, but operating off of what we do have we can offer a few ideas. To start with, you could simply fire Mrs. Elliot as a quick and dirty solution, maybe even sending Mrs. Miller off with her. But this would be a poor choice—Mrs. Elliot is an experienced and good employee, just not necessarily a good manager. Likewise, Mrs. Miller may not be cut out for management—at least not of the acquisitions department—but she was by all accounts an excellent reference librarian.
Along with speaking directly with the both of them, it would likely be advisable for Dr. Padilla to consult with the HR Department about potential solutions. If Mrs. Miller were to return to the Reference Department in some capacity while Mrs. Elliot were made supervisor of a different department, then that might work as an ideal solution, placing Mrs. Miller back where she’s comfortable and effective while removing Mrs. Elliot from the toxic environment that’s been created without losing the benefits of her years of experience. Once again though, Dr. Padilla would have to listen, consulting with the both of them about the ideas and getting their feelings on the matter.
If Mrs. Miller declined the idea, then it would need then it to be made clear that the current state of the department is unacceptable, but that the library and the HR Department would provide the necessary training, advisement, and guidance to help her set things right. She must be willing to make hard choices that not everyone will like, and above all she must communicate, reporting problems and making sure the right people stay informed. If things don’t improve, then it may be necessary to consider dismissing her, though that’s far from the optimal solution.
In the case of Mrs. Elliot, if she declined the idea of transferring to a new department, then it would need to be made clear that the state of the department has been unacceptable and that her behavior needs to be improved. Training can be provided by way of the HR Department to help train her to be a better listener and manager and communication between her and the staff may be facilitated so that amends can be made and feelings mollified. It things do not improve, then it may be necessary to dismiss Mrs. Elliot and promote someone else from the department to fill her position.
It also needs to be made clear to the staff that when problems or concerns exist, no matter how small they may seem, that it’s best to raise them early so that they can be dealt with before the damage really sets in. It may feel easier to simply endure and hope that things will resolve themselves, but as seen with Mr. Jackson, this attitude rarely works out for the best. Rather, everyone needs to actively communicate and listen to one another so as to not only deal with these sorts of problems but also promote a sense of community.
There are, of course, myriad other possible solutions but these heavily rely on being able to directly assess the situation from Mrs. Elliot and Mrs. Miller. For example, it’s possible that Mrs. Miller would do better if handed directly the position of department head, especially if the source of her sour behavior is a sense of being passed over—though this still leaves the issue of the toxic environment and may leave the staff feeling betrayed since they, justly or not, see Mrs. Elliot as their enemy. Alternately, and as a bit of a strange solution, Mrs. Miller’s and Mrs. Elliot’s roles could be flipped as Mrs. Miller may be more comfortable working with staff—being of a more social persuasion—while Mrs. Elliot’s experience and Acquisitions could allow her to be an effective manager—albeit with training and oversight. All of this depends on being able to speak directly with these two and confer with others—which, fortunately, appears to be Dr. Padilla’s plan.
Along with directly addressing the issue of Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Elliot, it would be advisable to engage with the morale issues directly through ensuring that the established policies help to create a positive environment and ensure that employee contributions are valued. According to a paper by Eric Jennings and Kathryn Tvaruzka, Building Staff Morale and Creating a Positive Workplace, an effective way of creating such a positive environment is through the employment of “fun.” It may seem anathema to some to mix fun and business, but as explained in the paper the idea is not so much about fun itself as it is about publicly communicating to employees that their accomplishments are valued by the organization. Rather than treating employees like drones, the idea is to create a cycle of positive reinforcement through open and fun communication and activities that thus lead to a better environment. Such may go far in cleaning up the toxic environment currently existing within the Acquisitions Department.
Further measures such as regular staff meetings would also help facilitate effective and open communication. Whether or not these currently exist is a matter left unclear but they can be said to be needed as they regular meetings can aid in boosting morale by allowing staff to communicate in an open forum and feel more engaged in their work and in the library. Furthermore, the issue of pay may need to be looked at given that Mrs. Elliot’s suspect employee reviews may have negatively impacted the pay levels of employees, further contributing to a decline in morale as staff felt they either had to obey Mrs. Elliot or see their pay decline, or even find themselves without a job.
Finally, while it may have been poorly implemented in this case, research does suggest that promoting from within is a good idea for the overall employee environment. In Damon Camille and Nicole Westbrook’s article, “Building a Program that Cultivates Library Leaders from Within the Organization,” it’s argued that this kind of internal promotion makes it clear that not only are employees valued, but their hard work can actually earn them more than just raises. Employees crave recognition for their experience, loyalty, and work, and promotions are often a key way of showing them just that. The problem is that one cannot simply promote from the inside without any sort of training or guidance. Rather, Camille and Westbrook suggest the implementation of training cohorts to help bring employees into their new positions ready and with all the skills and training they need while assessing their personalities and emotional intelligence to show them areas where they can improve so as to become effective leaders and managers. Had Mr. Jackson taken steps such as these, the situation likely would have turned out very differently.
In the end it’s a bit of a sad situation simply in how easily all of this could have been avoided. Had Mr. Jackson simply listened and sought opinions more when looking to fill the position of Acquisitions head or had been actively engaged with and involved in the daily operations of the library he may have caught the issue early and been able to deal with it. Yet instead, even when Mrs. Hodge finally did come to him, he chose to do nothing, listening but not hearing, nor even acting. It’s an example of how one should not handle a case such as this, while on the other hand Dr. Padilla provides an excellent example of what one should do, being actively engaged, actively listening, actively concerned, and actively working to solve the problem and catch others in the process.
It’s never easy dealing with a situation like this, but once Dr. Padilla has heard from Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Elliot and conferred with the library board, HR Department and, potentially, the Acquisitions staff, she’ll be well-equipped to make an informed and effective solution. She’s already very much on the right track, and her solution may resemble the one suggested here, but in the end that remains to be seen as the case ends right as Mrs. Miller heads to Dr. Padilla’s office. What can be said, in a more fundamental sense, is that good and effective communication truly is effective. A manager can’t merely look like they’re listening, with all the shiny policies in place, they have to actively listen to and engage with people and problems alike to ensure that the library runs as effectively as possible.
For a while, everything seemed okay. Well, it seemed okay from Mr. Jackson’s perspective. No one was coming in and utilizing his open door policy to lodge a complaint, so as far as he was concerned things were running well and smoothly. Except they weren’t.
Called before the library board, Mr. Jackson found himself under assault. One board member had kept an ear to the ground and had noticed a steady and pronounced decline in staff morale. The precise cause was unclear, and they hoped Mr. Jackson could illuminate the issue. But he was caught completely off-guard, convinced that everything was fine—no one had complained, after all. Well, almost no one.
Shortly before the meeting Mr. Jackson found himself faced with the frazzled Gabrielle Hodge, who confessed to him that the Acquisitions Department was falling apart from the inside. She laid all the blame squarely on one Evelyn Elliot, the department’s staff supervisor and, if Gabrielle was to be believed, the departmental dictator. She told Mr. Jackson about how Mrs. Elliot abused the employee review system to unduly punish anyone who dared speak out against her or offer up ideas contrary to what she desired. Even Mrs. Miller, the supposed head of the department, was terrified of crossing Mrs. Elliot.
Mr. Jackson seemed completely surprised and listened intently, nodding and showing concern, even handing Mrs. Hodge a tissue when she began to tear up at the stress of it all. She looked to him for a reply, for action, for leadership. But all he did was lean back and ask why she hadn’t gone through proper channels and raised the issue with Mrs. Miller first—there was a chain of command in place after all, and surely Mrs. Miller would be better equipped to deal with these issues. But Mrs. Hodge insisted: Mrs. Miller was powerless to act, being too afraid to invoke Mrs. Elliot’s wrath. Mr. Jackson merely shook his head and told her to raise the issue with her first, and let her come to him if she truly felt the need. With that he sent Mrs. Hodge on her way and seemingly forgot the matter ever happened—after all, surely Mrs. Miller would have come to him if there was a problem, and she hadn’t, so therefor there must not really be a problem, just one upset employee, and those sorts of problems are best left to resolve themselves. After all, Mr. Jackson prided himself in avoiding conflict and staying out of petty office politics.
There he was though, standing before the board, uncertain of what to say or do as his career crumbled around him. The board was livid—why had he not done anything about this, why was he not looking into it, how could he let a problem fester like this? He was the dean, it was his job to ensure things were running well. But Mr. Jackson had no answers to offer, and so he soon found himself cleaning out his office and moving into a forced retirement as the board looked to him to resign over what they saw as egregious mismanagement.
The position of dean did not long remain vacant as the board swiftly brought in one Loretta Padilla. Dr. Padilla immediately began looking into the issue of plummeting morale first-hand, conducting interviews of staff and patrons and an analysis of services to narrow down and determine the source of the internal crisis. She found, to some relief, that the issue was not a matter of services or patron discontent, though she realized that any issue left to linger for too long would impact the wider atmosphere of the library. Rather, she narrowed the matter down to the Acquisitions Department and, a few interviews later, to Cheryl Miller and Evelyn Elliot. She knew what she had to do: speak with them directly, get their story, and make the difficult call on how to proceed.
Such is how our story begins. The issue of listening crops up time and again here, especially with Mr. Jackson. From the start he seems to keep a certain distance from the operations on the ground and, while his ideas are good at times, he often just goes on those instincts rather than doing his due diligence and researching the issue to grasp the true and full impacts it may have. You can see this with his appointment of Cheryl Miller to head of the Acquisitions Department. On the surface it seems great: Mrs. Miller is popular, she’s good at her job as reference librarian, and promoting her would encourage others without invoking as much jealousy, thanks to her being so well-liked. But the problems in this decision are manifold. For starters, Mrs. Miller’s skills as a reference librarian are not necessarily going to transfer over to being an acquisitions librarian, let alone head of a department.
Think of it like this: a local town has a firefighter who is popular and something of a hero. So they appoint him police chief. He may be the best damn firefighter in the business, but only a few of his skills and points of knowledge are going to transfer over to police work, let alone to managing an entire police department. Likely as not he’d be forced to rely on others in the department who were more experienced to basically do his job for him, not because he wants to have to delegate everything away but simply because he has almost no idea where to even begin running an entire department of which he knows almost nothing. Mrs. Miller was put in a very similar situation and suffered a similar fate, finding herself reliant on her staff to do her job for her, and this allowed Mrs. Elliot to effectively become the real power behind the department. Had Mr. Jackson listened to Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Elliot, to the Acquisitions staff, and to the library board, he might have realized this. Perhaps they even did offer him such advice, but as seen with his dealings with Mrs. Hodge, Mr. Jackson had an issue with listening without actually hearing, giving all the signs of active listening without actually actively listening to or responding to people’s concerns or thoughts.
This then brings us to the curious case of Evelyn Miller. From her evaluations we know that she was a good employee prior to Mrs. Miller coming aboard, but after Mrs. Miller’s ascension it fell to Evelyn to begin running the department as Mrs. Miller came to rely more and more on Mrs. Elliot’s fifteen years of experience with the department. Perhaps Evelyn felt some degree of antipathy toward Mrs. Miller for being appointed with no experience in a position which she felt rightfully hers. Whatever the case, she quickly began running the department into the ground, having a clear vision of how she wanted things to go while brooking no dissension from the staff. If Mrs. Hodge is to be believed, Mrs. Elliot made it a point to lash out at staff who didn’t follow her commands, and though she officially had a policy of openness toward concerns or suggestions, those who dared raise thoughts with her that she did not approve of found themselves scorched in their evaluations. The policy was there, but as with Mr. Jackson, it bordered on being meaningless.
The real challenge of assessing Mrs. Elliot’s role in things, though, is that almost everything we know about her comes second-hand. Nothing about her is entirely certain. She may well be the tyrant that Mrs. Hodge claimed, or she may simply be terrible at communicating, sincerely wanting to listen to ideas but then being suspicious of people who she felt were challenging her own tenuous authority and thus marking them down for every little mistake. Or, perhaps these staff members truly were making mistakes. The precise reality of her case remains unclear, but then, this is precisely the reason that Dr. Padilla made it a point to listen directly to those involved rather than going merely on this claims of staff members.
The issue of listening even reaches back to Mrs. Miller, since while it is never explicitly stated it can be assumed that Mrs. Hodge and others did attempt to speak with Mrs. Miller but found themselves getting nowhere. Much like Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Miller listened to these concerns but didn’t engage with them or deal with them actively, instead just pushing back and hoping they’d resolve themselves. Indeed, she even fails to notify Mr. Jackson about the state of the department, just as Mr. Jackson failed to inform the board of the state of the library. Plenty more assumptions could be made, but as with Mrs. Elliot we only know a small slice of the truth, and that is why, once again, Dr. Padilla makes it a point to speak with her first hand to try and assess the situation and how to proceed.
Dr. Padilla serves as the constant contrast, showing what others should be doing and how to effectively diagnose and tackle issues. From the start she actively engages with the issue rather than pushing it down the ranks or hoping it’ll take care of itself. She actively goes out and speaks with people and solicits their concerns, letting everyone know that she’ll do everything she can to listen to concerns and solve problems when they arise. She readily admits that she won’t be able to fix everything, but adds that she can’t even attempt to solve a problem she isn’t aware of.
So often in communications the core problem is finding issues before they explode. People will often try to endure a situation until they simply can’t handle it anymore, at which point things can quickly snowball into a disaster. We see this with Mrs. Hodge who had clearly been struggle with these problems for quite some time but only came to Mr. Jackson when she truly felt she could not deal with it any longer. By that point Mr. Jackson had a disaster on his hands, something he couldn’t possibly hope to solve quickly or easily. Had Mrs. Hodge come forward earlier or, preferably, if Mr. Jackson had been actively involved as Dr. Padilla seems to be, he could have caught the issue early on while it was still small and manageable, sitting down the involved parties and coming to an equitable, agreeable solution.
That is perhaps the key take away of these communications problems, that a dean or director needs to be actively engaged with and aware of the staff and overall environment of the library so that problems can be caught early. Fortunately for Johnsonville State, this seems to be precisely the approach that Dr. Padilla is taking.
This still leaves the issue of what, precisely, to do about it all. To truly make the best possible decision we’d need to hear from Mrs. Elliot and Mrs. Miller and get their position on things as well as their character, but operating off of what we do have we can offer a few ideas. To start with, you could simply fire Mrs. Elliot as a quick and dirty solution, maybe even sending Mrs. Miller off with her. But this would be a poor choice—Mrs. Elliot is an experienced and good employee, just not necessarily a good manager. Likewise, Mrs. Miller may not be cut out for management—at least not of the acquisitions department—but she was by all accounts an excellent reference librarian.
Along with speaking directly with the both of them, it would likely be advisable for Dr. Padilla to consult with the HR Department about potential solutions. If Mrs. Miller were to return to the Reference Department in some capacity while Mrs. Elliot were made supervisor of a different department, then that might work as an ideal solution, placing Mrs. Miller back where she’s comfortable and effective while removing Mrs. Elliot from the toxic environment that’s been created without losing the benefits of her years of experience. Once again though, Dr. Padilla would have to listen, consulting with the both of them about the ideas and getting their feelings on the matter.
If Mrs. Miller declined the idea, then it would need then it to be made clear that the current state of the department is unacceptable, but that the library and the HR Department would provide the necessary training, advisement, and guidance to help her set things right. She must be willing to make hard choices that not everyone will like, and above all she must communicate, reporting problems and making sure the right people stay informed. If things don’t improve, then it may be necessary to consider dismissing her, though that’s far from the optimal solution.
In the case of Mrs. Elliot, if she declined the idea of transferring to a new department, then it would need to be made clear that the state of the department has been unacceptable and that her behavior needs to be improved. Training can be provided by way of the HR Department to help train her to be a better listener and manager and communication between her and the staff may be facilitated so that amends can be made and feelings mollified. It things do not improve, then it may be necessary to dismiss Mrs. Elliot and promote someone else from the department to fill her position.
It also needs to be made clear to the staff that when problems or concerns exist, no matter how small they may seem, that it’s best to raise them early so that they can be dealt with before the damage really sets in. It may feel easier to simply endure and hope that things will resolve themselves, but as seen with Mr. Jackson, this attitude rarely works out for the best. Rather, everyone needs to actively communicate and listen to one another so as to not only deal with these sorts of problems but also promote a sense of community.
There are, of course, myriad other possible solutions but these heavily rely on being able to directly assess the situation from Mrs. Elliot and Mrs. Miller. For example, it’s possible that Mrs. Miller would do better if handed directly the position of department head, especially if the source of her sour behavior is a sense of being passed over—though this still leaves the issue of the toxic environment and may leave the staff feeling betrayed since they, justly or not, see Mrs. Elliot as their enemy. Alternately, and as a bit of a strange solution, Mrs. Miller’s and Mrs. Elliot’s roles could be flipped as Mrs. Miller may be more comfortable working with staff—being of a more social persuasion—while Mrs. Elliot’s experience and Acquisitions could allow her to be an effective manager—albeit with training and oversight. All of this depends on being able to speak directly with these two and confer with others—which, fortunately, appears to be Dr. Padilla’s plan.
Along with directly addressing the issue of Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Elliot, it would be advisable to engage with the morale issues directly through ensuring that the established policies help to create a positive environment and ensure that employee contributions are valued. According to a paper by Eric Jennings and Kathryn Tvaruzka, Building Staff Morale and Creating a Positive Workplace, an effective way of creating such a positive environment is through the employment of “fun.” It may seem anathema to some to mix fun and business, but as explained in the paper the idea is not so much about fun itself as it is about publicly communicating to employees that their accomplishments are valued by the organization. Rather than treating employees like drones, the idea is to create a cycle of positive reinforcement through open and fun communication and activities that thus lead to a better environment. Such may go far in cleaning up the toxic environment currently existing within the Acquisitions Department.
Further measures such as regular staff meetings would also help facilitate effective and open communication. Whether or not these currently exist is a matter left unclear but they can be said to be needed as they regular meetings can aid in boosting morale by allowing staff to communicate in an open forum and feel more engaged in their work and in the library. Furthermore, the issue of pay may need to be looked at given that Mrs. Elliot’s suspect employee reviews may have negatively impacted the pay levels of employees, further contributing to a decline in morale as staff felt they either had to obey Mrs. Elliot or see their pay decline, or even find themselves without a job.
Finally, while it may have been poorly implemented in this case, research does suggest that promoting from within is a good idea for the overall employee environment. In Damon Camille and Nicole Westbrook’s article, “Building a Program that Cultivates Library Leaders from Within the Organization,” it’s argued that this kind of internal promotion makes it clear that not only are employees valued, but their hard work can actually earn them more than just raises. Employees crave recognition for their experience, loyalty, and work, and promotions are often a key way of showing them just that. The problem is that one cannot simply promote from the inside without any sort of training or guidance. Rather, Camille and Westbrook suggest the implementation of training cohorts to help bring employees into their new positions ready and with all the skills and training they need while assessing their personalities and emotional intelligence to show them areas where they can improve so as to become effective leaders and managers. Had Mr. Jackson taken steps such as these, the situation likely would have turned out very differently.
In the end it’s a bit of a sad situation simply in how easily all of this could have been avoided. Had Mr. Jackson simply listened and sought opinions more when looking to fill the position of Acquisitions head or had been actively engaged with and involved in the daily operations of the library he may have caught the issue early and been able to deal with it. Yet instead, even when Mrs. Hodge finally did come to him, he chose to do nothing, listening but not hearing, nor even acting. It’s an example of how one should not handle a case such as this, while on the other hand Dr. Padilla provides an excellent example of what one should do, being actively engaged, actively listening, actively concerned, and actively working to solve the problem and catch others in the process.
It’s never easy dealing with a situation like this, but once Dr. Padilla has heard from Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Elliot and conferred with the library board, HR Department and, potentially, the Acquisitions staff, she’ll be well-equipped to make an informed and effective solution. She’s already very much on the right track, and her solution may resemble the one suggested here, but in the end that remains to be seen as the case ends right as Mrs. Miller heads to Dr. Padilla’s office. What can be said, in a more fundamental sense, is that good and effective communication truly is effective. A manager can’t merely look like they’re listening, with all the shiny policies in place, they have to actively listen to and engage with people and problems alike to ensure that the library runs as effectively as possible.