Presented at the Minnesota Library Association Conference, 2014.

1. INVEST IN
SUCCESS
How to use professional development to boost your confidence and your
career
by Tiffany Eatman Allen & Susanne Markgren
Minnesota Library Association Conference -- October 8, 2014

2. Our Goals for the Next Hour...
• Tell you who we are
• Discuss why you should care about professional development
(PD)
• Get some feedback from you
• Provide some simple ways/ideas to add PD into your life
• Talk about creating a PD plan
• Give you some goals to work towards
• Motivate you to charge-up your own career!

3. Tiffany: Work History

4. Susanne: Work History

5. Who are We?
http://librarycareerpeople.com

6. The Book!
Q: What are online portfolios? Why should I
care about them? And, how do I get one?
Q: What would be the best second
master’s degree for an academic librarian
to get?
Q: How can a part-time librarian get the right
experience for career advancement?
Q: How do I convince my director to let
me go back to school?
Q: I want to be a children’s or young adult librarian,
but I have no experience. How do I make myself
marketable?

7. Survey
We conducted a survey, on managing a successful career. By early
2012, 2,369 people had started it and 1,922 had completed it --
an 81% completion rate.
"If you want a successful career in librarianship - or just about
anything else - you have to manage it. You can't sit back
passively and let things happen to you. You have to be
proactive and figure out what you want; where you want to be
in 2, 5, or 10 years; and what it will take to get there. Then
start working on it." - survey response

8. Professional Development
Barriers to (or lack of: __ )
• Time
• Money
• Motivation
• Encouragement
• Support
• Incentives / rewards
• Disengagment
... is the key to managing a successful career
Advantages (PD can help you: __ )
• Find a job
• Find a better job
• Change roles
• Advance in your career
• Break down barriers to creativity & innovation
• Become more confident
• Become a happier, more engaged, professional

9. Are you Engaged? Engaged employees work with
passion and feel a profound
connection to their company.
Not Engaged employees are
essentially “checked out.”
Putting time — but not energy or
passion — into their work.
Actively Disengaged
employees aren’t just unhappy at
work; they’re busy acting out
their unhappiness.
70%
OF AMERICAN WORKERS
ARE “NOT ENGAGED” OR
“ACTIVELY DISENGAGED.”
State of the American Workplace Report, 2013. Gallup measures employee engagement based on
workers’ responses to its Q12 survey, which consists of 12 actionable workplace elements with proven
links to performance outcomes. Download the report.

10. "We disengage to protect
ourselves from vulnerability,
shame, and feeling lost and
without purpose. We also
disengage when we feel like
the people who are leading
us ... aren't living up to their
end of the social contract."
- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
Download the full manifesto

11. Different Engagement Strategies
• Employees are most engaged when they have the opportunity
to do what they do best every day.
• Engagement is connected to having a strong sense of what
their organization stands for.
• To increase retention among Millenials (the most likely to job-hop),
provide plenty of opportunities to learn and grow.
• It's not enough to put the right people in the right jobs -- we
must invest in people's talents to optimize their performance.
• Create a culture of well-being.

12. Audience Questions
• Question 1
• Question 2

13. Ten
Professional
Development
Action Steps

14. Assess

15. "Take the time to assess your
skills and then translate them
into the language of the job
you want."
- Susanne & Tiffany, Career Q&A

16. Network

17. “Networking is both an art and a science. But in the
end – networking should be fun, exciting and a
rewarding approach to advancement. The more you
network – with a positive outlook – the more you will
learn. And if you’re always learning, you are growing
and thus developing yourself.”
-- "7 Reasons Networking Can Be a Professional Development Boot Camp." Glenn Llopis,
Forbes.com

18. Mentor

19. "Mentoring is a brain to
pick, an ear to listen,
and a push in the right
direction." - John Crosby
“Most people can do absolutely
awe-inspiring things.
Sometimes they just need a
little nudge.” - Timothy Ferriss

20. Learn

21. “As a teacher, my goal was
to go home at the end of
each day with more energy
than I had at the beginning of
the day.”
- "Ten Steps to Better Student Engagement."
Tristan De Frondeville. Edutopia.org
“Live as if you were to die
tomorrow. Learn as if you
were to live forever.”
- Gandhi

22. Seek

23. "There are times to stay put, and what
you want will come to you, and there
are times to go out into the world and
find such a thing for yourself."
- Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

24. Audience Questions
• Question 3
• Question 4

25. Collaborate

26. What's the Best Thing about Collaboration?
• Knowing that I am not alone with my dilemma, that I can call on others
for their expertise, which increases my self-confidence
• It can open doors for funding -- pooling of resources
• Different points of view and people who might see things that I am
simply overlooking
• I've participated in some group presentations and writing projects that I
never would have dared on my own
• Projects developed with others tend to have better outcomes and more
staying power
(survey responses)

27. Create

28. "USE CONSTRAINT TO FUEL CREATIVE ACTION:
Given a choice, most of us would of course prefer a little
more budget, a little more staff, and a little more time. But
constraints can spur creativity and incite action, as long as
you have the confidence to embrace them." - Tom Kelley & David
Kelley, Creative Confidence.
"Think about the overlap between your personal
passions and the workplace options that might be
available to you. Learn new skills. Start writing the new
story of your working life." - ibid.

29. Fail

30. “I have not failed. I’ve
just found 10,000 ways
that won’t work.” - Thomas
A. Edison
“Only those who dare to
fail greatly can ever
achieve greatly.” - Robert F.
Kennedy
“The only real mistake is
the one from which we
learn nothing.” - Henry Ford
“The front end of
innovation is supposed
to be messy.” – David & Tom
Kelley, Creative Confidence

31. Redefine

32. The thing is, you never really
start over. You don't lose all the
work that's come before. Even
if you try to toss it aside, the
lessons you've learned from it
will seep into what you do next.
- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work.
"What we know
matters but who we
are matters more."
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly.

33. Share

34. • document and record your process
• scoop up scraps and residue and shape it
into something interesting
• share something small every day
• use social media sites to share updates
• secure your own online space (register a
domain name)
• don't think self-promotion, think self-invention
- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work

35. Audience Question
• Question 5
What are is the next step in your professional plan?

36. Creating a Professional Development Plan
• is a personal endeavor
• is always a work in progress
• should be used to help you self-assess by:
- exploring strengths and limitations
- figuring out what is most important to you (at this point in your
career)
- understanding and predicting expectations
- defining goals
- creating actions steps

37. Professional Development Plan: To Do -
• Reflect
journal, organize, synthesize
• Gain self -awareness
satisfaction, engagement
• Seek outside input
supervisor, mentor, peers
• Develop action steps
Creating a Professional Development Plan |
EDUCAUSE
update resume, seek a mentor, attend conferences, enroll in
courses, join discussion groups...
• Set longer term goals
3 years, 5 years -- look at the bigger picture

38. Recommended Reading
• Career Q&A: A Librarian’s Real-Life, Practical Guide to Managing a
Successful Career. Susanne Markgren and Tiffany Eatman Allen.
Information Today, 2013.
• Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All.
Tom Kelley, and David Kelley. Crown Business, 2013.
• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the
Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Brené Brown. Gotham Books,
2012.
• Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being
Creative. Austin Kleon. Workman Publishing Group, 2012.
• Show Your Work: 10 Ways To Share Your Creativity and Get
Discovered. Austin Kleon. Workman Publishing Group, 2014.

39. Thank you!
Tiffany Eatman Allen
&
Susanne Markgren
This presentation is online at: http://bit.ly/mla_invest
Library Career People : http://librarycareerpeople.com/
@LibCareerPeople
librarycareerpeople@gmail.com

40. Photo Attributions: cc Creative Commons
• Assess: rafal_olechowski, Career development in word tag cloud on white, iStock photo
• Network: Marc Smith, https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6871711979
• Learn: courosa, https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035553780@N01/2311845824/
• Seek: Chris Goldberg, https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgold/7179893537
• Collaborate: styff22, Zen Still Life, iStock photo
• Create: Create Color, Jonah G.S. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonahgs/319116679/
• Mentor: ffaalumni, https://www.flickr.com/photos/40490812@N03/9045254666/
• Fail: Jeffpro57, https://www.flickr.com/photos/37357703@N08/6167125536/
• Redefine: Michael Tapp https://www.flickr.com/photos/59949757@N06/9179224517/
• Share: Sharing, Ben Grey https://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_grey/4582294721/