Day 12: When is a mentor not a mentor?

On Saturday's post, I mentioned mentors as a possible means to managing ones career path. It's no coincidence that this subject has come up around the time that ALIA has announced its Mentoring Scheme - it's something that I've been pondering for a couple of weeks now.

There are many approaches to mentorship - how does one find a mentor and approach them, and how does one manage their own relationship as a protege? (Note: I refuse to use the word "mentee". It's not a real word - even my spellchecker won't accept it - and protege sounds like you're taking the relationship far more seriously.)

I've often felt that finding a mentor is often the responsibility the responsibility of the person who wants to be mentored - much like finding an apprenticeship. You seek out those in the industry who inspire you, or who have paved a career much like the one you'd like to have yourself. You strike up a conversation with them - it might be at an ALIA event - exchange business cards, see if they're on Twitter, and then take opportunities to continue the relationship. Sometimes you'll hit it off, sometimes you won't. If you do, send them an email, let them know that you're interested in progressing into their sector / area of specialty, and you'd love the opportunity to chat more about it over coffee some time.

When you do meet up, have some interesting questions, and be prepared to listen and learn. Again, gauge how the relationship is going, and whether you're on the same wavelength, and the more confident you feel, take opportunities to open up a bit about your own challenges in your work (without sounding like a whinger!) and see how they respond. Stay in touch - meet up for regular catch-ups - again, coffee is generally a good option, and keeps things casual and friendly. A good mentorship is one that doesn't feel forced or bound by obligations. But, of course, you don't want to be wasting their time either. If you're not prepared to work to progress your own career, then a mentor might initially offer you advice, but as time passes, they'll lose interest in supporting you.

Also, I've formed a number of supportive professional relationships over the years - but I would never refer to any particular one as a mentorship - especially not to their face! That's not to say that I haven't appreciated the support I've received from time to time through my career - I have and I do! And similarly, in my role as the New Grads Convenor, I've often started ongoing relationships providing support and advice to new graduates starting out. But I've mostly felt that these connections have been more through a mutual commitment to the industry and overcoming common professional challenges, rather than necessarily just finding help to get a better job. I think it totally counts, but is a mentor a mentor if it's not formalised? It can be a fine line sometimes between having a supportive more-experienced peer / supervisor, and a mentor that provides advice and possibly even grooms you for promotion / poaching into another team (if they work in the same organisation as you).

That said, an organised mentoring scheme is something else completely. It's like a matchmaking service for people who can't find the right mentor for them - and really, it's such a changing industry that what worked for one person five years ago might not work for somebody else starting out right now. And, of course, those in isolated roles/locations or highly-specialised field can find it hard enough to find peers let alone mentors.

(On a side-note, running with my online dating comparison, wouldn't it be cool if there were a Tinder-like app for finding mentors / proteges? i.e. swipe right if you'd be prepared to mentor or be mentored by the person on the screen. If they match - instant mentorship!!)

I don't mind paying for an organisation like ALIA to set up a mentor-protege pairing. After all, there's substantial labour involved in setting it all up, and ensuring that people are paired off appropriately. The idea of quality control is one that I'm still curious about, though. On one hand, it's great that a program like this provides access to a wider pool of mentors, who are prepared to set up a formal mentor / protege relationship, and sign agreements that they will commit to forming a productive relationship. On the other hand, I also feel like you only get out of these things what you put in, and so the onus is ultimately on the individuals to maintain their commitment, rather than on ALIA to exercise quality control for a paid service.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to either approach. Personally, I have a good idea of which direction I need to take in my career, and where the challenges and pitfalls lie, so I'm already building the kinds of relationships I need to be able to address them. However, I'd also be curious to sign up for the mentoring scheme purely to see who I get paired up with, and what interesting conversations might ensure from there...

For those who are interested, the ALIA Mentoring Scheme is open to ALIA members, and applications close on 23 June 2017.

Day Seven : Five perfectly good reasons to join ALIA... and not to join.

Since my last couple of posts, there have been a few interesting comments. I think it's interesting that people have their own reasons for joining their professional association - or not. My professional priorities have changed through the years, and sometimes they've been aligned with ALIA's activities... other times, not so much.

So, here's a listicle of five perfectly good reasons to join, and five perfectly good reasons not to.

To Join...

1. I want to be a certified professional who has a portfolio of continuing professional development that is externally assessed and accredited.

2. It's an organisation that aligns well with my personal and professional views, and I want to support it's goals.

3. I want to support a culture of ongoing discourse, academic or otherwise, in my professional practice, and ALIA provides the forums for this to take place, whether it be at a conference or in a journal.

4. I want to make professional connections that will help me learn and develop my own career path within the industry.

5. I want to support an organisation that holds our universities accountable for what they teach our future librarians, and set the standard for accrediting people with the professional qualification.


...or not to join.

1. Membership costs money. I don't need to be a member to get a job, and being a certified professional won't help me get a better job.

2. The organisation doesn't align with my personal or professional views. (i.e. it's too conservative, it focuses too much on the library industry and not enough on the information industry.

3. It's just a platform for high-achievers to boast about their achievements and discuss idealistic best practices when the reality for most of us is we just don't have the resources or the knowhow to implement them.

4. My job already provides me with all the career development opportunities that I want or need.

5. The tertiary qualification doesn't guarantee a quality industry-ready professional, and there are plenty of GLAM industry jobs that don't even need an ALIA-accredited qualification anymore.

They all make fairly compelling arguments, depending on one's experience, priorities in life, and future aspirations. I guess the final question is not whether you should or shouldn't join, but do you want to? Is this an organisation that you want to be a part of?

If so, great! If not, then that's fine too.

Day Six: ...and why I joined ALIA again.

So, within a week or so of returning to Australia last October, I found myself attending the ALIA NSW Library Unconference in Sydney. After 18 months working for the UN overseas, I thought I'd give the library industry another decent shot, and had a couple of good opportunities open up to get my foot back in the door of the library world. I figured that an ALIA event would be a good chance to get a feel for the professional community again.

There were a number of familiar faces - one of whom was a former colleague and now ALIA staffer, who encouraged me to join ALIA again. I promised that I'd join as soon as I'd landed a permanent job in the industry. I neglected to mention that it had been over eight years since I'd had a permanent job. But, on the whole, it was an interesting crowd - and I was surprised at how optimistic everybody felt about the state of the industry and the future of their careers. It was nice.

A few months later, I attended an ALIA event, where it was announced that ALIA were making some changes to their constitution - specifically "To endorse the principles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in response to the many challenges faced by the world today and into the future."

This was something new, and it certainly caught my attention - especially as somebody who had spent the previous three years immersed in work that was intrinsically tied to the SDGs. Furthermore, when I spoke at the ALIA conference in 2014, one of my main points was on the similarities between many of the core objectives of library and information work and capacity-building in the developing world.

With this inclusion in ALIA's core aims, it felt like they were making a very deliberate shift toward professional values that were already important to me.

At the same time, my career had taken a turn for the better, working in one of my top employers of choice, which I found enjoyable and stimulating and challenging in a good way - BUT - it's the kind of place where one can easily disappear into a well-insulated bubble that keeps its focus on internal operational functions.

So, for me, I now feel like ALIA involvement can provide that opportunity to make the connections between the operational work I do as a professional in the workplace and the opportunities to interact with the wider community, especially in the field of International Development.  ALIA has its Asia-Pacific Spectial Interest Group (APSIG), and I'm curious to see how an increased focus on the SDGs will prompt further opportunities to perhaps form regional partnerships. And I'm keen to use these opportunities to connect with others who have worked with others who have worked in the space where libraries and international development intersects.

Furthermore, as a new employee in a large organisation, I'm hardly going to be an agent for substantial change in that part of my professional world. But getting involved in ALIA, once again I can pursue the areas of the industry that interest me that I wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to pursue in my work.

It's not the most common reason for joining ALIA, but it's one that works for me. It feels like an organic convergence of everything that I've done in my career so far.

When I first joined ALIA, I did so because I thought it would be good for my career, that it would help me find a job, and that by banding together with other librarians, it would make us a more "serious" profession. I believed that all librarians should contribute to their professional community, supporting each other in career development and lifelong learning and, in the process, create innovation in their work and futureproof the profession. That's what ALIA membership meant to me back then.

Honestly, I don't care about those things so much anymore. But the idea of ALIA as a development organisation - in similar ways to IFLA with last year's International Advocacy Programme - that's definitely something that I can get behind.

That said - I got that permanent job, so I pretty much had to keep my promise and join.

Also, ALIA membership is tax-deductible. Strangely enough, also a deciding factor.