Successful committee-work, like successful teaching, is about knowing when to shut up, calm down, or absent yourself entirely if that’s what the situation demands. It’s the art of not getting in the way, especially when you’re in the middle of a collective process that will move along perfectly well without you. When I was speaking at this event, I briefly referred to the need for librarians and learning support folks to collaborate more. The next day I found myself scheduled for a meeting with about 10 other people, including two people from my own department, to work on a supercharged annotated bibliography project. Later that day, when I went to our end-of-the week wind-down session, we all realized that no one could name the director of the Leadership program at our college. No one was that concerned.
DM
8 responses so far ↓
Carl // April 21, 2009 at 8:18 pm |
Yup. The work of Sisyphus is so much easier on the downslope.
Dave Mazella // April 22, 2009 at 7:59 am |
Thanks, Carl. Incidentally, one of the mysteries of this post is the extraordinary traffic it’s inspired, I suspect because of its title. I thought initially it had been linked somewhere, and then I realized that there are just lots of people on the internets running searches with “leadership qualities” as their keywords.
Carl // April 22, 2009 at 12:25 pm |
Funny. I wonder if they could name the director of your Leadership program (or ours).
My most popular post comes up on image searches for “trash barge.”
Dave Mazella // April 22, 2009 at 12:54 pm |
Leadership programs are one of those things that apparently exist on hundreds of campuses worldwide, and I have no idea what they teach or what their students do. I’ve become friends with people from the B-school here, so I don’t dismiss such programs out of hand, but those faculty generally don’t interact much with impoverished humanities profs.
One of our most popular posts comes up from the search for “eighteenth century hair.” I should write about that more often, or combine it with “leadership qualities,” and talk about ceremonial wigs or something.
Carl // April 22, 2009 at 2:40 pm |
Right, the whole Sun King thing.
Dave Mazella // April 22, 2009 at 2:53 pm |
Or this.
Carl // April 23, 2009 at 12:46 pm |
I love that episode!
Or this.
Carl // April 23, 2009 at 12:52 pm |
Drat. Never mind, it didn’t demand a sign-in the first time.