From Caretakers to Catalysts: Leadership in Archives

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Margot Note. My name is Bradley, and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled From Caretakers to Catalyst Leadership in Archives.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions, as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include Sydney, Presto, Argus, ArchivEra, Eloquent, and CuadraSTAR.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Margot Note. Margot Note is an author, archivist, and records manager helping individuals and organizations harness their history. As a principal of Margot Note Consulting LLC, she facilitates the understanding of the importance of unique collections, suggesting ways to manage them and to use them to tell stories to connect with people. And she’s also a popular guest author for Lucidius Think Clearly blog and has provided us with many great webinars that are listed on our website. So please feel free to check those out after today’s session. Take it away, Margo.

Thank you so much. So today, I wanna talk about leadership in in kind of the environment of advocating internally at your organization.

So what is leadership? Let’s kinda define it.

It’s being proactive. It’s being, active rather than reactive. You’re getting ahead of problems or ahead of messaging.

It’s rooted in understanding an organizational context. So really having not only your own self awareness, but kind of awareness about the type of organization that you work for and and what the possibilities are and what are perhaps the challenges there.

It emphasizes collaboration over directives.

Yes. There’s kind of an authoritative type of leadership where you tell people what to do, but I find it, especially in an, archival environment, that collaboration and working with people gets you a lot farther.

Leadership also takes responsibility, so it’s ownership of problems.

And I I found that a real test of leadership is, you know, apologizing for screwing up. Right? Getting it again, being proactive, and taking responsibility, for what you do. And then it demonstrates significance to a wider audience. And so that is particular with, I think, archivists. It’s like leadership is really educating people that are perhaps interested, but not non archivists, you know, what exactly archives do and what do archivists do? And that’s the key to advocacy for our profession.

So potential leaders. So I think sometimes when we think of leaders, we think of people that are really outgoing, that have big personalities, that are loud, that are, brave and kind of out there, but I think there’s all different types of leadership.

Leadership can be someone who’s very quiet, who’s very thoughtful, who’s very introverted. You don’t have to be kind of this outgoing personality. Right? This kind of salesman type personality. You can kind of be more introspective where I think that you know, if I was going to do, like, a Myers Briggs on people that are, go into the archival profession, I imagine that we’re we tend to be a lot more kind of introverted thinking type of people.

Let’s say, compared to someone who is the director of sales at a corporation, for example.

So leaders shape culture, and I think something I should say too is that leadership can be at all different levels of your department or your organization. You can be an intern. You can be a volunteer. You can be someone who just started their archival career and be a leader, or you could also be someone who’s mid career or kind of late career and and be a leader. It doesn’t really it’s not really limited to the the the, position title that you hold.

Leaders drive strategic, decisions that are done at the organization. They foster innovation, so always thinking about how can we do things differently, having the type of curiosity of kind of what’s out there.

But I think the other thing is that, you know, acknowledging that there might be a little bit of a struggle to lead beyond their domain. So knowing that, there’s a potential there, it might not leadership might not necessarily come naturally. It might be kind of the skill that you develop. I find that there’s people that are have inborn leadership abilities that might be just part of their personality, might be part of their up upbringing where they were really supported as children, and then there’s the rest of us who kind of had to learn through, you know, through the fires of life to speak it out, to be a leader, and to develop that type of, skill like a muscle, the same way that you would go to the gym or to the barre studio.

Leadership is a muscle that you can develop for some people.

So there’s I always feel everyone has the potential to be a leader.

And in project management specifically, there’s the phrase, that’s always used about kind of leading without authority, which is I think archival projects, I think, are key to leadership.

And I’ve written and talked about, project management for Resideo. And outside of Resideo, I’m kind of obsessed with project management because it’s been so helpful.

But I think part of, let’s say, leading a project is that you’re telling people what to do when you might not have any authority to do so as a project manager or a member of the project team or a member of the archives department. So you’re motivating people without formal control, and that requires establishing trust with people, being able to communicate well with people, and having empathy to be able to sit through their particular experiences and getting to know kind of perhaps what their pain points are.

As I say this, I’m reminded of a meeting that I had only a few hours ago where I was I’m helping this organization implement a type of software, and we’re meeting with particular teams. We had a great meeting where they were asking specific questions about approval workflows and ways of tagging the the stuff that we’re gonna put in the system.

And it was really good for me to listen and have empathy to their problems because these are the types of things that I would have never figured out on my own.

But that’s the big part of communication and empathy is figuring out, okay, what are these particular issues that we can foresee with this particular department, and how can I, as a leader in this project, get in front of that problem, talk to the vendor, figure out solutions?

And, again, it’s leading without authority. I have no I have no power or maybe a little bit of influence on this project. But, again, trying to find a way to be proactive, and that comes with communication and empathy.

Competencies of leadership are displaying honesty and integrity.

I think sometimes when people talk about transparency where I think that’s true to a certain extent. I think sometimes people are a bit too transparent, but I think being, there should be kind of a, we all wear, I think, a professional persona where at when we’re at work, so so we shouldn’t all let it loose. But I think leaders are able to display honesty and honesty and most or some situations and integrity integrity in all of them.

You should have technical and professional expertise, perhaps more per on the professional side than, let’s say, the technical, but at least you can know maybe the big picture of technical.

They solve problems, they analyze issues, and they’re innovators. They’re being creative. They’re thinking about how to, solve problems.

So our competencies are practicing self development. So things like attending a webinar like this, keeping up on the literature, doing what kind of fits your, interest level, time limits to kind of to get to know yourself as a leader and to, I think leadership is about accepting yourself as you are, which can be sometimes kind of difficult. Like, you’re you have enough self awareness to know your strengths and your weaknesses.

I find strength finder, I forget who puts it together, but strengths finder that that, analysis, I think is really good in getting more awareness about these are the strengths that I have. I mean, I remember before I became an archivist, I just thought organizing things, came naturally to everyone, having that type of mind to think about a workflow, to think logically about how to organize and categorize information.

I just assumed everyone thought that way, and it was like it was in in a somewhat a different career before I formally became an archivist and, got my MLS and my archives degree. But I didn’t I realized, oh, I had I became self aware. I’m like, oh, I have a particular strength and skill set that is valuable to people.

Leadership also focuses on results.

They take initiatives, and they think about stretch goals. So thinking about a goal for yourself, for your department, for your career that maybe is a little bit outside your comfort zone. It might be, it’s something that you might think you’re achievable or you can come close to it. And I think that’s how you grow as a person through that development, through kind of pushing yourself and sometimes pushing yourself to do things you might not necessarily wanna do or pushing yourself for things that you find resistance to.

And it is very interesting to to have empathy for yourself in those situations, but still that be kind of that inner loving parent and make yourself do it anyway. There’s a great book called fear feel the fear and do it, but do it anyway. I think that’s the name of it, and I always, thought that was very valuable. It’s like, yeah. You can be uncomfortable, but you can still do the thing that you want because, ultimately, it’s gonna benefit you.

Leadership also communicates powerfully and broadly and inspires and motivates others, builds relationships, and helps develop others. So you’re developing yourself, but you’re also finding opportunities to help others as well, especially if you, I find it especially with in past positions I’ve been in or currently with my consulting, kind of people that are coming up that are maybe junior members, like, helping them kind of develop their own skills, seeing opportunities that I can, give to them or open them up to kind of new opportunities, and then help them with their stretch goals as well.

Some further competencies are collaborating and fostering teamwork, developing a strategic perspective. So I think as archivists, I mean, I know I’m certainly guilty of this. I love the details. I love being in the weeds of the project, but I found that I have to also be able to be you know, to advocate for myself and for projects. I have to be able to see a more strategic over overall perspective.

That’s a different way of thinking for me. And I know sometimes I’m limited in that thinking, but it is very good to have that, strategic perspective to be able to see kind of the future of a project or initiative or an archives department of some sort. They champion change, and they connect the department to the outside world. So I think archives can be a little self contained, and And I think it’s also important, especially if you’re advocating internally, with your organization to kind of open the doors to welcome people in, to get out of that self containment and to kind of talk about the work that you’re doing, making that work visible.

There could be some weird challenges where there’s sometimes resistance from higher status colleagues. I have found that. I’ve talked pretty openly about it, I think, in the past where, you know, sometimes people don’t understand archives. They think it as, a cost center where it’s like they don’t mess they don’t necessarily see the, return on investment and the the money that they’re spending for the archives versus the value that archives brings to an organization.

And that’s that’s just reality. People just don’t either people get it or they don’t get it. Sometimes we can help them. There’s, ways that we can kind of bring them along, but there could be sometimes resistance from, colleagues that have some decision making capacities, some power, some influence that could not understand archives or not kind of want to understand archives and archival value.

Sometimes building relationships can be daunting. Sometimes it’s, overwhelming.

If you’re an introverted person, sometimes it’s a lot. It’s a lot to manage your relationship and also do your everyday work.

I’ve you know, balancing your day your daily demands. I’ve said, you know, people that work in the accounting office don’t have to advocate about why there should be accountants.

But sometimes archives have to do that.

And sometimes it’s difficult sometimes to influence others to figure out to spend the time, to think about kind of how you can help influence others. What are their particular pain points that the archives can help them with? That takes, you know, resources, time, and effort.

As archivists, we’re understaffed. We’re overworked.

We have a lot that we’re responsible for, so this sometimes feels like one other thing that we need to do, but I think it’s an important component of leadership.

So self evaluation is is key to leadership. So it’s really about your strengths. What makes you uniquely you? So as I mentioned kinda previously, using something like strengths finder, which basically the philosophy is, like, don’t worry about being a well rounded individual. A well rounded individual was for when you were applying to college and you had to show how well rounded you were, and you did sports and you did art and you did AP classes. Like, we’re not in college anymore.

I think it’s really the key, to leadership and to success in life is really recognizing what you do what you do well, what you do better than, let’s say, eighty percent of the population and really leaning into that and seeing how you can use that, like, to go to go with yourself rather than against yourself. Right?

Thinking about what your work style is.

We’re in a really unique position now where the silver lining of the pandemic was that there’s much more remote work or hybrid work, people seeing or it’s it’s hard to tell, but sometimes people, I think, are more open to a work style that’s more flexible. I mean, obviously, if you’re working with physical collections, you might have to actually be in the archival office.

But, certainly, there’s more there’s more flexibility to make your particular work style, like, making sure you’re working at your kind of key hours of the day versus a normal kind of nine to five job.

Really thinking about what your values are, particularly in the in the workplace. What do you value? What makes sense for you? What type of work environment you wanna work in?

Knowing if and sometimes that it simply is a matter of recognizing, you know, perhaps I’m not working in the most healthy work environment, and that’s okay to to acknowledge that or to realize, wow. I have a really great boss. I have great colleagues.

I have a you know, I work for a place that has a great mission. You know, there’s all different ways that, you know, that’s, I think, tied into values too. But really kind of seeing evaluating yourself with a certain type of detachment and neutrality to really see things as they are, and then you can always make changes. And then thinking about your contributions.

So what do you need to like, how do you like to contribute to, work and and what kind of satisfies you? And, again, it’s it’s making friends with yourself. It’s getting to know yourself. It’s having self awareness and real realizing too you don’t have to change at all.

Like, you as yourself are perfectly I mean, maybe I’m getting into the woo woo in this webinar. But, really, you know, as you are, there’s nothing you have to do differently to be a leader. You just have to be more of you, and, you know, scars and all, warts and all. So strengths are thinking about, using feedback analysis to identify strengths, sometimes asking people what your strengths are, looking at, let’s say, performance reviews where they can be kind of you know, sometimes people are in kind of corporate speak.

But sometimes it’s good to like, is there something that you get consistently back about you’re good at something? And sometimes you need kind of other kind of an outsider perspective to see, what your strengths are. Sometimes you I mean, sometimes people know what their strengths are right away. Sometimes there’s hidden strengths where you think, as I said before, you know, you think you a trait of your personality is totally normal where other people might see it as a strength.

So it’s helpful sometimes to record anticipated outcomes after significant decisions. So thinking up through, you know, does this make sense? Am am I how do I think kind of forecasting?

So seeing, am I good at forecasting? Am I good at kind of anticipating issues as they come up?

Comparing anticipated outcomes to results, prior toward prioritizing your strengths that you have, and then avoiding wasting time in areas of incompetence.

So sometimes that’s hard to do, let’s say, if you’re a loan arranger where you’re doing everything in an archives. Right? But if you’re in some type of department where you have a more specialized position or if you’re looking, let’s say, to get a a new position, or if there’s ways to delegate, certain types of things that you’re just not good at, sometimes it’s better to delegate if you have if you can, those types of that type of work, and then really lean into the things that you’re really good at. So are you really good at processing?

Are you really good at donor relations or of, writing a finding aid or, you know, metadata creation. Like, what is it that you’re really good at? And that could be technical skills, but it could also be, you know, skills related to your personality or the way that you work.

So thinking about work style is understanding one’s work style, and that could be things like how you process information, getting to know kind of, again, taking a step out of yourself and really seeing yourself kind of in a neutral position.

What are your collaboration preferences? Do you like working one on one? Do you like working on a in a group? Do you like you know, are you someone who best concentrates when you’re alone? You know, I think that that makes sense. I know for me, I tend to be better kind of one on one than in a group or a class setting.

But I just know that that that’s just how I learn and process information.

What are your strengths in decision making or in your advisory roles? And, again, what are your optical optimal working conditions? So, obviously, you can’t you can’t control all of this, but but you certainly can have some at least acknowledging, I think, what works best for you, I think, is really helpful.

Looking at value. So you’re defining your principles.

You know, you’re thinking who the responsibility is for ethical living, like, ethically working too. What will you put up with with and what will you not tolerate?

Making sure you align your personal and organizational values. Ideally, ideally, we wanna work in an environment that, you know, coexist with each other.

Sometimes that sometimes that’s not there too. So I wanna acknowledge that as well. I think sometimes we tend to be overly positive about work where we can say, yeah. You can really work in a toxic, you know, a place that’s really toxic. So how do you what is your plan for getting out of there? Right?

Values enhance professional performance. And then also understanding your values, I think, also prevents frustration where if you know what your values are and if they align with your organization or not, at least you are aware of it so you don’t fully frustrate yourself, by expecting something that could possibly be there, for example.

So in, when you’re looking at your work environment, you’re considering your strengths, your work style, and your values, and it also reflects on the ideal work environment.

When you’re thinking about contributions, you’re evaluating the current state of the work that you’re doing.

You’re understanding the organizational needs. So seeing are there gaps? Are you kind of fulfilling the archival mission within your organization? Are there kind of obvious gaps where you can help people with?

So you’re, again, use utilizing your strengths, your work style, and your values, and then being really strategic about what can you how can you contribute to the organization, like, in the best possible way. And it could be things that maybe as an archivist, you don’t think are valuable, but other people can think is valuable. So I’m I I feel like I was used as an example, but, you know, in a past position where I I thought it was great, I did all I took care of a three year backlog where I just was processing like a maniac, and I got it all done. But, like, no one frankly, no one cared but me. I was very proud of myself, but I still am very proud of myself.

But what really mattered is I digitized some newsletters, some nine nineties, some, audits that they had, stuff that took me an afternoon to do, and it was like I was walking on water. And it you know?

For me, I didn’t really get it, but it it worked. So that for in that certain situation, me doing what I thought was easy that I could that required no thought, no real energy, really helped get people on board about what the archives could do.

Did it make sense? No. It didn’t, but it worked. And I’ll take it. And I was very happy to get those accolades over something that really took not much work at all. But it took me a while to realize, like, okay. That’s what people really wanted.

So archivists, I think, are unique because we have a historical context. We have a, especially a horse historical context of the organization.

We possess a historical insight as a vantage point. So we’re looking at kind of past, present, and future of an organization, a very unique type of outlook, and we’re also not siloed. We’re not necessarily tied to one department. We can look at all departments.

So that helps engage us with cross functional discussions between, let’s say, legal and the PR with programs.

We can identify trends and offer perspectives, and that’s what our vantage point gives us the perspective of.

I think when we can give some historical context, it reinforces credibility because we have that institutional knowledge that we’ve gained through the records. And it helps position archivists as advisors, as being able to give that type of insight. We’re not, we’re not necessarily just doers, which I think is important. I mean, we have to be doing. But I think as thinkers, as being as being aligned as doing some of that knowledge work at that higher level, that strategic thinking, I think is very valuable in raising our, profile within organizations.

Partnerships are helpful for leadership, because it’s all about collaboration.

We can really work between departments, disciplines with our partnership, so, like, legal, marketing, research, public relations. Those are kind of places with depending on your organization where it makes sense where archives would be the most valuable. Sometimes it’s helpful to work with, like, c suite, so COO, which may would make sense, the CFO sometimes with financial records.

If you have any type of programs, if you’re a nonprofit with development. There’s ways that you can partner, and it might look different for each type of department.

And it helps extend the reach of archival services, so it’s helpful to know and to help. And sometimes people don’t realize that the archives can help with particular problems that they’re having, especially if it’s related to information governance or data governance or, you know, if they’re if the, you know, fundraising department is working on some type of data, project, they might not even realize that the archives has a lot of data that could help with it, for example. Or you might be working on two different tracks of the same project where you can you can have a much more powerful impact if you work together in a partnership.

Archivists as leaders are advocating for resources. So that’s what we need a lot of as archivists. So we’re thinking about what are the resources necessary to fulfill our mission.

We wanna make sure we navigate the financial landscape by aligning initiatives with goals.

And then we also, hopefully, wanna be at the table when we talk about budget allocation, how to develop a budget, what do we need, what is a realistic budget, because archives cost money.

There’s kind of this, I thought that sometimes archives run themselves or if you set up an archives, like, just coast or you can use volunteers or interns to do archives, and we all know that’s, like, very wishful thinking. Like, archives require professionals. They require a nice budget, and there’s a lot that can be done. But I think a big part of leadership is for asking for what you want.

Like, knowing what you want and then asking for it and finding out a way to sit in on those conversations, especially when it comes to budget decisions. I’m working on a chapter in a book where I’m talking all about budgets, and there is a great line that I got, a citation that from a book from, like, the nineties about, like, the budget process. And they were talking about, you know, budgets are a political process, which I thought, oh, that’s a really good I wanna kind of expand on that, but it’s all about, you know, people that control the money have the power. So we wanna be there at the table or at least contribute to what’s being discussed at that table.

So leaders as archivists also wanna embrace change. So I think sometimes it’s easy to be in the status quo. It’s comfortable.

There’s so much work to be done. It’s hard to think about change. But we do wanna think about fostering innovation. We wanna think about technological advancements. How can we use automation, AI, the systems that we already have to do more and have it be less kind of manual and to have the software do that type of work where we’re using our thinking and doing to do the highest level of archival work that we can that no computer, no system can replicate, right, versus manually entering things in a spreadsheet versus thinking conceptually about finding aids and collections and exhibits and programming.

We wanna make sure we integrate tools, analytics, and platforms, and I think that’s we’re kind of partnering with, let’s say, IT or partnering with people within your organization that are embracing technology that have a fresh point of view. Sometimes even people that are kind of new to the organization because they’re coming from, let’s say, another place that did things differently.

They’re they’re willing to try new things versus, let’s say, people that have been embedded in the organization for a long time that are more set in their ways. So there’s ways to kind of work with this and kind of embrace change to help the archives.

We also want to do internal education, so educating people about leading through example through expertise and advocacy, educating people about archives.

That could be things like workshops, training sessions, presentations, educating colleagues, and then cultivating a culture that values contributions.

So, again, getting ahead of people, being proactive about what can the archives offer and making that very clear to people.

And one way to do that, I think what I found is that, certainly, there’s people that are gonna want kind of hands on archival research and, like, a professional kind of finding things for them. But I think also setting things up to be more of a kind of self-service twenty four seven model within your organization is very helpful too, giving people tools.

At one position I had, there was a page that we had in the, Internet that was very basic, and it was it was literally a listing of links.

And they were all anything that you need in the archives were available there. Where I wanted to certainly, I could help people find things or they could reach out to me, and I would do much a lot of hands on kind of reference work for the archives. But I also wanted to give people the opportunity to explore and find things on their own, to get comfortable with the system. So even having that page, which was, like, you know, not the most elegant or technologically savvy page, but it did give people access, and that was the most important thing. And I think maybe if there was, like, something more complicated, to access, I think it would kind of turn people off. It was something that they were used to, like, you know, listings on the Internet, you know, very, very simple.

So leadership through advocacy, and advocating for archives is thinking about, how you can encourage colleagues to recognize the potential of your resources.

So helping them solve their problems, modeling behavior you wish to see in others.

It helps inform a more shape a more informed organization, and it showcases the value of archival materials. I think especially when I found that when people are onboarding in an organization, or offboarding as well, like, that’s a way to, with onboarding, you can really capture some questions to figure out, okay, what do people need to know about this organization to get started? And with offboarding, it’s important to capture that institutional knowledge if you can, to make sure you’re you’re making sure you’re documenting things, being clear about where materials are kept, what’s digitized, what’s born digital, you know, all those good things. So I think a big way to advocate for the archives is to show leadership in a way that feels comfortable for you.

So the path to leadership, it’s a it extends beyond positional authority. So you might have the title of director of the archives, or you might be, you know, archival intern or assistant archivist or special collections manager. It really does not matter what your position says. It’s about who you are and how you can show leadership being authentically you.

And I think it’s, yeah, it’s kind of interesting where at LinkedIn, they always suggest, like, when you have your headline about what you are, don’t put put your position title. You’re not, you know, you’re not assistant archivist at x y z. You are, you know, archivist offering excellent, you know, reference skills or something like that. Like, you’re it’s more about kind of how broadly you are, and you just happen to be in that role. So you are a leader. You just happen to have this role right now, or later on you can move on somewhere else. So really thinking about leadership beyond your authority or position within an organization.

It’s aligning, your archival endeavors with the organizational objectives. So making sure you what you’re doing is aligning with what the organization needs and wants and understands, and that there’s some you’re helping solve some problems of the organization while doing, you know, all the good, cool archival stuff as well. And it’s really thinking about what the future looks like for the department, for your position, for you yourself, career wise. Like, what does that what does leadership look like for you, and and how can that kind of propel you into the future?

Awesome. Thank you, Margo, for the wonderful presentation. And we’re excited to announce that you can go to our website to get a copy of Margo’s latest book with Lucidea Press called Preserve, Promote, Persevere, the Archivist’s Guide to Internal Advocacy.

And if you’d like to learn more about our archival collections management system called ArchivEra, please feel free to visit our website or reach out to us, by email at sales@lucidea.com, and we’d be happy to have a conversation with you.

And if you have any more questions about this webinar, this webinar series, or our, archival collections management system called ArchivEra, please feel free to reach out to us, via any of the channels on the screen listed here.

And we I thank you all for attending today, and until next time. Thank you.