The Most Important LIS Skill
Fall down seven times, get up eight.
— Japanese proverb
Every spring marks the start of a new opportunity to work with students, specifically those who will be taking the Alternative Careers class I teach for the University of Denver LIS program. It is one of the most rewarding — and challenging — parts of my professional life.
How does one say with any level of confidence (or honesty) "yes, this might be a great professional path for you to follow," when the reality is we have no idea what career paths are likely to survive or emerge over the coming decades? Will there still be corporate libraries? Will there still be MLS-staffed reference desks in public libraries? What will be the role of academic libraries — and librarians — in a world of online learning and embedded resources? What new roles and opportunities will emerge that we can barely imagine today?
My belief is that for every contracting LIS opportunity, ten new ones will open up. Demand for our skills may change in the coming years, but I don't believe that demand will lessen — it will simply be coming from new and different constituencies. We may be deploying our skills on new types of projects, for new types of employers, with very different job descriptions. But we most certainly be deploying those skills.
So given this somewhat chaotic vision of the future, what do I tell my students is the most important LIS skill they can learn? Information networking? Research and reference? Web development? Nope. Resiliency.
Essentially, resiliency is the ability to bounce back from a setback, to refuse to be derailed or defeated by adversity, to embrace the opportunity inherent in change. Resilience is based on flexibility and adaptability, and a belief that although circumstances may be difficult or confusing, you have what it takes to handle whatever's thrown your way.
Psychiatrist Frederic Flach, who has written extensively about personal resiliency (see, for example, Resilience: Discovering a New Strength at Times of Stress, rev. ed., Hatherleigh Press, 2004), describes the personality traits that define a resilient individual as:
Creativity. The ability to tolerate pain. Insight into ourselves and what we are going through at any particular phase in our lives. Independence of spirit. Self respect. The ability to restore self esteem when it is diminished or temporarily lost. A capacity for learning. The ability to make and keep friends. Freedom to depend on others, with the skill to set proper limits on the depth of our dependency. A perspective on life that offers a vital, evolving philosophy within which we can interpret all that we experience and from which we can discover some measure of personal meaning.
Now, generally, in an LIS program as in the LIS profession, you're given high marks for learning and following the rules. There's usually somewhat less support for the "hey, here's a crazy-cool idea that's never been tried — let's try it!" types of initiatives. Yet that's exactly the sort of thinking we need to cultivate (if not instigate) in order to become more resilient in our careers and as a profession.
So the way we approach this in class is to structure what-if scenarios around the sorts of obstacles or set-backs any of us might encounter in our careers. We'll put one of these on the whiteboard (the class favorite is almost always "help, I'm ready to strangle my boss," perhaps suggesting the need for a bit more management training in LIS programs?) and then brainstorm solutions to the problem.
And the interesting thing is that the solution is never that the problem improves ("my boss gets a personality transplant" is not an approved solution!), but rather that the students come up with alternative strategies for dealing with the problem. The solutions are uniformly creative, realistic, and based on an expectation of personal responsibility. Basically, that translates into "what steps can I realistically take to improve this situation for myself?"
Or we'll look at the really daunting challenge: someone just lost his or her job. No matter how solid you are, getting laid off can't help but shake your confidence. And yet clearly this is the time you need that sense of personal resiliency the most (speaking from personal experience here). If you go back to Flach's list of characteristics, you'll see that each and every one of these will help you traverse the anger, pain, embarrassment, and confusion you'll have to process through to get to the other side of your emotions — the side where you're ready to go after the next great opportunity.
An additional characteristic that I believe contributes to personal resiliency is how you frame the stories of your life. We all have setbacks. But you can either decide that these setbacks are simply part of the normal up-and-down trajectory of a dynamic career and part of your ongoing career-building process, or you can let them derail you. How? By taking them personally, by seeing yourself as a victim, by giving in to a sense of powerlessness regarding your own life. Framing events this way keeps you stuck, when what you really want to be doing is feeling the pain, acknowledging that it's a rotten deal, and then moving forward.
These days, I have an even better understanding of the power of personal resiliency. I recently became Vice President of Content for a company called Disaboom, which is creating an online resource of information and community for people with disabilities (www.disaboom.com). The co-founder and man I work with, Dr. Glen House, is a quadriplegic as the result of a skiing accident at age 20. After his accident, he put himself through medical school and is now head of the rehabilitation program for a large Colorado-based hospital, working with others to help them craft an independent life despite disabilities.
We've talked about how someone with a recent disabling event such as a spinal cord injury resulting in paralysis manages to move forward beyond the anger and grief. I've asked him how he did. And his description of his emotional journey basically integrates all of characteristics noted by Flach — you simply refuse to let life derail you. True, it might take you some time to get back on track, and you may need to do some "falling apart" for a bit, but then you choose to move forward. Or to quote Dr. House, to "live forward."
I believe this is the heart of developing personal and career resiliency: a commitment to always get up yet again, no matter how many times life may knock you down. A commitment to learn anew, no matter how many times things change. If my students can master this skill, then I have no doubt that they will also be able to confidently find their way throughout decades of a changing LIS landscape.