Steve Thomas: Bobbi, welcome back to Circulating Ideas.
Bobbi Newman: Thank you, Steve. I’m glad to be here again.
Steve Thomas: So we talked a little bit before we started recording that you were one of the people I was originally brainstorming the podcast with before I started it 13, 14 years ago, and then you were the guest on episode eight back in 2012. So thank you for that initial brainstorming and helping me figure out the podcast.
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, you’re welcome and kudos to you for keeping it going for 13 years. I’m impressed.
Steve Thomas: I’m exhausted, but I don’t think I asked you when we were on before. What first led you to working in the library field?
Bobbi Newman: Oh, yeah. That is an interesting journey. I did my first work in libraries when I was 16 in the Carnegie Public Library in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, which is my hometown and as many libraries in Iowa, a small rural library who had one professional MLS staff member. Looking back it, I think about, basically I staffed the reference desk on the weekends as a 16-year-old, which seems a little wild, but I know many small and rural libraries here in Iowa and across the country are only open part-time and don’t have full-time staff. So we were lucky, I guess, in that regard that we did have some regular full-time staff that worked during the week.
And then as an undergraduate getting a degree in history, I used the library a lot, which is the library at the University of Northern Iowa, the Rod Library up here. I can remember going in and feeding quarters into the microfiche machine to print out paper for research. And after I graduated, I actually ended up in Phoenix and I was working in the semiconductor industry, and a friend said to me, you should be a librarian and that kind of planted the seed and I went back to school and that was it.
Steve Thomas: Well, that person was obviously right! And then during peak library blogging time, you were running your blog Librarian By Day and you’re still blogging over there. Was there any particular reason why you wanted to be blogging?
Bobbi Newman: You know, I think at that point in time, blogging was so new. At that same time, I also wrote a personal knitting blog and there was this whole circle of knitters that were writing and blogging, and I was doing this Web 2.0 stuff, and we were talking about MySpace back then and so it just seemed like the thing to do. Twitter was taking off.
When I first started blogging, I did it anonymously. That’s why it’s Librarian By Day, for a lot of reasons, and over the years I’ve quit being anonymous and it’s me and I guess I still have something to say. It’s a good way to get my thoughts out and organize them even if no one’s reading anymore. I don’t know if anybody reads library blogs in 2025, but it really helps me organize my thoughts.
Steve Thomas: Well, I’m an old person that still uses an RSS reader, so, hey, I’m subscribed there. So you got one reader at least!
Bobbi Newman: Yes, I’m still using an RSS reader as well and I’m still bitter over Google Reader, so…
Steve Thomas: yeah, I think I was thinking of doing a blog at that time and then I sort of realized there were enough library blogs and so I did this instead.
Bobbi Newman: Yeah. One of the early library podcasts.
Steve Thomas: Yep, yep, yep. Maurice Coleman has me beat, being before me.
Bobbi Newman: That was the one I was thinking of, the only one I knew, I think at that time that existed really, that I was listening to, T is for Training. Yep.
Steve Thomas: Yep. And still around.
Bobbi Newman: Yep.
Steve Thomas: I think he stay, I think he’s sticking around just to stick it to me to make sure he’s the oldest.
Bobbi Newman: The day you retire, he’ll retire the next day.
Steve Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Well, I think during the COVID-19 pandemic, I think is when a lot of us started thinking about wellbeing in the workplace a lot more, but I know you were writing about it and thinking about it before that. What got you interested in that topic in the first place?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, so around 2017 and 18, at library conferences, you know, state, national, local ones, I saw a lot of sessions that were on things like burnout or compassion fatigue or other sort of themes related to our mental wellbeing and self care as librarians. And I went back and I thought, the thing that all of these seemed to be missing, at least the ones I saw, was they were focused on how you as an individual can take care of the symptoms or effects of a workplace that isn’t functioning well or sometimes things like compassion fatigue or something we can’t really escape and aren’t necessarily an impact of a workplace that isn’t functioning well but there are things we can do to help mitigate the responses to that.
So I started thinking, well, I’m gonna create a class for the job I had at the time, and still do, on wellness in the workplace. So I just started digging into a lot of the research around what wellness was and what wellbeing was and what the research showed about how we can change both the physical environment at work to improve not just our wellbeing, but all of it is tied to productivity because that’s the world we live in. We don’t get to do most things that work for wellbeing sake alone, and then also policies and procedures that that affect that, and then of course, that leads to culture too.
It’s been an interesting journey and you mentioned Covid. I had signed the contract for the first book, the one I wrote, and Twanna Hodge wrote the DEIA chapter in that book. We signed that contract at the beginning of March 2020, the very beginning of March. And we said, we’re gonna have this done by the end of the summer. It’s gonna be a quiet summer, and I think it didn’t get done for two years. And so wellbeing took on a whole new meaning after that time period. It’s even more important now.
Steve Thomas: In the book you talk about building a wellbeing-centric culture. What do you think that actually looks like day to day in a library?
Bobbi Newman: It looks like being conscious of the challenges that we’re facing in libraries, whether we’re talking about emotional labor, we already talked about compassion fatigue, invisible labor, trauma-informed approaches, both for our staff and for the communities that we’re serving. Part of it is just general awareness that there’s these challenges and that we have to take conscious efforts to improve or even just maintain an environment or an atmosphere that helps to support physical, emotional, and social wellbeing.
And I think part of the work I do, and I hope that is clear in this book as well, is that it is pushing back against some of the traditional wellness programs. One of the things I talk about when I talk about wellness or wellbeing is the wellness industry is a trillion dollar industry, with a “T”, like it is a hot topic where people are trying to sell us a lot of things. And most of those things don’t actually improve our wellbeing.
Steve Thomas: You worked with a lot of different contributors for this book. How did you pull together this wide range of voices for the topics?
Bobbi Newman: That’s a good question. I tried to cast a really wide net for proposals. I think you know this, and as somebody who’s worked in public libraries, I know this, that we often miss the voice of public librarians, especially in this type of work, because they just don’t have the capacity to do this writing as part of their day job. So I tried to post not just on listservs, but social media as well, and then sent direct emails to people I know have been working on different aspects of wellbeing. It’s gotten to be a much, I wanna say bigger, but I think maybe it’s like 10, 15 people who are talking about it in libraries, but asking them to forward it on, and so we got a really great mix, I think, of topics and approaches to wellbeing in the book. I’m just delighted with all of the contributors.
Steve Thomas: Fobazi Ettarh first laid out that concept of vocational awe and it’s mentioned explicitly a couple times in the book, but that’s kind of underlies some of that compassion fatigue. Can you explain what that concept is and why it can be a destructive mindset?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and just read quote Fobazi’s article in the Library With the Lead Pipe and then get into it. So she writes that, “Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue,” and that’s her I’m quoting, “that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they can be recognized and deconstructed.”
And I think that “recognized and deconstructed” really is where that ties into wellness and wellbeing. Because one, as somebody who’s done a lot of work around wellness in the library workplace over the last, gosh, eight years, I still catch myself, I don’t wanna say experiencing vocational awe, but participating in it. My thoughts are there around the higher mission of the library work and our goals, which lead us to do things like accept lower salaries in the profession. It can be things like working extra hours, staying late, coming in early, working on nights and weekends. It also looks like this idea that the workplace as a family, rather than treating it like a business exchange, which it is, paid for your labor and acting accordingly in that.
And so I think one of the things we have to do when we start looking about ways to deconstruct both the culture and the policies and practices that lead us to have unhealthy practices or policies is we have to be able and willing to look critically at why we think that this is okay. Why is it okay to not take your vacation time or come to work sick? Those kind of things that we do that aren’t great, and why are we willing to have our break room be full of the furniture that’s too gross for the public area? Like, we deserve to have nice break room furniture. We deserve to have new carpet in our spaces, those kind of things.
And so I think that is an important lens to look through any time we’re looking at our practices and policies and to be aware of it. Like I said, I sometimes catch myself doing this still, where I catch myself thinking, oh gosh, for the patrons, for the members, that kind of thing. And it’s like, no, you, you have to take care of yourself, especially right now.
Steve Thomas: Yeah. And I think part some of that is just being in a service profession, a helping profession. It just ties into that. ’cause like, ’cause we are doing things to help people, but you have to separate it in your head of not getting too into that.
And it’s fun to joke around. You’re like, oh, librarians are superheroes and libraries are punk and libraries is super cool. And that’s all fun to play with, but it’s when you start taking yourself too seriously and letting it. Like you said, because I’m this superhero, I don’t need to be paid and I don’t need anything else and I assume other service professions must feel this kind of thing, nurses and of course, usually it’s women-dominated fields, teachers obviously.
Bobbi Newman: Right. And I think we do that because one, I think a certain type of person goes into a helping profession, and you mentioned like nurses and other professions. I think the phrase is like setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm and we wanna make sure we’re not doing that in libraries, and this is something I try to stress when I’m talking to people about the importance of self-care and taking care of wellbeing, is that doing these practices really does make you better at your job. Taking that time to recharge or do self-care ensures that you’re providing the good service you wanna keep providing.
Steve Thomas: Well, and for everybody, and your book is a handbook for managers and I think it’s especially important for managers to, number one, be modeling that behavior for the rest of the staff, and also to know how to give advice to your staff and help them through these things as well. I know I find myself doing that a lot where I am taking care of them and not taking care of myself.
And I think that first chapter gets into that a little bit more too, with not only vocational awe is just part of that, it’s emotional invisible labor, which is what we’re talking about there and it can really wear people down. So, what are some ways that managers can recognize when that’s happening and then what can they do about it?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And managers, especially middle managers, I hate to use that phrase, but you know what I’m talking about at least, right, are in a really precarious position because you’ve got this bottom up pressure from your staff to provide a workplace for them that is a good place to work, is healthy, supports wellbeing, while maybe pushing up against policies or practices or culture that you know doesn’t align with that, and then same time, top down pressure about performance and other kind of things. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but it just came out from Gallup, but all of the things we hear about mental health in the workplace is worse for managers, and so it really can be a precarious position.
This book is obviously a great starting point and I recently created a class on burnout for ALA for managers and talking about how to protect your staff, but then also protect yourself with them. And so that looks like a lot of the traditional self-care practices that we talk about: setting boundaries around work hours and the time you’re willing to respond to email, taking your lunches, taking your lunches away from your desk. Really, I guess I don’t wanna say basic things because I struggle with these and I know everybody else struggles with them too, but it goes back to the trillion dollar wellness industry, true ways to take care of yourself don’t cost anything, but they’re really hard to do because they involve getting away from getting up from your desk, going outside, getting some nature, that kind of thing that really makes a huge difference.
Steve Thomas: I hope my staff is not listening to this when they see me sitting at my desk eating my lunch, which I think I’ve made a good step toward that, that I do actually take a lunch now, but I do still sit at my desk, so I need to go to the break room as well. Like, I do sit there and I read a book and I just eat my lunch and I take my full 30 minutes but yeah, I need to move to the break room.
Bobbi Newman: I always say, do as I say, not as I do.
Steve Thomas: And I should say, I wanna make sure to give people credit that the first chapter was by Ariel Turner and Shamella Cromartie.
Communication is a topic that comes up throughout the book, but is the core topic of the second and third chapters, which is Hannah Kukal Curtiss, and chapter three is Peggy Griesinger and F. Elizabeth Nicholson. How can improved communication aid in workplace wellness? What’s the importance of communication?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah. So I really just wanted to acknowledge too that Hannah is one of the contributors who works in a public library, so it was really great to have this chapter from her. I don’t know that the biographies made it into the print book. We were going over the page limit.
Anyway, so I like the combination of these two chapters because I think they address a couple of different ways to tackle communication, which are all great. Hannah’s chapter looks at high conflict versus healthy conflict in their library situation, and she references a book as part of her work on that, but I think what’s really interesting about that in tying to a bigger picture in libraries in general, is that I think a lot of the people who work in libraries tend to be conflict diverse, and there’s a lot of research that shows in regard to psychological safety, regards to communication, transparency, that addressing conflict early and directly and with compassion really matters because letting things fester just doesn’t ever go anywhere good.
And so both chapters are providing ways that you can address this. Hannah’s chapter talks about doing the DISC assessment. It’s personality types. So I have taken this DISC assessment at one point. And for anybody like you who knows me personally, you’ll be shocked to know that I was a D, which is the dominant, but Hannah says she likes, she likes to call it direct and I like to call it decisive. I think they did a disservice to us D’s, but I found that really interesting to see these different communication styles that they really delved into. And I think that’s really important is that there isn’t one correct way to communicate necessarily, and they looked at that and how we could assume good intentions from our peers and other people.
She also talks about not just staff to staff communication, but also management to staff and then the staff to customer communication part of that too, so they took it another step beyond internal discussions about what that looks like interacting with their patrons or customers. And she talks about psychological safety and the important importance of that, which I think is a key foundation for workplace wellbeing. It comes up throughout multiple chapters in the book.
And then I really loved Peggy and Elizabeth’s chapter because they talk about their perspective in a academic library, not just about setting expectations through communication, again, resolving conflict, and then helping to build trust and create spaces where staff felt heard and valued. And then they went the next step and talked about this is the manager part, managing that emotional labor of the communications work, that it is hard work, and it is something that’s unique to being in a management position. Transparency matters so much in regards to psychological safety, but also burnout. And the six causes of burnout, that kind of thing, and so creating an environment that has psychological safety is one of the first steps that allows people to speak up and push back against culture or policies or practices that aren’t good for us. They feel safe doing that.
Steve Thomas: Yes, the biographies are in the book, so they made it in, but I’m gonna skip to chapter six here and talk about recognition and appreciation, and that chapter is by Margie Sheppard and Katie Pierce-Farrier. What are some ways that leaders can show appreciation and in a way that’s genuine and actually makes a difference?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah. I love that they wrote this chapter because this is also tying back into one of the causes of burnout at work and our overall sense of feeling appreciated and like our work matters. They talk about creating a culture of recognition, which I love so they’re not talking about just like, you have to recognize your staff because I think that’s obvious, but they talk about ways that people can do that and ways that that can be enacted in practice within the library.
The second bullet point they have is that recognition should be inclusive and reaching all levels of the organization. And that is really true, I think, for staff, recognizing both big and small achievements, so maybe not just celebrating the end of a project, but milestones along the way, or just regular everyday things.
And the other part is that also this book is for managers, but also encourage staff to recognize their managers. When the your manager is doing something that you appreciate or you value, even if it’s just creating the culture that does wellbeing at work. Because managers are people too, and they like to know they’re doing a good job.
But they’re talking about consistency and transparency and I think that’s so important and communication. Especially if you’ve come from a culture where recognition isn’t something that’s handed out regularly or often, it can feel inauthentic to be doing it sometimes and so like any creating of a new habit, doing that consistently with the staff and going out of your way to acknowledge all contributions.
The other thing that I love that they talked about is, in particular providing training and resources for both employees and leaders on the importance of recognition and how to give and receive it effectively. And so if that’s a cultural change that you wanna make in your institution, providing some sort of training around it and embracing it as part of your culture is really important.
Steve Thomas: Absolutely. In 2023, former surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a loneliness epidemic in the United States , and loneliness is the topic of Chapter 10 by Loida Garcia-Febo, who I think everybody probably knows, former ALA president, and lots of other great things she does. How can library staff and managers work to address the issue of loneliness?
Bobbi Newman: I think she did a really good job in this chapter of talking about how we can foster connections among our staff without going into the dangerous territory of like, we’re all a family here, right? We want staff to feel connected and part of a team at work, but you don’t wanna cross that line to the idea of the family connection because then you’re pushing into vocational awe, that you work more hours or that kind of thing because you’re going above and beyond.
She talks in this chapter about supporting social participation in the community. And so ways to get out of the library in particular and connect with the community as a whole, encouraging your staff to do that and creating the time and space for them to do that, whatever that looks like, looking at ways to connect with each other in the workplace and empowering each other. She talks about using creativity as a tool, which is really fascinating, I think, as a good connection and how we can do that inside the workplace. I think the other thing is, and I guess I’ll keep going back to this, but all this work sort of ties together in different ways, so I think about the idea of feeling connected and safe at work and fostering collaboration. And that’s again, tied to burnout and to psychological safety, and so I think she did a really good job of talking about how we can make those connections at work without sort of crossing a line.
Steve Thomas: Yeah and making social connections is even emphasized in an earlier chapter, in chapter eight, which is called Nurturing Social Connections and Collaboration, and that is by Becky Libourel Diamond, Dee Magnoni, Sue Oldenburg, and L. M. Miller. And that goes into a little more detail in there, but it’s that connection that’s the important thing and making those connections can then help with loneliness.
Bobbi Newman: And they talk in that chapter about, again, getting outside the library. So whether it’s professional networking, if you’re an academic library, on campus, public library, out in your community, that those are important as well.
Steve Thomas: Chapter 13 talks about moral injury. For people who don’t really understand what that means, can you break down what moral injury is and why it matters in library work?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, Alejandro and Teresa introduced me to this concept with their chapter, and I’ve been seeing a lot more talk about it in libraries. I know Kaetrena Davis Kendrick is also doing some work around moral injury now, so I’ll get the go to the definition before I get too far into it. So I’m reading from the VA website section about PTSD, which, like many theories and concepts that we talk about in wellbeing in libraries, like compassion fatigue, those theories come out of often the medical or other sectors and then go into other sort of service type industries and so I’m gonna read from the website:
“So what is moral injury? In traumatic or unusually stressful circumstances, people may perpetuate, fail to prevent, or witness events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations, so when someone does something that goes against their belief, this is often referred to as act of commission. When they fail to do something in line with their belief, it’s often referred to as an act of omission. Individuals may also experience betrayal from leadership, others in positions of power, or peers that can result in adverse outcomes. Moral injury is the distressing, psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes spiritual aftermath of exposure to those events. A moral injury can occur in response to acting or witnessing behaviors that go against an individual’s values and moral beliefs.”
And I think just hopefully hearing that, we can sort of imagine what that looks like. I think that we’re seeing this, I’m glad that we’re talking about this, and this might look like in libraries if staff are being pressured to compromise ethical standards, so maybe the ALA Code of Ethics or their personal code of ethics around libraries. It could look like, I think the obvious one might be removing books from the collection, not being able to host specific types of events, having displays on specific topics, especially right now. It’s good that they include this omission, that not doing stuff also counts because I think, especially right now, people may be operating from a place of self protection sometimes, or fear with the work that they’re doing in libraries so they may be not doing things they think they should or they think that are important in order to protect themselves, their family, their coworkers, their staff, and so we can be experiencing this. I think looking at both the impact of this on our wellbeing and how to recover from it, which they talk about a little bit in this chapter, is really important.
And I wanna circle back. Witnessing these can have the same impact, so it isn’t even necessarily that you personally made a decision or did something, but that you saw something or you witnessed something that happened along those lines. I just was looking at, I already mentioned Kaetrena’s survey on this this morning, so she’s doing a survey on this right now and I was going through that survey and part of it is witnessing either acts by supervisors or coworkers that that misalign with your values.
I always try to bring it back around to, okay, so what do we do? I think that Alejandra and Theresa did a really good job in this chapter of, they call it tackling moral injury. In there, they include practices like reflecting on your personal values, what we hold important to us, trying to stay informed around ethical issues that are happening in the profession. I know that can be really hard right now, really important also to have boundaries about how you’re getting your information and when you get information, building a network or a sounding board. That can look like a professional network or sounding board, but it could also just be fans… fans, family, friends, and loved ones. If you have fans, congratulations, you do. I mean, you have a podcast, you have fans. And then practicing self-care and boundaries and talking about what’s happening with you. And then from a manager perspective, empowering employees to create a safe and supportive environment to openly talk about what’s happening.
I think especially in the US, anything around mental health and mental health care is stigmatized pretty deeply so we often don’t talk about it because we’re worried it gives the perception that we’re incompetent or that we’re not good at our job or we’ve got that bootstrap mentality. You should just push through it, which really isn’t the right approach to a lot of those things.
And the other thing, since I’m talking about mental health and stuff, I always encourage people to take advantage of their EAP, take advantage of the resources offered by your workplace if you are struggling right now with anxiety, depression, moral injury, anything like that, reach out and please get help.
Steve Thomas: I wanted to ask a couple of things about chapter 15, which is about burnout. Managers, we’ve talked about this, you’re balancing the staff wellbeing, you’re balancing your own wellbeing, you’re balancing the high expectations from the public, from your administration, from your boards, from your deans if you’re an academic library, there’s all kinds of pressure that we’re dealing with and trying to balance all that. How do managers walk that tightrope without burning themselves, or their teams, out?
Bobbi Newman: That is a really good question, and I think that especially for managers, having built-in time to your day or your week, I probably wouldn’t go less frequently than that, to reflect on your values, what’s important to you, in how you care for yourself and how you lead your team and how you respond to things from higher up, sort of that grounding is really important. And I think, talking about burnout, we don’t build in time for self care, and I would consider that self-care. That’s a type of self-care if that’s how you start your morning or if it happens at lunch time, whatever that needs to look like in your space, but really taking time to ground yourself because it is work. It’s the part of the emotional and invisible labor that happens in libraries that we don’t talk about and we feel to give space for.
And so I think, Suzanne is who wrote this chapter, and I think she does a really great job of tackling some basics in here. We talked a little bit about this, I think in the lead up of the don’t take time off culture, people who get to the end of the year and are forced to take vacation because they didn’t use their vacation, or people who are coming into work sick and there’s a lot of reasons people do that: vocational awe, the martyr culture that we sometimes see in libraries. There’s the flip side of that, that it’s seen as a huge inconvenience to the rest of the staff if you miss your shift, and there’s ways that we can address that culturally.
But she’s talking about this, don’t take time off culture, and I wanna just reiterate that all the research shows that taking a vacation really makes a difference for self-care and stress management. If you’ve really started to move into burnout territory, it doesn’t help as much there, but that’s another conversation. So taking time off, taking off a whole week or two weeks at a time and, and truly disconnecting is truly, truly important , and we can’t do this in the US, but taking a whole month off and really not answering your email can make a huge difference, but if you can take at least a whole week, but two weeks is really ideal. She talks about that.
And sometimes when I’m working with managers, we talked about the personality types earlier with the communication, but different things appeal to different people. Sometimes you have to set an example for your staff. You can’t expect your staff to take the time off that they need, that we know that they need, if you’re not taking it off too.
And then she talks about paying attention to the hours that you’re working, not coming in early, staying late, sending emails or responding to emails outside of whatever normal time looks like. And I know that’s hard when often the library is open maybe from eight in the morning to eight at night, that kind of thing. So, encouraging people not to check email on their phone.
And then she circles back to communication, which I think has been a thread all through our conversation, communication is a challenge and it takes work to be a good communicator and to stay on top of it and talks about ways to do that. She talks about email boundaries, which I touched on a little bit as well.
And it’s amazing to me, I guess, that we still have to say do not micromanage, because I don’t know that there’s any research that indicates that’s a good approach, that anyone likes that or that that’s a good approach to managing people, but we do have to say be aware of your tendency as a human being to be a micromanager. I guess it’s human nature.
And she talks about creating time for trying new things and exploration, which is, I think too, another good part of self care in general, that learning, and I don’t think we were gonna talk about Don’s chapter here, but he talks about learning as part of wellness and wellbeing and then again, recognition and celebrating yourself and your staff.
Steve Thomas: Yeah. And it’s interesting that the chapter is subtitled “Protecting your Employees From You.” What are some behaviors that you can be looking for that are unintentionally hurting your team, sort of like, if you’re burned out, how do you know you’re burned out?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah. So there are three key symptoms of burnout according to the World Health Organization: exhaustion, which is the most common one and I think that’s how burnout has entered into the common lexicon. People say, oh, I’m burned out on this, or I’m burned out on that. I’m tired of it, is what they’re talking about. I’m exhausted, and I think, at a risk of going down a rabbit hole, when you look at the survey models that measure burnout, Copenhagen is the one that just measures exhaustion, Maslach Burnout Inventory measures all three, and then I think there’s a couple other ones.
So the other two, which are really important in determining if you actually have burnout is the cynicism around your work. So feeling negative thoughts about your work, your ability to do your work, or the impact your work is making.
And so that’s the next one is ineffectiveness: you feel like your work just doesn’t matter anymore. And so those are the ways that you know you’re burned out or you’re veering into burnout territory. And I will stress, and I don’t I think that she goes over this in the book, but I’m gonna pull in from other research here, if you’re veering into that territory, you have to take action. The research shows that burnout recovery takes probably years to truly recover from, and there’s some new research that shows you’ll never fully recover from it. So it is really important if you’re experiencing that, to look at the six causes of burnout in the workplace and look at how you can take action there.
So Susan’s not going, I think, that deep into it, but she really talks about modeling the behavior that helps prevent exhaustion: not answering email, being conscious of your hours worked, those kind of things.
Steve Thomas: I do think back now to when you said, “Oh, you’ve been doing the podcast 13 years, congratulations!” And I said, “I’m exhausted.” There’s my self-reflection. So. We’ll reflect on that.
A lot of libraries, obviously in current times, but even just over the last recent years have been going through a lot of rough patches with political stuff, funding stuff is just constant with libraries; even in good times, funding is never great for libraries, but a lot of this stuff sometimes leads to distrust in organizations and trust is one of the things discussed in chapter 16 by Corey Ha.
How can a manager, like if this trust is already broken, and not by you, the manager, but just by other issues, how do you rebuild that trust? Because there are ways that you can fix the trust when you broke it but then what do you do when it’s out of your control, or the issue that broke their trust is out of your control?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, I think going into a situation where either morale is broken, trust is broken, possibly both, a team that’s experiencing burnout, there’s no psychological safety, those kind of things, is a really hard situation to go into as a manager and repair that team.
And I think that Corey does a good job of breaking this out in these four pillars and talking about “it begins with you” is his first one. And here he is encouraging you to do something we already talked about, which is reflect on your personal values and goals: what do you want to make happen with the team that you’re in? What are ways that you can do self-improvement for yourself? And this is that daily grounding kind of thing we talked about. And he talks about the importance of taking care of yourself first. It’s in a really important in a leadership position to practice self-care, both to take care of your wellbeing and to set an example for your team.
And I loved that he included how important it is that you be your authentic self into that. I think that’s really important because there’s a lot of ways to be good managers. There’s a lot of ways to be bad managers too, right? But there’s a lot of ways to be a good manager, and it’s finding what works for you and your personality, your communication style, that kind of thing, and so it isn’t necessarily “check this check box on this list” because then what you get is an experience that feels maybe inauthentic or insincere for staff so then they may doubt your intentions, even though your intentions might be good.
And he talks about honesty, like we’re back to communication again, that what we’re trying to accomplish, that you name the elephant in the room if you’re going into a situation with low morale or whatever happened, it’s a toxic workplace, to talk about that and that the goal as a team is to improve it.
I gave a presentation yesterday and one of the staff members shared that their manager has the group work as a team to set their boundaries and their values. Like what are their non-negotiable boundaries for work and what are their values, so working with your team to look at what that might look like in your space and being transparent about it.
And then Corey’s second pillar is having a vision and goals. I think that’s really important when you’re getting together with yourself and the team. What are you working towards? How do we know if we’ve gotten there, what are the milestones gonna look like along the way? And that might be really hard ’cause I think sometimes measuring toxic workplaces or low morale are really complicated.
And then he’s going back to meeting with staff, bringing them into the picture and connecting with them throughout the process, acknowledging that the work that they’re doing, and I would say acknowledging the work that you’re doing as a manager is really important.
And his last one is providing support and that looks like professional development. It might look like work flexibility, coming in early, leaving early, vice versa or taking an extended bit of time off during the day to go to an appointment or a loved one’s event and providing the resources to help people do the things that they need to do, put your sort of money and your efforts where your mouth is to create this workplace where people can thrive in at work and that’s possible.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. So I did wanna go over briefly the topics that we skipped, but that you definitely are covered in the book and so if you wanted to learn more, definitely get the book. We talked about how to do this on a budget and setting realistic performance expectations. There’s physical sides of this, like ergonomics and disabilities, anti-fat bias are covered in here. And disability, not just physical disabilities, but intellectual disabilities and any kind of disabilities. How professional development can help with this, and emotional, invisible labor, there’s another chapter a little bit more in deep that we talked about that a little bit at the beginning, but there’s one that goes a little bit more into that, and then self-reflection I think is an important one as well that’s part of the self-care, I think, of understanding what you’re doing and ’cause if you don’t understand yourself, how are you gonna fix yourself?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, I don’t know that I can pick a favorite chapter from this book because I think they’re all touching on something really unique and important. I love Amanda Darby’s chapter on “not an emergency room” mindset. I think that’s a great starting place for people, and the nice thing about how the book is laid out, that they can just sort of jump to the chapter that grabs their attention. You don’t need to read it front to back, but you can pick and choose.
And you mentioned Meg’s anti-fat bias, which is so important and we’re starting to hear more about as well. And then JJ’s disability and wellness are also, I think, really topics we don’t hear as much about sometimes in our work in libraries and around wellbeing. So that’s wonderful to have them in there.
Steve Thomas: So the last thing I wanted to ask is, on a tough day, what is a wellness practice that you personally turn to?
Bobbi Newman: This is a great question and this is a “do as I say, not as I do” I think another piece of the conversation. So two things: the one I’ve started turning to most recently is nature, and there’s a growing body of research around the benefits and the exposure to nature.
In the first book, and when I talk about wellbeing in general, about exposure to natural light and exposure to nature, and these are really important. I think you’ve been working in libraries a long time, Steve. I have been working in libraries a long time. I have worked in basements that were never meant to house people. I’ve worked with the old metal desks. I have worked in a beautiful new library, I won’t name names, that I had an office on an outside wall, but there was no window because aesthetically, it wasn’t the architect’s vision. And I have worked in spaces where I had a sort of weird window view that I mostly saw the moldy side of the concrete building, but I did sometimes get to see a tree.
It’s been wonderful to see an increased interest in how exposure to nature and natural light during the work day and at work. That research coming out, it’s continuing to come and the benefits of that. And so my hope is that we start creating spaces that are better for us to work in, but we know how often libraries get a new building, so getting exposure to nature has really made a difference. And I read one study that even if you just go outside and you look up, so seeing the tree canopy does something to your brain. So even if you’re in a parking lot or you’re not in the best area, if you can look up to the tree canopy, that really helps. So for me, getting outside, getting some nature is really helpful.
The other practice that I know works, but I struggle, I think, more to do, is mindfulness. I think it’s kind of gotten trendy in the last couple years. I see a lot more in presentations and stuff back in, I think it was 2019, the summer of 2019, I was fortunate enough to get into a mindfulness-based, stress reduction program at the University of Iowa, where I work , and I went in kind of as a skeptic to this practice. I did it because I wanted to help with stress, but I don’t know how I went in kind of as a skeptic, and so I think we did two or three hours, once or twice a week, for a month or two, and then at the end we had a day-long silent retreat. And that was a struggle. But one of the things that I took away from that is that mindfulness doesn’t necessarily look like the breathing exercises sometimes you may have seen, or sometimes you’ll do an abbreviated body scan, whether it’s like two or five minutes. When I was doing that practice, we had to do a 30 minute one. Let me tell you, I have never done that again after I got out of that. But you can mindfully eat your food. You can mindfully move your body. If you do crafts, you can mindfully, if you’re gonna sit and knit for an hour, maybe you just spend the first two minutes like, looking at the yarn and the texture of the yarn and the colors and how it smells. Sometimes when I lead a group in this, I have them look at a picture, like of a leaf or something.
So there’s a lot of ways to practice mindfulness, which is all to go back to me saying if I remember to practice mindfulness, I find it works. I struggle more to do it than other tasks, but it does work if you do it. So those are my two sort of favorite ones.
Steve Thomas: I find the same thing with mindfulness, that it’s very helpful when I do it but getting myself to do it is the problem. And I am lucky that my branch has lots of good natural light in it. So no matter where you are in the building, there’s usually some natural light around, and my office does have a window that looks back on a little field behind me. So it’s nice.
Bobbi Newman: Very nice. Very nice.
Steve Thomas: Well, Bobbi, thank you so much for sharing your insights and the stuff in the book here today. It really feels like a breath of fresh air ’cause I think a lot of library workers are dealing with a lot of these issues, especially I know speaking from personal experience, managers need this kind of thing. Wellbeing in the Library Workplace is available now so you can get a copy or make sure your library gets a copy and then you can read that copy, and if there’s somebody listening who wants to dig in deeper, how can they get in touch with you?
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, you can always reach out to me through email. It’s probably the easiest way: Bobbi, B-O-B-B-I dot newman, N-E-W-M-A-N, at gmail.com. I do still write a blog, not as regularly as I used to, but librarianbyday.net. And I write about what I’m reading and thinking about with a relation to workplace wellbeing on LinkedIn and Bluesky, so you can find me there as well.
Steve Thomas: Subscribe via RSS. Come on. RSS, yeah.
Bobbi Newman: Make a comeback! I feel like QR codes are making a comeback. Why can’t RSS make a comeback?
Steve Thomas: Yep, absolutely! Thanks again, Bobbi.
Bobbi Newman: Thank you so much for having me.
Steve Thomas: And hopefully it won’t be another 12, 13 years before I have you back again.
Bobbi Newman: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Circulating Ideas 