Your knowledge is valuable - especially if you know how to pass it along!
- Have you been tasked with mentoring a colleague but don't know where to start?
- Are you expected to provide background information for new staff with diverse backgrounds and no prior library experience?
- Does your library need to prepare all employees for an upcoming organization-wide change?
- Would the loss of key skills or knowledge held by single individuals create a crisis for your department?
This workshop will explore techniques for providing in-house training on any budget in any sized library, using the knowledge and skills that already exist in your organization. You will learn how you can use peer training and mentoring to foster staff involvement and excitement, build an organizational culture of learning and teamwork, and ease any change process. At the end of the workshop, you will outline your own approach to peer training or mentoring and leave with an action plan for how to begin.
Workshop Description: This all-day interactive workshop will utilize class discussion, individual and group exercises, and real-life examples to provide you with the tools you need for designing peer training and mentoring solutions for a variety of individual and group situations. The class will consider potential challenges that could come up in different library settings and share creative and successful ways to meet them. The instructor will provide handouts, as well as practical, useful tips, and will help you work on your own action plan for a peer training or peer mentoring experience in your library.
Pre-workshop assignment: (Optional) This course will be even more valuable to you if you come to the workshop with an idea for a training need or a possible mentoring assignment in your library. Students will also be provided with library scenarios to use during the exercises and plan development.
Preliminary Course Outline:
- What is Peer Training, and Why Do It?
- What is Peer Mentoring, and Why Do It?
- How to Begin
- Identify the training goal
- Determine the desired outcome
- How to Plan and Implement Peer Training
- Identify potential trainers
- Work with training team to prepare and test training plan
- Schedule for success
- Practice for success
- Go! and pay attention
- Evaluate for success
- Follow-up for success
- Congratulate! for future success
- How to Plan and Implement Peer Mentoring
- Assess the individual's needs or goals and desired outcomes
- Find out what the individual already knows or what is already working well
- Determine the priorities or what needs to come first
- Personalize the coaching sessions and assignments
- Evaluate the new skills
- Follow up where needed
- Challenges: How To Anticipate Them, How to Meet Them
- Recruiting reluctant trainers or mentors
- Securing commitment from reluctant supervisors
- Attracting reluctant students
- Finding the knowledge in your own organization
- Meeting a tight deadline
- Providing practice opportunity during long training roll-out or after training ends
- Other challenges in your library
- Design Your Own Peer Training or Peer Mentoring Plan
Workshop Instructor: Janet Hildebrand