Not an Emergency Room: A Mindset for Encouraging Realistic Performance Expectations Among Employees

In academic and public libraries, where patrons often have unreasonable expectations of what we as librarians can do for them, reminding ourselves and our employees that “we are a library, not an emergency room” can be helpful in working towards a healthier view of the stakes involved in our work and towards realistic performance expectations in the workplace. This presentation will focus on a mindset that can help in coaching employees towards healthier expectations regarding their own performance in an environment that frequently asks us to go above and beyond to serve patrons, often at the expense of our own mental health. Library leaders can demonstrate the boundaries of what is and is not doable in a work environment by not being afraid to say no to unreasonable patron requests, by explicitly placing value on our own work-life balance, and by taking other similar actions that demonstrate to our employees that we understand and respect our own limits, and therefore, theirs as well.

Objectives:

After this presentation, attendees will be able to:

1) explain why the “library, not emergency room” mindset is important in creating a library environment with good work-life balance and realistic performance expectations;

2) put the stakes of a given library workplace scenario into perspective;

3) accurately identify workplace scenarios in which applying the mindset is appropriate;

4) coach employees on how to incorporate the mindset into their own workplace actions and decisions and support them as they learn how to do so; and

5) model the mindset for employees by incorporating it into their own practice.