By Bob Boiko. Originally published in three parts in December 2005 and January 2006. This version is excerpted from the earlier version.

The best employees can be problematic at times. The worst employees can be productive members of an organization.

They're all--we're all--people. We don't turn that off when we're at work.

Problem people aren't necessarily bad employees--they may also be some of your stars.

Will there ever be a library without communications problems? Probably not--at least not as long as people run and use the library. We're prone to communications problems; it comes with the territory. We (most of us, some of the time; some of us, most of the time) disguise our feelings in our comments. We avoid saying what we mean. We scapegoat.

Many articles in LLN speak to ways to improve your strength as a manager or leader. What about weaknesses?

A few highlights from these notes (from outside the library field):

Leadership is about doing--but it's also about being. Notes here consider some of the qualities that make for successful leaders. 

Three posts from two library-related blogs, dating from December 2007 and January 2008, have been sitting in my "possible material for LLN" folder for a while--and, looking at them now, I see links among the three. They're all, to one extent or another, about self-examination on an individual and institutional level.

Shorter notes on change and change management from outside the literature. A related set of library-related notes appears in Coping with change in libraries.

Thoughts from outside the library literature. Primarily by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest.

By Jamie LaRue

Two sets of notes on the OCLC report From Awareness to Funding--one from Leslie Dillon pointing to some other commentaries, the other an extended commentary from Jeff Scott, Library Director for the City of Casa Grande Public Library (Arizona).