If you’re a mission-driven professional with enthusiasm for innovation in higher education, explore this position at the University of California’s California Digital Library (CDL).  As Communications/Marketing  Coordinator, you will be responsible for strategic communications and marketing for a world-class digital library serving faculty, students, and staff at the University of California and beyond, assisting directors and managers clarify their communications objectives, defining and articulating their messages, and preparing their communications and marketing materials.  You will make recommendations for marketing research, branding and product positioning and help us effectively communicate our messages about complex digital library services.  Other responsibilities include overseeing the development and maintenance of the distribution channels and good practice guidelines that support communication at the CDL in general. This position may hire and supervise CDL technical writing staff and other contract communications and copywriting staff.

•  Bachelor’s degree in communication, marketing, business administration or related field.
• Knowledge of communications and marketing practice as demonstrated by at least five years of relevant professional experience promoting, marketing, or supporting use of an online information product/service; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Demonstrated experience and knowledge of best principles and practices in performing marketing research and/or needs assessment experience for information services.
• Familiarity with web design and maintenance and best practices for writing in a web-based context.
• Strong analytical skills, creative thinking and writing capability as demonstrated by the ability to focus on key issues, gather, assess, and synthesize information and recommendations from a wide variety of sources on a broad range of issues to formulate messaging and positioning statements.
• Demonstrated ability to understand technical issues at a conceptual level and effectively convey and explain information to users.
• Excellent interpersonal skills as demonstrated by the ability to interact collaboratively and productively with diverse technical and programmatic staff and professional staff across the UC system.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with University and media communications staff and manage outside vendors and agencies.

HOW TO APPLY: For a complete job description or to apply for this position, please visit: https://jobs.ucop.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=54538

To review a complete list of all of UCOP’s open positions please visit University of California Office of the President Employment Website: http://jobs.ucop.edu”>http://jobs.ucop.edu

Sometimes our post will arise from a skill we already have and want to share; sometimes it’s from a wish to learn something new so you can learn it too. Often, we’re inspired by talented bloggers who generously share their ideas and their uplifting spirits. We want to highlight a few of our favorites in this post — and what more appropriate time to show our gratitude than the week of Thanksgiving?

3 Blogs That Inspire Us

1. Speaking About Presenting: Lena and I presented a workshop at a conference last month. We started our rehearsal by checking out Olivia Mitchell’s great advice on effective presentations. (A “hat tip” to our colleague Joan Starr for introducing us to this blog). This is a rich resource of public speaking skills that new and experienced presenters can both utilize. We happily absorbed her confidence-building advice about How to Look Authoritative When You Feel Anything But.

2. Innovate on Purpose by Jeffrey Phillips is dedicated to ideas, conversations and approaches for sustainable, repeatable workplace innovation. His advice is eminently practical in its focus on creating a culture of innovation over the long term. We were particularly struck by his recent post explaining the importance of finding the right people to innovate and getting them into the right roles.

3. Pick the Brain is a blog about self-improvement — personal productivity, motivation, and self-education. A small team of experts provides advice that is great for the workplace but also works well in many facets of our lives. Lori Taylor’s recent advice about How To Stop Focusing On People & Focus On Issues (It’s Easy If You Do This) gave me a path forward in a sticky situation.

Now It’s Your Turn

What blogs do you follow (besides this one, of course)? Share your inspirations in the comment section below!

For more about what inspires us to blog and how we choose our topics, see our interview in University of California’s LINK newsletter.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

Last week, Leslie outlined the basics on managing meetings in her post on How to Host an Effective Virtual Meeting. This week, we’ll narrow our focus to a few easy ways to capture what really matters in your meetings — critical decisions, actions, and next steps. If you absolutely need a literal record of who said what, consider doing a voice recording or video of your meeting. (Most conferencing software products offer recordings as an option at a small additional fee.)

Try one or more of these tips for your own note taking:

3 Tips for Taking Simple & Effective Notes at Meetings

1. Type the notes during the the meeting. It takes a little practice, but it’s much more efficient. Use a numbered agenda as the starting point and capture action items and brief notes under each numbered agenda item. The benefit is combining the agenda and notes in a single document (that’s one less document to keep track of), and best of all, your note-taking duties are done when the meeting’s done.
2. Keep the notes as brief as possible. Only capture what’s most critical. Too much typing can be distracting. Record decisions and actions. Avoid statements like “discussed [fill in the blank] topic.” This is not informative. Was a decision made? What action will be taken? What was the upshot of the discussion?
3. Save the meeting notes in a shared space like a wiki page or a shared document in Google Docs for easy access and editing.  In the past, you had to distribute the notes to meeting participants and then collate everyone’s changes. This was time-consuming and a poor use of everyone’s time. Today, you can have participants edit directly in a shared document (and one that will even show you the revision history.)

Example of An Agenda and Notes

This approach may sound simplistic, yet it’s effective and fast. With the time you save, you can devote your energy to making sure meeting participants know what they have agreed to do and what their deadlines are.  A simple way to do this is to create a table at the top of your meeting notes that pulls out this important information.  Here are the essentials to track:

• Who is responsible.
• What is the action.
• When is it due.
• It’s useful to have a general Notes column for brief comments or status updates.

Example of An Action Table

Your action table might look something like this:

Be sure to get your team’s agreement in advance before trying these methods. Find out how much context you are expected to record about decisions, actions, issue background, etc. For example, do you need a record of whose idea it was and what the alternative ideas were, or is it sufficient to simply record the final decision? Talk with your team and manager beforehand.

“A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted.” – James T. Kirk (12 Leadership Lessons From the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise)

Now, It’s Your Turn

1. Briefly skim these articles:

How to Record Useful Meeting Minutes

4 Top Tips on How to Take Meeting Minutes

2. Read our previous post How to Embrace Innovation for why it’s good to share meeting notes on a screen during the meeting (see “Start with a Simple Innovation”).

What Method Works for You?

Do you have a favorite method for taking notes or tips you’d like to share? We’d love to hear them. Send an email to us at yourlifeatwork@gmail.com or comment below.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

How can you make sure you do it right more often than not? Effective communication is one of the toughest skills to master, since our individual personalities vary so much. The key is to build a strong communication bridge with your manager so you can be mutually successful at sharing and managing the effects of important news.

7 Ways to Build a Communication Bridge with Your Manager

1. Set the groundwork: During a time where things are quiet and peaceful, discuss with your manager what types of news should be shared and how.  Ask them what they expect to receive from you, and how you should deliver it.  For instance, which things can wait for a regular check-in meeting and which things need to be shared immediately?

2. Never let your manager be surprised. Remember that your manager’s manager doesn’t want to be surprised either, so think strategically. Review possible scenarios and play them out.  For example, if there’s a major problem with a service, your manager might want to be informed the same day or within three hours or immediately. They might want to be texted, phoned, or called out of a meeting.

3. Give a bit of advance notice. Let your manager know you have something important to discuss and ask for a time to meet. Try to pick the time of day when your manager is at their best and not facing an imminent deadline.

4. Take the time you need. Allow enough time to frame the issue, discuss it, ask questions, and come up with a solution. Don’t let your anxiety stop you from getting the feedback and support you need. It helps to write down your main points and frame the discussion before you meet. Before you leave the meeting, be sure you know what the next steps are.

5. Don’t shy away from delivering bad news. Most of us are eager to share good news but more hesitant to share bad news, hoping we can resolve the problem quickly. If something is not going right, it’s better to share the bad news up front. Every manager would love to hear your news paired with a solution, but don’t be afraid to say you don’t have one and you need their assistance in crafting a solution.

6. Keep your tone calm and respectful. Your approach should be strategic and planned, not emotional and reactionary. Your demeanor will keep your manager calm as well.

7. If you are a manager: The most important thing you can do is to create a climate where your staff is comfortable communicating important news to you. Show them that you don’t “shoot the messenger” but instead welcome all news.

“The relationship with your boss is a partnership. It takes effort to built the relationship and nurture it. You have to communicate well, avoid confrontations and resolve differences in a positive way.” – Jane Boucher

Now, It’s Your Turn

1. Make an appointment with your manager and work together on #1 and #2 above.

2. Read our related post on 3 Ways to Be More Effective in Giving and Receiving Feedback.

3. Look at a few of these articles to get more tips:

Top 7 Tips on Delivering Bad News

Tips for giving your boss bad news

How to deliver bad news to your boss

eHow’s How to deliver bad news to your boss

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

Why should we continue to provide service X in the library (or research center) when it could be provided–or may be provided already–in open the marketplace?

This is a good question, actually. Resources are scarce, and public resources are especially scarce. All of us want to be sure that they are being spent in the best possible way.

The answer I gave was this: a service offering from librarians should show evidence of listening to users. That is, I would expect that it would be meeting the needs of a particular community or group of communities, perhaps even one that is under-served by the open market.

I hold this view because librarians have special training in how to listen effectively. It’s called the reference interview. It’s surprising how much the spirit of that interaction informs the way many of us think about what we do, even if we have never staffed a reference desk or put in a shift on a virtual reference service.

While thinking about this, I read a blog post on the practice of Active Listening which argued that listening is an essential project management skill. It struck me that these two methodologies have some important ideas in common, and so I humbly present what is possibly the world’s first…

Reference Interview: Active Listening CrossWalk

One conclusion you might draw from this fanciful exercise is that the reference interview model has the advantage of built-in assessment, not only with checking back to confirm understanding, but also after the conclusion of delivering the requested information or service.

The other feature of the reference interview model that really jumps out when you look at this chart is that librarians are basically hard-wired to deliver solutions. Both the interview and active listening are processes that iterate, so, in the case of the reference interview, the librarian’s goal is to maintain the connection until the information need is fulfilled.

When you think about it, this is a powerful model for service delivery!

Small talk is not your thing, you say. Is this a skill you really need to develop? Yes. According to CareerBuilder.com: “A study at the Stanford University School of Business tracked a group of MBAs 10 years after they graduated. The result? Grade point averages had no bearing on their success — but their ability to converse with others did.”

The good news is you don’t need to be a virtuoso conversationalist or even an extrovert to strike up a conversation with people you don’t know. So, what do you need to know?

3 Things to Know Before Talking with a Stranger

1. Know your intent. Have a purpose for every social event you attend. Ask yourself: Why I am here? What do I need to accomplish before I leave? For example, at a conference your goal may be to connect with three people and exchange business cards. With a clear goal in mind you have a focus and an incentive to avoid interactions that aren’t moving you towards your goal.  Once you’ve accomplished what you set out to do, you’re free to leave or revisit the buffet.

2. Know yourself. Prepare your “elevator speech” for both personal and professional encounters. An elevator speech imagines you have less than a minute to make an impression and convey something meaningful about yourself to someone. (See our previous post How to Discover Your DNA for ways to understand what makes you unique.)

Who are you and what do you do? Be able to say what you do, what you’re working on, or what your interests are SIMPLY and in a couple of different ways. For example, have both a precise explanation for someone who understands your area and a generalized explanation for everyone else. Avoid using jargon unless you’re at an event where everyone speaks the same jargon. (Even then, you will be a refreshing break from your colleagues if you present yourself using simple clear language.)

As difficult as it may seem, you can boil down your elevator speech into a sentence or two. (You get extra credit if you make your message vivid and memorable.) It doesn’t have to be precise.  For example, I was struggling with describing what I do and another person next to me piped up, “You make libraries easier to use.”  That works, and if someone is really interested, I can go into more detail. This approach invites a dialog and makes you look confident — that is, you appear to have a clear grasp of what you do and care about.

Elevator Speech in Action

Last year Leslie and I attended a townhall meeting introducing incoming University of California President Mark Yudof to staff. Leslie and I prepared ourselves to briefly describe the strategic goals of our group. Sure enough, the opportunity struck when President Yudof introduced himself to us, shook our hands, and asked what we did. Without missing a beat, we were able to tell him our group’s three strategic goals and converse briefly with him about how we were tackling those goals. Our actual goals were less important than the fact that we had concrete goals that were easy to understand and we were actively pursuing them. The key message was we know what we’re doing, why it matters, and we’re actively doing it.

3. Know how to start (and end) a conversation. Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project blog has a terrific post on getting a conversation going that includes bonus tips on how to avoid being boring. Here are her first three tips (see below for a link to her full post):

• Comment on a topic common to both of you at the moment: the food, the room, the occasion, the weather. “How do you know our host?” “What brings you to this event?” But keep it on the positive side! Unless you can be hilariously funny, the first time you come in contact with a person isn’t a good time to complain.

• Comment on a topic of general interest. A friend scans Google News right before he goes anywhere where he needs to make small talk, so he can say, “Did you hear that Justice Souter is stepping down from the bench?” or whatever might be happening.

• Ask open questions that can’t be answered with a single word. “What’s keeping you busy these days?” This is a good question if you’re talking to a person who doesn’t have an office job. It’s also helpful because it allows people to choose their focus (work, volunteer, family, hobby) — preferable to the inevitable question (well, inevitable at least in New York City): “What do you do?”

It can be trickier to remove yourself from a conversation that’s gone sour. Here are some tips:

• Change the subject.
• Stop asking questions or commenting on what the other person has to say.
• End the conversation abruptly, but politely, by asking for a card or setting up your next appointment if you’re discussing business.
• Set up a signal with friends in advance to pull you away.

First Impressions Matter

People will make a judgment about you within a few seconds. Giving the other person your full attention and having a pleasant demeanor will go a long way towards a positive encounter. Here’s an example of how body language matters.  This advice comes from a past Vice President at University of California when she spoke to graduates of the career development program: Always exit an elevator with your head held high and a calm expression. Why? As a leader, it conveys that everything is okay. Conversely, imagine the impression you would get if your director entered your office with their head down and a worried look on their face.

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” — Dorothy Nevill

Now, It’s Your Turn

Read one of these brief articles and pick a few tips to try at a work or personal social event.

Seven Tips for Making Good Conversation with a Stranger from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project blog. Includes tips for knowing if you’re boring someone and tips to avoid being a bore (which are pretty funny!)

12 Tips for Making Small Talk from CareerBuilder.com. Includes tips on exit lines.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

As a project manager, did you have a revelation halfway through the project that the team doesn’t really know why they are doing the project and — even worse — each person has a different idea of what “done” should look like?

What’s at Stake? If you don’t have a clearly-articulated vision of the successful outcomes for your assignment or project, how will you ever know if you’re successful? In fact, how will you ever know if you’re even finished?

I’ve become much more productive since I learned to start every new assignment by saying, “Please tell me what success looks like on this assignment. What are the desired outcomes? What will we have accomplished at the end of this process? How will we know we have been successful?” At first, I got some blank stares. Over time, people admitted, “I knew you were going to ask me that, and I’m not sure what to say, but I know you need a vision to get started.” That’s OK — in fact, that’s a victory, because now you can start the conversation.

5 Steps to Envisioning Successful Outcomes

1. Explain what’s in it for them. “I’d like to ask a set of questions to get a clear picture of what you need, so that I can do it right the first time and not waste time on rewrites. If I can understand what success looks like, I can take us there.” Always start with the “WIIFM” — the “What’s In It For Me” factor. It ensures that people will listen and cooperate because you have their interests at heart.

2. Hold a conversation using open-ended questions to draw out the fullest picture of the desired end result. Keep asking in different ways until you get what you need.

• What does success look like on this software project? What problems does this system solve? What’s your vision of how someone will use it when it’s finished?
• What will we have accomplished by the end of this brainstorming session? How will we use what we learned in the session – where will we take it from here?
• Who is the audience for this report? Is it meant to inform or persuade? What are the key ideas you want to get across? Are there any political sensitivities I should be aware of?
• When I attend this all-campus conference, are you expecting that I’ll bring back specific information or talk to any particular individuals who are interested on our project?

Once you have the big picture, you can ask about the logistics, among them:

• What is the due date?
• Who needs to approve it?
• What form or format are you looking for?
• Who should I talk to for more information?

3. Send your notes after the meeting and ask for confirmation that you got it right. This ensures your grasp on the project, and it also calls out any gaps in logic or intent. It keeps misunderstandings to a minimum, especially as time, stress, and scope-creep cloud our recollections. Over the years, I’ve learned not to move forward until I have written agreement. We’re all much happier with the result.

4. Create a road map and plan. Now that you know “where we are” and “where we want to be,” you can determine the steps that will take you there. The size of the project will dictate the length and detail of the plan. Once again, this calls out any gaps in logic, timing, or resource allocation.

5. If there are others on your project, share the road map and plan. Explain the vision, the reasons for the project, and the desired outcomes. Hold a real dialogue; let everyone ask questions to see what you’ve missed. At the same time, you can uncover hidden objections or resistance from people who are not “on board.” Your project will be more successful when everyone can accept and articulate the vision.

“The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in the mind.” –Henry David Thoreau

Now It’s Your Turn

Take a look at these blog posts for more information:

• Define Clear Outcomes for Project Success
• Four Keys To Successful Project Management
• Know When to Finish

Share Your Perspective

What’s the best way to bring everyone into alignment with the shared vision? Do you have any special techniques that work for you?

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

CDL has joined many of our colleague and partner institutions, like UC Riverside Libraries, UCSF Libraries, UC Press, Internet Archive, Hathi Trust, OCLC, and many others in creating a Twitter account.  We have done this for several reasons, including:

• as an additional way to get CDLINFO out into the world;
• as a way to amplify the voice and message of the accounts the main CDL account will follow. “Following” simply means to receive the other Twitter account’s updates, or “tweets;”
• and as a way to promote our visibility, in keeping with our values of openness and sharing.

The CDL account is called CalDigLib (http://www.twitter.com/caldiglib) and we encourage you to follow it if you are a Twitter user.  Even if you are not a Twitter user, you can view it by simply going to the URL. You will find this content:

• CDLINFO articles: the headline  with a link to the full article
• Tweets from accounts followed by CalDigLib — accounts that feature CDL Program and Service news, announcements, resources, etc.

If you currently receive CDLINFO via RSS and you are a Twitter user, you may wish to consider following the new CDL Twitter account and receiving your CDL news in this manner.  If you currently receive CDLINFO via email, and have been looking for a reason to try Twitter, this might be a good time to take the leap!

The first CDL Program we will be following is the brand-new eScholarship account.  As time goes by, more Programs and Services will build Twitter into their marketing and communication plans.  Why? Because, as our friend Roy Tennant recently blogged, “Twitter is the new RSS” (http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1090000309/post/290048229.html).  For some of our audiences, at least, this is increasingly the best way to connect.

We hope some of you will join us by following this new account.  Of course, we know some of you are already there! We look forward to a lively exchange as we all get to know this new channel for communication.

For any questions and more information, please contact Joan Starr (joan.starr@ucop.edu) or (@joan_starr on Twitter).