Remember the
princess who kissed the frog so he became a prince? At first they
danced all weekend, toasted each other in the morning with coffee, with
champagne at night and always with kisses. Perhaps it was in bed after
the first year had ground around she noticed he had become cold with
her. She had to sleep with a heating pad and a feather doona. His
manner grew increasingly chilly and damp when she entered a room. He
spent his time indulging in water sports, tending his hydroponic
garden, and working on his insect collection. Then in the third year
when she said to him one day, "My dearest, are you taking your vitamins
daily, you look quite green," he leaped away from her . Finally, on
their fifth anniversary, she confronted him. "Dear Heart, don't you
love me any more?" He replied, "Ribett, Ribett." Though courtship turns
frogs into princes, marriage turns them quietly back. [1]
The perspective of
relationships
The subject of
professionalism can be viewed from a number of perspectives, of which
perhaps the most important is the perspective of what may be seen as
the essential, unavoidable tensions between the individual as a
professional and the individual as an employee. These tensions define
the relationship between the individual and the paid position.
Professionals tend
to go into a job with high hopes that the organisation will nurture and
support them in delivering a totally professional high quality service,
with no compromises needed . In many essentials a job is not an
"occupation" but a relationship, a relationship with potential for all
the elements of courtship, marriage, and sometimes, divorce, thus, when
trying to understand the place of the professional within in the
organisation it would be useful to turn to the literature which
explores the concept of relationship morphology. This literature is
highly relevant to the process of reaching an understanding of the
adaptive process which is reflected in the psychological evolution
undergone as various relationships are traversed, including those which
are unhappy, painful and even seemingly destructive.
In the positions
individuals take, it is not uncommon to see the hand of fate or luck,
when in actuality each position is a type of relationship which teaches
its incumbent what he or she most needs to know when he or she most
need to know it. Just as the serial choice of lovers is perhaps the
most visible, objective measure of emotional growth and development, so
the serial choice of jobs is perhaps the most visible, objective
measure of p rofessional growth and development.
Love
relationships, from adolescent crushes to lifelong marriage, are so
intriguing and complex because they involve (at least) two people in
constant motion and flux. When both partners share certain fundamental
psychological processes, they may evolve and develop, often with little
introspection, along much the same clear path and so stay together as
they grow older. It takes little imagination to extrapolate from this
to the relationship between an individual and the organisation in which
he or she works. The professional relationship is made more complex
than the personal one by the requirement to simultaneously juggle a
relationship with the organisation as a whole, a relationship with the
library within the organisation (another organisation in effect), and
with at least one individual (the supervisor, who might be a section
head, the librarian, or a non-librarian manager). If these latter
change one might find oneself inadvertently in a different sort of
relationship. The important thing is to be aware of what the
relationship is, and why it is what it is.
The jobs an
individual selects, how that individual relates to the organisation,
the position and individual level of performance, and the reasons for
leaving them, follow an inexorable logic which reflects that of
personal relationships.
Most couples, even
those fortunate in their ability to form a broadly congruent intimate
connection, are unlikely to continue to evolve together in all
the myriad ways that go to mak e up a romantic bond. One partner or the
other is likely to angle off, or move a little faster or a little
slower, or simply stop. The majority of people enjoy (or suffer) a
number of interactions of varying lengths that they call "love" through
out the course of their lives, and so it is with their jobs. That an
individual falls in love with a particular person at a particular time
may not be quite preordained, but personality structure and degree of
emotional maturity make the choice of partner remarkably predictable.
People do not fall in love by coincidence. Who they select as lovers,
how they relate to them, and the reasons the relationship ultimately
ends follow an inexorable psychological logic.
The best way of
charting where an individual's career is going is to see where it has
been. Individuals tend to choose jobs as they tend to choose lovers -
to fill particular emotional needs and as a reflection of how they
feel about themselves and what they feel they deserve.
Eight discrete
patterns of relationship between individuals and their jobs can be
identified. These follow the eight ways of making intimate connections
identified by clinical psychiatrist Martin Blinder. Although the course
of professional and personal maturation leads most people through
several types of professional relationships, there is surprisingly
little overlap of these distinctive patterns, and change from one to
the other comes very slowly, so slowly that it is likely that few
recognise the transition. People tend to be stubbornly loyal to their
subconscious needs, sometimes at great cost.
Validating
relationships
Those whose
insecurities create a compelling need for validation will choose a
position on the basis of the perceived status of the organisation or
the visible symbols of success that the j ob will confer. In the
professional work environment choosing a job consistent only with the
need to appear successful involves also risking being bored and
frustrated, and of having professional growth stifled. Librarians will
not only be working within a library, but also within the larger
organisation, and this is where they will be in greatest danger of
developing validation relationships in which they focus not on their
professional skills but on the generic prejudices of non-librarian
managers.
Validating
relationships resound of adolescence, when everyone wants to date the
captain of the rugby team or the prettiest girl in the class. These
relationships do not meet deeper, indivi dual psychological needs and
therefore often hide emptiness and anger. Relinquishing to others the
power to affirm that one is all right, involves remaining dependent on
one's connections with them. Absorbing the validating messages, on the
other hand, fa cilitates becoming self-validating and reduces the need
for repeated external validation by others. Though initially the
relationship may be used to lend support in those areas in which
deficiencies are felt, the validation inherent in that support can be
internalised.
Structure-building
relationships
In the workplace,
the professional may be locked into what appears to be a good, solid
job, for long after all opportunities to grow in the job have ceased.
While continuing in such a posit ion may apparently offer security it
will limit the ability to contribute as a professional, rather than the
ability to contribute as an employee. The structure-building
relationship is future oriented in as far as it promises security by
maximising super annuation and other benefits of long-term employment,
but it typically puts emotional growth and personal satisfaction on
hold. The comfort and security of a structure-building relationship can
make it difficult to identify the sources of concurrent disco ntents,
or of potentially serious future dissatisfactions. Although awareness
that the relationship has problems can be quite acute, the presence of
so much that is seen to be valuable may cause difficulties in deciding
what to do to change what no longer is personally or professionally
beneficial without disrupting what is still beneficial.
Experimental
relationships
For some,
experimentation is very nearly a lifelong process, either because they
are uniquely slow learners or because they are always finding more to
learn. A point can be reached, however , when what appears to be
experimentation is, in fact, the settling into a rigid, fixed pattern,
wherein change itself becomes the constant. It is relatively easy for a
professional to establish a pattern of repeated experimentation -
numerous short-term jobs which do not really build up and round out
one's expertise. Time spent in reflecting, both while in a particular
job and for some time afterwards, on what has been learned from the job
and on the job, will inform future career decisions.
To identify what
has been learned requires the application of top-level structures, an
integral part of organising and dealing with aspects of everyday life
and basic to the way humans think. The four most common top-level
structures are description (listing); comparison/contrast;
cause/effect; and problem/solution.
Avoidant
relationships
Avoidant
relationships are founded on a need to escape feelings of vulnerability
or loss, emotional commitment, or threats to self-esteem. Characterised
by distance, superficiality, secretiveness, denial, withholding, and
mistrust, such relationships can form in time of need, crisis, fear, or
emotional depletion, or can be part of an on-going, life-long pattern.
They provide safe havens - partners in avoidant relationships need not
change, mature, or even feel. Such relationships between the individual
and the workplace are extremely common, but allowing oneself to stay in
such a relationship is a denial of professionalism.
Fusion
relationships
Fusion
relationships are particularly problematical for librarians. Fusion
relationships are characterised by a clinging dependency alternated
with hostile impulsiveness, and by a single-mi nded, controlling
possessiveness, sometimes to the exclusion of anyone or anything else.
On the personal level, there are probably seeds of a fusion
relationship incipient in all individuals - moments of feeling of
incompleteness, when the persona is defined too closely around another
person.
The professional
can fall victim to two different fusion relationships; either
developing a fusion relationship with the library profession, or with
the organisation. Western civilisation a s a whole now values
efficiency to an extent that occasionally makes ethical objections seem
"naive" and "unscientific". This is a particular trap for the
professional in a fusion relationship with either the profession or the
organisation, and especially where there is dissonance between
professional values and standards and organisational values and
standards.
Healing
relationships
Increasing numbers
of professionals are taking new jobs for the purposes of healing the
wounds of restructuring, retrenchment or otherwise traumatic
work-related experiences. However, the very purpose of the healing
relationship ensures that it is time-limited and relatively
problem-free as it runs its course, and therefore, that it is
relatively problem-free should not be taken to be an indicator that the
relationship is a permanent one.
In personal
relationships partners in healing may have few of the intrinsic
qualities necessary for an enduring relationship, but they nevertheless
can provide a soothing, indulgent ambience in which to recover from
psychic pain. Once healing is complete, however, fundamental
misfittings or other previously ignored or unnoticed problems usually
ensure the quiet end of the romance, unless it shifts to a different
form. The same should hold true in the workplace.
Transitional
relationships
The transitional
relationship is a hybrid between the old job and the new, the old
romance and the new. For most professionals, the majority of positions
will be transitional, providing professional and personal growth
together with career progression.
Transitional
relationships contribute to the growth of individuals. With few
exceptions most move through a series of short relationships,
successively leaving one in favour of another, reflecting progressive
levels of maturity. The new partner usually has characteristics both of
previous lovers and of the individual's ultimate ideal partner. For
example, someone drawn to surface beauty might advance to good looks with
substance, or someone might progress from an abusive relationship to
one in which the partner is merely neglectful. Old conflicts may
re-emerge but are resolved more quickly and with less pain. Mistakes
may still be made, choices can be less than optimum, but by and la rge
individuals learn and profit from experience.
Relative to
earlier experience and choices, transitional relationships embrace
larger patterns and are sufficiently fluid to provide many more
opportunities for utilising behaviour patterns . Partner choice is more
conscious and insightful. Problems inherent in previous partners are
still visible but are coupled with greater insights for working them
out. Whereas in the healing relationship there is preoccupation with
the pain of the previous union, most couples in transition, though
still comparing new partners with the old, now focus intently upon the
new ones. People involved with each other at this level usually sense
that they are in transit and, as in the healing relationship, tend to
sequester their partners from the rest of their lives (work, friends,
etc). When they move apart their reasons are always much more apparent
to them than at any time before. There is far less confusion and chaos,
and the futility of trying to work out the problems is clear.
The distinguishing
characteristic of the transitional relationship is that it reflects
growth, often profound growth. It allows a great leap ahead. It is free
of the symptoms and defence me chanisms characterising validating,
avoidance or fusion relationships, is more alive and personal than
those directed toward building structure, is possible only for those
who have completed the therapy inherent in healing relationships, and
is more purposeful than experimental relationships. Librarians in
transitional positions may not yet have arrived, but they are certainly
going somewhere.
Synergistic
relationships
A synergistic
relationship is not entered into with any expectation that the
relationship will transform either party, because the transformation
has already occurred. Each partner is in the relationship on his or
her own terms and both recognise that the relationship is worthy of
permanence and of the commitment and devotion that will make it endure
but that neither partner is going to change very much. While there will
may be some polishing and fine-tuning, there will be little structural
change.
A synergistic work
relationship is not entirely unknown, but it would be irrational to
expect that such a relationship is possible for anyone who has not
established his or her professional credentials thoroughly, and who is
able to be essentially autonomous in relation to the organisation. Such
autonomy may come with very senior positions, but is rare and cannot be
guaranteed.
Career patterns
On average
librarians will experience several of these modes of relating in the
course of their professional lives. Progress will not be at a
consistent rate, and it is possible to plateau, to seem to be stuck at
one level with no possibility of moving forward. This is more likely to
happen if, during the job selection process, fit and need are ignored.
The tendency is to compromise fit in the interest of need. In times of
recession it is r elatively common for professionals to believe that
they cannot be selective about positions. Yet, precisely because there
will be so many tensions, so many difficulties in the work place which
result from these tight times, it is extremely unwise to take a job
which does not allow its incumbent to grow and to make the ethical and
moral choices which are comfortable. The pressures on the organisation
caused by the recession will be an added burden and professionals need
to be strong and confident to cope with that burden.
Making sure that
the job fits the individual, as well as being fit for that individual,
requires self-examination about fitness for the position. This entails
assessing whether the relevant skills are possessed, or, even better,
the potential to grow them. It also entails assessing the level of
enjoyment that will be obtained from the duties and responsibilities
the position entails. People, when choosing partners, tend to start
with valida tion relationships. However, professionals well up the
career ladder often take jobs they will not enjoy because the position
is seen to be prestigious, a good career move, or the salary is high.
To ensure a career
progression that reflects actual potentional, librarians must ensure
that the jobs they take are the jobs they really deserve, not merely
the jobs they believe they have to settle for. Professionals are not
victims. Indeed behaving like a victim is unprofessional, nor is any
salary or benefit worth enough to entice a true professional to discard
or compromise essential values. For some time there seems to have been
an unarticulated consensus that Machiavelli's The Prince is
the appropriate behavioural and managerial guide within our
organisations. Faust may be more useful, particularly in the
public sector.
Relationship with
paraprofessionals and support staff
One of the
commonly used definers is the so-called boundary between professional
work and non-professional work, and a common complaint in the library
profession comes from Library Technicians, who perceive they are
treated as lesser beings. To treat people who are working as part of
the team responsible for delivering the service as being somehow less
important, is not only arrogant, it is unprofessional. It is
unprofessional because it impacts on the quality of the service that
is delivered - people who do not feel valued do not perform at the
optimum level. Arrogance mitigates against growing and learning, and
the resulting stagnation impacts negatively on the service delivered.
Burnout
Burnout, a
condition caused by too great a discrepancy between expectations and
reality, is commonly developed by committed professionals. In romantic
relationships the expectations can be so high that no one person can
fulfil them. At times the reality is so stark that it defeats the
expectations even if these are not too high. In both cases, when the
discrepancy between expectations and reality is chronic, the result can
be devastating. With the accumulation of disappointments, with the
stress of daily living, comes a gradual erosion of spirit and
eventually, burnout.
It is interesting
to note that throughout most of human history neither current
expectations of jobs or of romantic love were known. Indeed, throughout
most of human history current expecta tions would have been regarded as
extraordinary, even incredible. People worked and wed for very basic
reasons that had nothing to do with personal fulfilment.
The literature of
burnout concentrates on job burnout, but examination of the small
amount of research that has been carried out on relationships burnout,
would suggest that use of that model, with the hope it offers for
repairing the situation, fits better in the current fluid
organisational climate and makes more sense because it takes more
account of human emotions.
People who believe
in romantic love expect it to give life a sense of meaning. Job burnout
impacts most on those who start out idealistic and highly motivated,
expecting the work to give me aning to their lives. There is a direct
relationship between romantic love and burnout. Falling in love is the
initial stage of, and the prerequisite for, the burnout process. There
is a dynamic interaction between couples and the environment in which
they live. It is not the characteristics of the partner that cause
burnout, but rather the destruction of romantic ideals by situational
stresses that are erroneously attributed to the partner. Burnout on the
job is the result of a dynamic interaction between people and their
perceived environment. The interplay between the original ideas and
expectations an individual has when starting a job and the work
environment as it is experienced by that individual determines whether
a highly motivated worker will burn out or will reach peak
performance. The environment is not a totally objective external
reality. Rather, it is a perceived subjective representation of the
world.
Expectations about
professional or romantic relationships result from learned cultural
values as well as from personal experiences and always exist as part of
belief systems. They are activated when people fall in love, or when
they apply for a new position, and are in full force when a commitment
is made or when the position is taken up. Expectations have a powerful
effect on both professional and personal relationships, even when
unconscious and not openly verbalised, because they are associated
with what is perceived to be the essence of life.
Frustrated
romantic expectations cause bitter disappointment and with it the
erosion of love and commitment. Frustrated professional expectations
can cause equally bitter disappointment and a range of problems,
including alienation from the profession, and reduction of commitment
to the job. Fulfilled expectations, however, are not a guarantee
against burnout. Both professional and romantic ideals can be
frustrated by not being achieved or by being achieved yet failing to
give life the sense of significance they were expected to provide.
It is assumed that
the outcome of the ongoing interaction between a professional and the
environment can be positive or negative for the relationship. The best
possible outcome is an ideal balance between security and growth. A
committed professional should not accept that renegotiation of
expectations is not possible. The trick is knowing when it is and when
it is not.
The perspective
of professional obligations
The professional
librarian has a number of professional obligations of which the chief
is to behave in an ethical fashion.
-
Ethics
- There is no
argument that librarians have a professional obligation to behave in an
ethical fashion at all times, but interpretations of what this means in
practice can vary. Ethics relate to personal interactions with people.
The issues of conflict of interest, exploitation, privacy, even
criminality are ethical issues. In the public sector the spotlight is
very much on conflict of interest and criminality, but it is in the
other areas that professionals need to be particularly vigilant.
Work-place and
personal pressures are cited as the causal factors in unethical
behaviour. Ludwig and Longenecker, in a recent article, suggest a
somewhat different perspective. By tracing an analogy to the story of
David and Bathsheba, which describes how King David became caught up in
a downward spiral of unethical decisions, they suggest that many
ethical violations are the by-products of success, rather than business
and competitive pre ssures, and that these ethical violations result
from a willingness to abandon personal principles. They identify four
potential by-products of success which may lead to ethical violations:
complacency and lack of strategic focus; privileged access to in
formation, people or objects; unrestrained control of organisational
resources; and inflated self-belief in ability to manipulate and
control outcomes.
The professional
obligations of humour, excellence, and continous learning can also be
seen as aspects of the obligation to behave ethically. Being able to
laugh at oneself and at the foib les of the profession is healthy,
shows up where work needs to be done, and keeps the sense of balance.
When everything is very serious the tendency is to stop criticising
constructively and start protecting. Part of the professional
obligation of excelle nce includes both doing the best that can
possibly be done, and being courageous because without courage
integrity is compromised. Excellence also requires continual learning.
To remain alert and satisfied, individuals need to keep learning.
Librarians ha ve a professional obligation to be involved in continuing
education, both as a learner and as a teacher. Such opportunities can
be formal, or informal. Professional reading is a critical ongoing
continuing education opportunity.
Much has been
written about crafting statements of ethics, and philosophical
treatises on the subject abound. More useful in the practical sense is
to consider how one would behave when faced with varying ethical
dilemmas. Ethical dilemmas in Libraries , Herbert White's
collection of case studies, which captures many of the ethical issues
that regularly confront librarians, highlights the fact that the
decision-making process is rar ely straight-forward, and that ethical
issues are not necessarily recognised to be so when they arise in
libraries.
-
Empowerment
- Libraries are
vehicles for empowering people, so by what they do librarians, by
definition, are in the business of empowerment. Empowerment is a
complex issue, because it is basically about facilitating people to be
all they can be, which includes a llowing them to make mistakes. It is
not, however, about rescuing people. No one is responsible for how
someone else feels about themselves. Individuals can contribute to a
person's self-esteem by noticing, commenting on and affirming positive
traits and skills, but are not responsible for rescuing anyone other
than themselves. Nonetheless professionals are responsible for doing
whatever they can to assist people to rescue themselves.
Part of the
professional obligation is to create an empowering workplace. It is no
good saying that libraries are about empowering people if, by the way
librarians behave in the workplace, they disempower the people who are
supposed to be fulfilling that purpose.
-
Advocacy and Promotion
- Every librarian
has an obligation to promote the profession and what it achieves. This
is not done by apologising for being part of it. It is done by naming
and claiming what professional librarians do, and by letting others
know of the contribution of the profession to the wider world, and of
the profession's successes.
Particularly as
librarians attempt to ingratiate themselves with others, including
economic rationalists, the prevalence of some very unprofessional
behaviour is regrettable. This behaviour includes that shown by
individuals who disassociate themselves from the profession while
denigrating professional peers. If it were to be verbalised, the
message would read:"Even though I appear to be a librarian, I'm
different, it is those other l ibrarians who cannot be taken seriously.
They're inadequate in numerous ways ...."
In the United
States one response to racism was a phenomenon called "passing". People
of colour who looked white moved into white society, denied their negro
heritage and took on white culture in every aspect of their lives. The
move on the part of librarians to drop any reference to libraries or
librarianship in their titles, is equivalent to passing, and signals a
massive inferiority, which does nothing for our ability as a
profession to advocate both for ourselves and for our libraries.
The perspective
of the invisible college
One of the reasons
that the professional can be in a problematical situation in the work
environment, is because of the professional world view. In an
organisation, as an employee of that organisation, the professional is
generally supposed to be com mitted to that organisation, its goals and
purposes. Yet a professional has a wider world view, and, perhaps
therefore, a much more tenuous loyalty to the organisation. This can be
particularly so in libraries, where the library may be only part of the
or ganisation and the purposes of the organisation might have little or
nothing to do with libraries.
Professional
associations fit under the rubric of the invisible college because it
is the Association which provides a ready-made network from which to
draw and weave a personal network.
Conclusion
Professional
status brings with it a number of obligations and responsibilities,
chief of which is to be conscious of the choices to be made and the
implications of those choices. Professional behaviour, rather than
possession of a professional quali fication, is the mark of a
professional librarian, but surviving and growing as a professional
requires managing career choices competently and consciously.
References
- Piercy,
Marge,"A
story wet as tears", in Stone, Paper, Knife. New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1983
- Feyerabend,
Paul. Farewell to reason. London. Verso, 1987, p 23
- Ludwig, D C
and
Longenecker C O, "The Bathsheba syndrome: the ethical failure of
successful leaders."Journal of Business Ethics Netherlands),
12(4), April 1993, pp 265-2 73
- White,
Herbert
S. Ethical dilemmas in libraries: a collection of case studies. New
York. G K Hall, 1992.
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