Learning partnerships for the Information professional : coaching to accelerate development

Darries, Fatima Learning partnerships for the Information professional : coaching to accelerate development., 2005 . In 8th Annual LIASA Conference, Nelspruit, Limpopo (South Africa), 26-30 September 2005. (Unpublished) [Presentation]

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English abstract

The Library, like any other organization, achieves its objectives by people doing their jobs properly. The success of a Library is largely dependant on the quality of the service provided by the frontline staff, namely, the staff that have direct contact with the library’s users. In order for the frontline staff to do their work properly, they need to be properly trained. However, training and development is not a once off event, but a continuous process. A great deal of learning takes place through on-the-job experience. The manager should therefore look for opportunities to enhance performance and development on the job. On the job coaching is an opportunity to create a one-on-one learning partnership for the purposes of further development and refining basic competencies of the learner. Coaching is not to be confused with mentoring. For the purposes of this paper coaching is considered to be the deliberate acceleration of the enhancement and refinement of existing competencies of the learners to improve the performance of the learner in a particular position. Mentoring, on the other hand, deals with long term career development. This paper is based on the practical experience of a learning partnership programme implemented in 2004 at the then Cape Technikon Libraries. The purpose of which was to support new encumbents, the learners, in particular positions by partnering them with experienced and knowledgeable librarians, the coaches. However, more importantly, the programme aimed at accelerating the professional development of the learners. The paper will describe how the particular learning needs were identified and how the programme was custom designed for each learner. The vital part of such a learning partnership is that the learner should be paired with the right coach or coaches with the particular expertise that the learner requires. One would not necessarily find all of the expertise required in one coach. For this reason learners often had more than one coach. The selection of the coaches is therefore an important part of the development programme. The learners had regular feedback sessions with their coaches and the learner also had an opportunity to feedback to all role players on their own perception of their learning and the programme. In some cases, particular learning experiences were created to facilitate more in-depth learning for particular competencies. However, in all instances these were developed with the learner and coach’s involvement. Finally the programme was assessed by all the learners and coaches. The paper will pay particular attention to the critical evaluation of such programmes. Lastly the paper will identify key learning points and oversights of this particular programme and develop a checklist against which to plan, design, implement and assess further coaching programmes.

Item type:	Presentation
Keywords:	Coaching, mentoring, on-the-job training, professional development
Subjects:	F. Management. > FE. Personnel management.
Depositing user:	Fatima Darries
Date deposited:	02 Nov 2006
Last modified:	02 Oct 2014 12:05
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/10760/8318

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