What are ways we can bring joy into our work lives and libraries? On this show Rebecca Hass, Programming and Outreach Manager with Anne Arundel County Public Library, talks about Building Joy-Centric Libraries. It’s a way we can get joy into the conversation about what we do and then make it happen.
Recommended Books & Links by Rebecca Hass
Transcript
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Adriane Herrick Juarez:
This is Adriane Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership Podcast where we talk about libraries and leadership and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations, and strategic insights in the profession.
What are ways we can bring joy into our work lives and libraries? On this show, Rebecca Haas, Programming and Outreach Manager with Anne Arundel County Public Library, talks about building joy-centric libraries. It’s a way we can get joy into the conversation about what we do and then make it happen. Enjoy the show!
Becky, welcome to the show.
Rebecca Hass:
Thanks for having me.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #1: Thanks for being here. Today we are talking about building joy-centric libraries. As we start, what does it mean to build a joy-centric library? 01:18
Rebecca Hass:
I think we can all think of a time where we were in a work environment that didn’t have joy. We wanted more joy for ourselves, for our coworkers, for our community. So, what might happen if we notice and can claim some of our agency to help build the libraries we’ve been waiting for? I think that joy is intrinsic in that journey and process.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #2: It definitely should be. So, tell me why this is important in our organizations. 01:54
Rebecca Hass:
Last year, the US Surgeon General released a report called Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. In that he specifically named libraries as one of the key social infrastructures that support the development of social connection. How amazing is that for libraries to be called out and named explicitly as leaders in our community about social connectedness? From my research and from my experience, I’ve found that joy is key to that connection for us as individuals and for our organizations.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #3: It is remarkable that libraries were called out in that way. So I’m happy we are talking about this. As we know, to best fulfill our role in libraries it starts with successful teams. What are some potential team issues that can benefit from what you’re talking about? 02:37
Rebecca Hass:
Think about some of the meetings you’ve been in. How many of them have talked explicitly about retention, staff morale, burnout, needing to increase our customer base, trying to encourage innovation? All of these different things can be influenced with joy.
There are very simple practices, different elements, different ways that we can do exactly that. Just dialing up joy and really thinking about the rate of return on all of those nouns. Staff retention—how much does that impact our bottom line? Relationships and joy can deeply influence some of our institutions and some of these different team issues, and our day-to-day realities as library staff.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #4: Absolutely, and I know you talk about something called a positive psychology framework. Can you help our listeners understand what this is? 03:47
Rebecca Hass:
This comes out of a training—a framework, that of course has an acronym like most beautiful frameworks do. This one is PERMA, p-e-r-m-a. The P stands for positive emotions. These are the feelings. Also when we’re talking about joy, we’re thinking about feelings, but it actually has two pieces, joy. It has the feelings piece, but there’s also an active piece, and that shows up in E—which is engagement, that’s that active joy. R is relationships, moments like this—these moments of connection. M, meaning our values. Many of our institutions have values that are listed explicitly. At Anne Arundel County Public Library one of ours is kindness, curiosity, belonging. How does joy support all of those values? And then the A—accomplishment, achievement. Sometimes I talk about a #smallwins which actually comes from Harvard Business Review—there’s a beautiful article, highly recommended. But thinking about ways that we celebrate—things that go right, taking time to pause, name, honor, explicitly around those accomplishments, small ones and big ones.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #5: Thank you for that useful acronym. In light of that, what are some tools we can use to integrate a positive psychology framework into team meetings and coaching sessions? 05:20
Rebecca Hass:
I love this question. I could talk about this for hours, I won’t. Okay, so when we’re thinking about a challenge, a goal, a project, what might happen if we gave ourselves permission to bring joy into that design, into that response? It will help us to be more creative. It will help us to really flip the script on the way that we’re engaging with some of the things that we have to do every day. But it brings some of the tools around creativity and innovation, and it really does change the way that we interact with some of our problems.
What might happen if we brought, let’s say, that #small wins into the beginning of the conversation of the design of the meeting—put it on the agenda. Put #small wins early in the agenda and see what happens.
Same applies for performance evaluations, coaching sessions—when we give ourselves that space to bring joy into the conversation, things change. Our approach changes. We change, and the same is true for our community. When we’re in a space and we’re working on a goal together, thinking about strategic planning, what might happen if we brought joy to strategic planning? I’m going to tell you it’s a game changer. We’re allowed to do that, and not just allowed, but we can instigate that joy for ourselves, for our teams, for our institutions, for our community—dare I say, for the world.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #6: I like the concept of bringing joy into the conversation, and not only that, but very early in the conversation so that it shapes what we are doing. Will you share with our listeners some joy-centric exercises that they can integrate into their work environments? 07:11
Rebecca Hass:
One of my favorites, to start, is what I call a joy space, that permission to put it into our calendar, explicitly. We put a lot of things on the calendar, guaranteed joy isn’t often one of them.
Thinking about what that might look like for you, for your team, for your coworkers. For me, it’s very often, I schedule what I call a joy-spotting break. It doesn’t have to be long, five minutes. I do a little loop de loo around the parking lot looking for nature, because nature almost always brings me joy. This time of year I’m looking for the blossoms, the daffodils, the cherry blossoms. I want all of that good color.
Sometimes I’ll even say, I’m going on a color scavenger hunt. I’m going to find all the yellow I can—Forsythia. Just beautiful ways of integrating explicitly that joy space in my day. It gives me a really great excuse to get out of the building. Sometimes I’ll scoop up one of my coworkers and say, Hey, you want to go for a joy walk? It’s not going to take long. Or, maybe we need to work on something. We’re going to have a different approach if we’re maybe noticing the color yellow and creative problem solving—so that’s a little example.
Another one that I’m really fond of is music. We use music a lot as a team. We have a channel where we share what we lovingly call our earworms, the songs that are getting stuck in our head. We did this during stupid Covid. At the beginning of Covid we needed some of that joy space and we started sharing just songs that were part of our families, our virtual commutes. These little moments of joy space.
We’re still using that channel today. It’s of course a little different now. This morning I had a song in my head and I threw it in there. It’s just a fun way for me to integrate some of that joy while I’m working on payroll. Then bring the team along to say, I’m having fun as I make sure you get paid.
All great, simple, simple ways for us to continue to embed joy in our practices, and it is a practice, naming it, and modeling it for each other—instigating it. Sometimes my team will look at me and notice that I’m getting the crinkled eyebrow and say, Um, you want to go for some joy walk? I think maybe a joy walk is in order here. It’s been really helpful.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #7: Joy space as a practice sounds like an excellent thing for all of us to do and to integrate into our teams. Becky, is there anything else you would like to share? 10:00
Rebecca Hass:
One of my favorite things about joy is how radically inclusive it can be. It helps us to create a space for celebrating ourselves and each other, and just some of the really beautiful, unique attributes that we bring, and helps to add beauty and diversity into our perspectives—into our world. I personally have learned so much from different movements like queer joy and black joy. I love thinking about joy as a revolution that is growing, and that libraries get to support this global lifelong learning joy practice.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #8: That said, do you have any favorite management or leadership books or resources and why? 10:48
Rebecca Hass:
Well, I’m a good librarian, so I have like a thousand, of course. I’m a huge fan of Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering. I think that libraries have a really unique role that gets to play in communities as a host—the gift of hospitality that libraries serve in our communities is pretty amazing.
How might we keep dialing up joy in those gathering spaces? I feel like there’s a lot of connective tissue there with us in person, virtual, with our staff, with community partners, customers, presenters, vendors, new customers, regular customers—future customers. There’s just so much room for this practice of belonging that I feel like Priya Parker really just exemplifies and teaches so beautifully.
I’m also a big fan of results-based accountability. That framework has been instrumental in my work. It comes down to two questions—are we doing the right things, are we doing them well? From my perspective, joy is part of how we do things well in library work and in community work. We don’t really need to torture each other. It’s allowed to be fun. So, how might we do that better and more?
Experiential design has also been a key part of my learning, and training, and framework practice. So, folks like Scaling Intimacy—Alex Rogers, creative problem solving, all of these beautiful gifts and models I love to bring into the design and the practice. I’m always trying to dial up more coach-like approaches. I’m a certified Coach through my micro-business, which is Joy work LLC. This is another framework that’s been really instrumental in how I design library joy, and joy for myself as well.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #9: Thank you. Becky, in closing, what do libraries mean to you personally? 12:48
Rebecca Hass:
Libraries have been such an important part of my journey from being a little kid—going to the library with my dad. We went to the library in Philadelphia, which was enormous and amazing. Then we would go to our local library that was really small. I grew up in a town of 3000 people, so that library was key for me feeling connected, and seen, and valued.
I went down deep rabbit holes in Egyptology and the librarian never flinched. She would try with all her might to find whatever random thing that I was trying to find that day, and that lifelong learning has stuck with me and has been such a gift. Now I’m getting to support that work all over the place. Everything from health, and supporting Covid recovery, to community work on transportation, and Chromebook giveaways. I mean, it’s pretty amazing how libraries are part of our community and support this work.
I do find that sometimes with our county agencies, they’re coming and they have what I lovingly call broccoli. There are things that are really good for people, but it’s a little bit on the bland and the dry, and it’s not the good broccoli dipped in tempura. No, this is the broccoli that you know, the kids try to avoid.
But what I love is that libraries get to bring the cotton candy. That community resource fair—we’re allowed to bring fun, and balloon houses, and bubbles, and you name it. None of that is surprising for our community. Then I can bring the dentist, and the toothbrushes, along with my salsa and chips, and dancing. That’s just such a gift for libraries to be able to be part of that yes, and mentality. I feel like they model it so well. That’s something that improv has really gifted me.
So yeah, I often say that I love to be part of library on a good day, and there’s so many good days. We get to spend so much time in our lives at work, and libraries get to help make my work and my life deeply meaningful and connecting and joyful. Little moments from laughing with my coworkers when things get squirrely and sideways, and then the deep, deep joy of resilience, and strength during the hard stuff. Libraries get to be part of all of that—the day-to-day, the real, the gritty, the messy, the squirrely. That’s library on a good day because it’s a human day, and we’re here and I love that.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #10: We are here, and I love that too. And I also love your description of libraries, as gritty and messy, but also with cotton candy. So I’m going to hold on to that one, because I’m kind of hoping today is going to be a cotton candy day.
Becky, it has been a true joy having you here talking about building joy-centric libraries. You’ve shared fantastic resources and ideas with us, and there are so many more out there that people can look for to help bring joy into their teams and library work. So everybody jump in. Take a look at what’s out there in the joy realm and start integrating it into your work. Thank you, Becky, for being here. 15:34
Rebecca Hass:
Thanks for having me.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
You’ve been listening to Library Leadership podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes, tune in to Library Leadership Podcast.com, where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right to your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
We would like to thank the Park City Library for their dedicated support of this show. The opinions expressed on this show are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of Library Leadership podcast or our sponsors.