4.13 Angela Pashia: Every Library Leader Needs A Coach

Stepping into leadership in higher education often comes without a roadmap. In this episode of The Mindful Academy Podcast, host Jennifer speaks with Angela Pashia - coach, former tenured academic librarian, and founder of Lead With Curiosity.

Angela shares why every library leader needs a coach, and how adopting a coaching mindset transforms leadership. From breaking free of “vocational awe” to navigating conflict and burnout, Angela explains how curiosity, listening, and empowering others create healthier, more confident leaders.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why leadership is a skill you must develop, not something you’re born with.
• How “vocational awe” contributes to burnout in higher ed.
• Practical ways coaching skills help leaders navigate change and conflict.
• Why leading with curiosity fosters trust, collaboration, and resilience.

Whether you’re a library leader, faculty member, or anyone navigating the challenges of higher education, this conversation offers insight, encouragement, and practical strategies for sustainable leadership.

Learn more about Angela’s work: leadwithcuriosity.org

Transcript

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Mindful Academy Podcast. Thank you again for joining me. And I have a guest this week with whom I'm going to have a conversation about coaching in higher education contexts. And my guest is Angela Pasha, and she is a coach and a former librarian, and currently an expat from the United States.

And we there might be people who are jealous of that and maybe we'll ask her a little bit about how that's going, but we're gonna talk about all sorts of things, coaching and taking care of oneself in the increasingly complex, fast moving, I don't know, insert the adjectives of your choice, landscape of higher education.

Angela, welcome and I'm gonna pass the virtual mic over to you and ask you to provide us with a little introduction about who you are and what you do. Thanks, Jennifer. So I, my like tagline is I help [00:01:00] library leaders confidently manage through the change in conflict that you're dealing with so that you can feel better about going to work.

I focus on library leaders there because I was an academic librarian for 12 years and there's like a sense of a division between librarians and academics, but I was even within academic librarians, there's this huge range from staff to administrative faculty to tenured faculty. And I was all the way at the extreme end of tenured full professor, when I left my position, my first leadership roles were like chairing a faculty senate committee and.

President of the local A UP chapter for a year. So there's a close connection there, right? Yeah. And for our listeners who [00:02:00] aren't super familiar with the landscape of academic libraries what, so I am married to a library administrator. He has PhD as an MLS and started as a librarian and has now worked his way up to a position that in the United States would be called Dean of Libraries.

Here it's university librarian in Canada. And it differs from institution to institution, but there are a number of, colleges and universities where librarians go through ranks, like professors do that, they have tenure, they have research obligations. What, and then there are institutions where that's definitely not the case where they aren't tenured.

And where research obligations are not non-existent and sometimes even discouraged. And, but parallel to that, like the notion of service is let's say the volume on that is turned way up compared to even the service obligations of a faculty member. So they are analogous in that, they share a context, they share often a union or [00:03:00] bargaining structure.

They share concerns but their reward and evaluation criteria are not always the same. And so I come from the humanities and what I will say is one of the things that if you as a listener come from the humanities, one of the things that you and librarians will have in common is there, there are two phrases I'm going to use and Angela, I'm gonna use these phrases and then I'm gonna bounce it back to you to see what your responses are there.

The two phrases, one I think comes from Kathleen Fitzpatrick's first book, generous Thinking, where she talks about humanities faculty feeling very much like the moral compass of the institution, right? Like the, this notion that when the institution. Veers off of a moral course, a culturally cons, a cultural moral course that humanities faculty take that very personally and feel it is their obligation to perhaps call that out or call that in, or [00:04:00] alert the institution to the fact that it is veering from its moral mission, social, ethical justice oriented, knowledge oriented, enlightenment oriented mission.

And librarians often share that notion of being the moral and ethical compass of the institution. And the other thing that they share is the notion of vocational awe and that term, if you're not familiar with it, comes out of actually library research. Like it was a librarian who first coined that.

And then I hear it used now in humanities spaces. Because this is very much your wheelhouse. I'm gonna ask you to what are your thoughts on those two terms, maybe as a framing device for how we think of coaching leaders in contexts where pe, where employees, faculty, and staff come with these notions of moral compass and vocational a So when you were talking about the moral compass thing, [00:05:00] my brain went to vocational awe, because that's, that is such a powerful way to get you to overwork and burn yourself out.

But like looking at, I'm gonna talk about libraries because I know libraries is a lot better than humanities. All good. What does it mean to be the moral compass of the university? So

Edar came up with vocational awe, and that came into the lexicon around the time that there was a lot of critical librarianship going on, which is like research on the ways that the library has supported oppressive ideologies throughout our history. Collections are not neutral. [00:06:00] Managing access to resources is not neutral.

Deciding to keep or discard information is not neutral. Yeah. And even historically libraries were considered like supporting democratization. But when you really look back at those projects, it was. Americanizing assimilating immigrants with lighter skin. And during that period they were segregated.

So if you didn't pass the paper bag test, you didn't get included there. So that narrative is really complicated. And that's probably like a whole different direction than when you, what you had in mind there. But that we have to go in and really interrogate what is the moral compass that we're talking [00:07:00] about.

And thank you for bringing that up because when I said moral compass, I'm like, oh, I'm like, am I gonna define what I think the moral compass is or should be? Or what people who share the job I once had might say because one person's moral compass might not be another person's moral compass, which is probably where this conversation gets so complicated, right?

Because I would, I don't think anybody at university is thinking, oh, here we are supporting fascism. And yet the what one notices in looking at increasingly acrimonious relationships between boards and presidents and faculty is the notion of the moral direction of the university is very much up for grabs in certain places.

But it would be probably my Wednesday morning preference to, to not dive headlong into that. Because that is a different discussion. And although I think that coaching leaders in developing a coaching culture can actually help navigate those [00:08:00] things I'm not gonna take on that challenge today.

What I'd like, okay so we're, what I'd like you to define from your perspective and your knowledge is this notion of vaca vocational awe. Because this gets in people's way and this is a really good entry point and lever point for coaches, for people who are having collegial conversations to get at what change might look like.

So what's vocational? Awe. So it's this idea that, and coming out of libraries like we are. Doing this important service. We are the foundation of democracy, or we are supporting all of these amazing initiatives. And it's a vocation as in it's a calling is like a spiritual [00:09:00] calling. Yep.

And that idea one, sets you up to be exploited because if you don't work this weekend, then the students are gonna suffer. The students aren't going to get the benefit of this thing if you put reasonable boundaries around your time. And it also makes it really hard to fix those structural issues because you're so focused on.

This is such a good, magical things. It's so beneficial. Yeah. And it's like my mantra in life is that perfection does not exist in the real world. And if you are [00:10:00] not willing to look at areas for improvement, then you're hurting this thing that you really claim to care about. You value it so much that you want to hamstring it from being able to be better or adapt and change as the context in which it exists, adapts and changes.

So thank you for the. The librarian take on vaca vocational awe. And if the term is new to you as a listener it is so rich to explore if you're, if you're an academic, regardless of discipline. To what degree have you self-defined your role? Or is your context defining your role as this like selfless, holy calling?

I think that this shows up in K through 12 education all the time, right? Like, how [00:11:00] dare you want money? You do this for love, right? Yeah. That's, you do this because you love knowledge, you love the kids. I'm going to, for the librarians, like I'm making the hand motion. If you're not watching it on video oh, the book, right?

There, there are these cultural narratives around oh, we're not in this for filthy luker. Our fulfillment comes entirely from serving a higher purpose. And so it come, there's this monastic or spiritual or wholly element to to the pursuit or to the discourse around this pursuit that if you solely it with things that appear selfish, like wanting to be paid adequately, wanting adequate vacation time, wanting boundaries not wanting to be bothered on email or text at 10:00 PM whatever it may [00:12:00] be that you are somehow spitting in the face of a who opportunity slash duty

and that. I see it in higher ed faculty. You see it in K 12 teachers. You see it in healthcare, you see it in social work, you see it in so many fields. And like healthcare is the exception to what I'm about to say. But if it doesn't get done, nobody's gonna die. Er healthcare workers. Okay. Yeah.

There are a small number of roles where if you're not on it, somebody might bleed out, but for most of us, that's not the case. And it is interesting. In all of those professions that you listed, what do they have in common? They're feminized. [00:13:00] And that is a whole other rant that we could go down because but I get right.

So if we are talking to listeners of the podcast, if we're talking to people who are thinking about coaching as a modality for change, I think maybe we've painted a nice back, nice a backdrop for this where we have professional roles that really could ex expand like foam insulation to fill all available nooks and crannies of your life because they are often thought of as vocations.

And then for, and I know there are, there's a whole discussion about leadership and authority and power in higher ed and how it is gendered and the paucity of female leadership in higher ed. But if you look at the rank and file. Especially at the assistant and associate level. Since the nineties, higher education PhD programs have been become, in most disciplines, not all increasingly feminized as, for example, the tech [00:14:00] boom in the early two thousands drew tons of young men out of graduate school in order to like, oh, I don't need to go do that.

I'll go make my millions. In Silicon Valley. There was research about that in the early odds about how this is really changing the demographic of PhD programs, which in turns change, which in turn changes the demographic of higher education. So we have a bunch of women on average who are in jobs that have, could have no boundaries, and then something snaps or a slow realization, dawns that maybe this isn't a tenable way to live and work, and maybe they call you.

And what are, what do you find that your clients library leaders, like when they decide to work with a coach, what do they present with as this needs to change as [00:15:00] their problem? So I, because I focus on the like help you manage confidently, manage change in conflict, people are coming to me more figuring out how to be the kind of leaders that they want to be, how to navigate some legacy toxicity in this department that they just moved into.

Which is can also take over your whole life, but also like just. We have so many narratives around what it is to be a confident leader, and I don't, I had a conversation with somebody recently and it, because I spent so much time in the coaching and leadership development space, I'm like, [00:16:00] this can't just go out without saying, right?

But we were talking about leadership as a skill that you have to actually develop that is on top of all of the other work you're doing. Because even in the library I worked at, our dean still taught a class. Like it wasn't like moving up into a leadership position takes you away from all of your other responsibilities necessarily.

But then you have this extra layer that. It's, if it's your first time in a leadership position, you may have never needed those skills before. You may be an amazing teacher and researcher, but then how do you get a whole department of people to work together effectively? It is not just something that comes naturally.[00:17:00] 

And that was

like a, that's why I'm struggling, kind. So your client was like, oh, I had never thought that I had taken on an entirely new job at which I was expected to be proficient from the jump with zero training or prep and maybe depending on where you're at, minimal modeling of what that might look like.

Minimal. I'm so happy that we've landed at this awareness in our conversation that before anything happens if we're, if you're in a leadership position, what is your, what's your preparation? What's your take, what's your philosophy around leadership? How do you start with, like yourself as a leader?

And work from there in terms of what's in my control as a human being, what's in my control as a leader? How do [00:18:00] we start off from there? So in your experience, both in the library and now as a coach, this is maybe me just being nosy how much tr leadership training is out there in your experience for people who are moving up into library administration roles?

So there are some like big name well-known programs. There's a CRL, the, it's the a LA section for college and research libraries association of College and Research Libraries. That's what it's called. Yeah. A CRL. Yeah. And they collaborate with Harvard University for a leadership institute that's like prestigious.

It does the whole, here's everything, need to know to be a leader. I think a one week crash course. It is not free. It's far not every [00:19:00] institution far from free, right? Not every institution can afford to send every department chair to that. And, this conversation, we can parallel it over to higher ed too, right?

There are all sorts of things about how to be a leader in fundraising, how to be a faculty leader, right? What do they cost? How many of them are there? But also when I was a brand new baby librarian, I went to A CRL, does a similar one week immersive program on being, teaching information literacy. And it was such a whirlwind wind.

I barely learned anything 'cause it was like trying to drink from a fire hose. So I never went through the Harvard training, the A CRL Harvard training. So I can't speak from experience, but that. Getting an overview of everything in one week is hard, [00:20:00] and that doesn't give you space to go into specific skills for actually dealing with those, with your situation, your context.

With your context, what's happening in my library today that I might need to confront or work with? And one of my last role in higher education was doing leadership development programming internally on campus for chair chairs, vice provost, deans, and not every university does in-house leadership development.

The universities that do it like depend how much money, how much staffing do we have, how seriously are we taking this, right? So the offerings are super scattershot across institutions and within the institution. Who get who's invited to show up. Like our department heads and libraries invited to show up to the leadership training that the department heads on the AC in academic units are invited to.

[00:21:00] Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And that, like in libraries, state organiz state chapters of the a LA or state consortia. There's so many acronyms and different ways we organize ourselves. Different state organizations will do some leadership trainings and sometimes that's available. Sometimes it's not.

It's not, it depends on the state. Yeah. So that scattershot is really the right word. Yeah. So if you're out there and thinking like what leadership training? Doesn't everybody have that? Or what leadership training? Is that a thing like. There are people on both ends of that spectrum as a coach and as somebody who was a practitioner where do you come in when it comes to leadership training or leadership skill building, competency building.

So I, when I moved into leadership roles, I looked around and [00:22:00] was not really interested in the options that were available. I was interested in coaching and what that offers is a way to have conversations and, facilitate growth in a way that was consistent with my values. And so I went and got coach training and developed a program for librarians to bring some of that back.

Managers are not going to be like full ICF coaches. You don't have time for that. And you have a lot more complicated relationships than an external coach who only does not have to write somebody's annual evaluation. But so I developed a small group program to help library leaders learn the core [00:23:00] skills that are most relevant to managing a team.

And be able to look for any places where they can give their employees autonomy and then support them in taking ownership of those decisions and work through what's going to be most meaningful for them. Again, managers are not gonna get to dig into deep values as often as we get to, but you can still talk about like, why do you actually care about this?

Yeah. And how's that gonna support your goals? Yep. So I wanna circle back to the program that you developed, but before we get there I wanna dig in a little bit to the timeline. When you became a library leader and weren't in love with the [00:24:00] offerings for leadership development that you saw around you, did you first work with a coach and say, oh, this isn't what I want.

I want to hire a coach to be my sounding board as I go down this path. No. So I I have an aunt who is a coach and is very much in the new agey woo space. So I was a little bit prejudiced against coaching. I, when I realized I wanted to make a change, I started exploring other possible career paths and came across book coaching. Oh, okay. And like a whole video of here's how you get into this. And I'm like, that would, that sounds awesome. Because the way this video series presented it, it sounded a lot like the mentoring that [00:25:00] I loved doing. Okay. Yeah. While leading a department. Yeah. And.

That led me down the whole rabbit hole into learning about ICF and how coaching is different from mentoring and we're not just, here's the process I'm gonna tell you to follow. Yeah. And I backtracking as a librarian, like I said, I was like much more like faculty than most librarians. We had a credit bearing information literacy course that I taught one or two sections most semesters.

I, that was an incredible space to practice critical pedagogies. And like I got into that in the early 2010s, 2015 ish and. [00:26:00] That's a lot of, facilitating difficult conversations, bringing in conversations about the ways that structural racism has shaped what's even available in the library.

And then how do we have a conversation about that in a small town, about an hour outside of Atlanta, Georgia. So like the values that came out and why I taught the way I did and really practiced building up those critical pedagogy skills, I shaped how I led my team, why I wasn't interested in a lot of the established leadership programs.

And then when I saw, found out about book coaching instead of just woo, new agey coaching, I, that's, I fell in with it that way. Yeah. Yeah. And then it clicked. I, I find when [00:27:00] rewind, approximately what year did you start your coach training? 22. Okay. I ask because when I started mine in 2016 I knew after and I started coach training because I had worked with a coach because I had left a tenured position, moved countries.

Tried various things, really unhappy, needed to reinvent myself. I felt and knew somebody socially who was a coach, and she was like you need to come talk to me. And after working with a couple coaches, this consensus was, maybe you should look at this might really suit you. And after my first intensive coaching weekend, and it my program was five in-person or six in-person, weekends, over half a year halfway through the first one, it was like, holy crap, academics need this so badly.

Nobody has ever asked me [00:28:00] these questions. Holy cow. Like I was just floored. And I'm like this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to work with academics to get in touch with their values, to do all the things. So I started looking who else does this? Who else does this? And in 2016 I felt like I was screaming into the void.

So there's Jen Polk, who has been on the podcast recently from PhD to Life. There was Joe Ben ever, who's also been on the podcast recently, who is a writing coach and like really maybe one of the OGs in this space. Very writing focused. And Jen is very career transition focused. And what you and I have in common is okay, you have a job and you probably wanna keep it, at least for now.

And you also want to be fulfilled and happy and sleep at night and manage what comes at you in your role. All of that to say like [00:29:00] the, how long did it take you to figure out like, oh, I'm gonna coach these people. I'm gonna work with these people because there, there was, it is gaining, there are more of us now, like in my series of podcast interviews this year has all been people who have academic backgrounds and are now providing some sort of essential service, but they're not in the academy.

And some of us do coaching, and even people like Jen Ben Alstein, who does PR and websites she asks really deep and profound questions to help you present yourself. So this is a growing a growing field. And I'm just curious, what, how did you wind up doing what you're doing now? Going from, oh, I'm a library leader and I want some training and maybe coaching is what it's gonna look like but I'm not gonna coach people to write books.

I'm gonna coach people to lead or coach people who are leaders to be more effective leaders. What did that transition or timeline look like for you? I. [00:30:00] I think it was,

I forget if it was 21, or No, it was January 22. I was just like, I had been grouchy and miserable for a while and I went out for a walk with my dog one day and I was just like, started out grumbling about stupid things in my neighborhood and by the end of I, we walk for about an hour every evening, afternoon, whatever.

And by the end of it I realized I need to make a major change. And I had been offered the opportunity to, find a leadership development program that I wanted to actually enroll in because I was in this leadership position. And I started doing this research on [00:31:00] what do I want to actually do? And I found out about coaching and then I convinced my employer to enroll me in a coach training program as leadership development as part of my exit plan.

And I, as part of that planning, so there's a platform for continuing professional development for librarians called Library Juice Academy. And I've been teaching there since 2016 on various topics. And once I was wrapping up my coach training and starting to like, I. Map out my departure. I proposed a whole bunch of new classes on a bunch of things that I thought I might wanna coach people on.

So [00:32:00] I've built a course on coaching as a leadership skill, a course on transitioning out of libraries, that career focus. A course on getting started writing for publication because a lot of librarians have to do that, but have, do not have as much training as the average academic.

Absolutely. So if the average academic is struggling with that, librarians are just I forget, there were a couple of others that I put together as a sandbox to see what I wanna do. Nice. In May 23 was the first time I taught the coaching as a leadership skill class, and I had, I think it was 23 people in the class.

And it was amazing. I, it's an online, completely asynchronous class [00:33:00] using discussion forums and those usually suck. Yeah, it was the, it was amazing. It was the best discussion board I have ever been in, and I've taught that class a few times since, and that's consistently, the feedback is oh my God, I've never been in a discussion board like that.

And working with a group of, most of them are middle managers. It's. By the time you're in the dean's office, you're probably not taking a library juice class unless it's right with your team. But working with this group of managers that really cares about trying to create a healthier culture in their library.

And this in libraries, there's a lot [00:34:00] of discussion about toxics, toxic workplaces, low morale experiences legacy toxicity, all of that. And this is coming back around to vocational awe except not doing the boundary or I'm not. Not doing that whole thing, I'm maintaining my boundaries, but like this is a way that I can actually help to make things better in libraries.

In a way that I never could as a librarian. Great. And that, yeah. So that alerts me to the fact that one of the things that you and I have in common is not only working one-on-one with people on their own, intentionality around their career, around their [00:35:00] own navigation of difficult contexts and their own leadership philosophy, persona, whatever, but have.

The added joy of working hope, either with groups or it with institutions on bringing a co coaching culture into what leadership looks like. And I agree with you wholeheartedly, like your average department chair is not probably interested in pursuing a coaching credential.

Although, like back to my comment about, the difference between 2016 to to 2025, like a lot is shifting. And I think that our con, our higher ed context, people are seeing more the value of, oh, whether it's writing, whether it's leadership, whether it's difficult conversations. There are lots of opportunities for coaching conversations, whether that happens with a credentialed coach in, a highly confidential transformational conversation or [00:36:00] whether it's whether we bring some of those skills into our daily work so that maybe things like legacy toxicity don't have as much of an opportunity to grow and take hold and sink in.

So when you think about offering coaching skills to leaders what are, gimme your top few hits, like what are the big points that you, that in your course and in your work you really nail for leaders? Here's some things that we're gonna talk about, think about work through when it comes to coaching skills.

So in, so I started with that class and then I. Realize the asynchronous was really limiting and expanded into a small group program. And we start off with what even is the coaching mindset and really 'cause that, like the client or the employee is responsible for their own choices is [00:37:00] such a big one for so many library leaders that like, I want you to thrive, I want you to succeed and I want this so much for you that I'm gonna wind up tipping over into micromanagement to make sure that you succeed.

And that's no. Giving them that autonomy is important. Okay. And librarians like. We have the reference desk, we give you the answers. You come and bring your questions to us and we give you answers. This is this. On a personal level, this has also been an ongoing transformation.

For me that one of my very early realizations when I started training as a coach is that when you spend an entire career getting all the gold stars for being the person at the front of the room who knows the answer, that shifting into a mindset where not only do you not have to know the answer, but knowing it like [00:38:00] doesn't help you at all.

It's a radical transformation. And that as for librarians, like it's not just the gold star, it's your job is to job provide these answers. Yeah. And now all of a sudden you're in this position where your job is actually to help that other person get the answer. And when it comes to organizational dynamics things, there isn't, the encyclopedia answer there, there's more than one way to do a thing.

And so this notion of stepping into leadership and taking the subject matter expert framework of I know everything there is to know about this thing, or I should, and I have the answer and right, like that subject matter expert mindset is not a great leadership mindset because it puts you in, in, in the position of being the expert.

And that decreases your [00:39:00] ability to hold boundaries because gosh if like it has to happen and you're the person, and so obviously you need, but it also, yeah, it takes away autonomy from others if you are the expert and that, so in. In the program, we start with the mindset focus and then build focus on active listening and asking coaching style questions instead of leading questions instead of, yes, no questions.

All of that, and

actually work through practicing that and the framework of a coaching conversation. And we just had the current cohort [00:40:00] had a jumpstart week in July and Monday was like, get to know you talk about coaching mindset more. Tuesday we focused in on asking, practicing, asking questions and talked through some of the instructional materials and all of that.

And then on Wednesday they started actually doing a coaching conversation with another partner. And then Thursday was pretty much just practicing actually coaching one another and getting feedback on how well you did. And it, that was the first time I did that format instead of meeting every other week.

It was intensive, but less fire ozy because you get to sleep and reset [00:41:00] between, and it, we only met for an hour and a half on Zoom, and then they had homework that they could work through at their own pace. And so we do, we had the jumpstart and then we're meeting twice a month for three more months because I actually, this was the first time I did the jumpstart.

And so I sent request for some feedback with, a Google form and somebody waited until just a few days ago to respond and was like, if I had filled this out when you first sent it, I would've said yes. I felt very confident that I would regularly practice coaching my team just based on the jumpstart.

But now that we're actually back into it and I'm realizing how much we have these established patterns, I don't know if I would have, and that's if you dig into the literature [00:42:00] on managerial coaching training. That's a big issue. People, it's so easy to get through a one week intensive and then you go back to real life and you leave it on a shelf to collect dust.

Precisely, precisely. And that is the transformational potential of coaching because it is both you as a manager with your team or you and I as coaches with our clients, like it's a relationship of a certain duration. And so it is, so I can have an aha moment as a coachee and be like, oh gosh, I keep doing that thing interesting.

It's getting in my way, I'm getting in my own way by doing whatever I'm doing or thinking whatever. I'm thinking I'm gonna change that. And you talk with your coach about how might I change that? Maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try that. And maybe you set up an experiment. Often in sessions with my clients, but okay, is there a way you want to experiment with this new way of being in the next few weeks?[00:43:00] 

Okay, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna do this, and this. Okay, so then we check in a couple weeks, how's it going? What have you noticed? And you notice that you're human and you have default patterns, whether they are managerial patterns, whether they're self-talk patterns, whether they're action patterns, right?

We have default patterns and you cannot just learn your way out of a default pattern. And so there's the group program, but also rewinding to what you said before about the image of the leader as the subject matter specialist, that also comes up a lot in individual coaching where you've seen this, these examples, and they seem so confident and you're having questions and you're doubting yourself. And how do you build the confidence to say, no, that isn't necess, that's just not the kind of leader I want [00:44:00] to be. I want to be a more collaborative leader and what does it look like to lead confidently in a collaborative way, because that's more in line with my values and that's that image of the I know everything and I don't need to ask any questions.

Just do what I say, leader. Leader. That's seen as so strong, but it's not great. Yeah. Yeah. And what that comes with the, I know it, I got it under control just. Don't challenge me, don't ask me questions. I don't need to ask you questions. We got this unlocked. I find, and I chalk this up to the academic mindset as well and I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

I think part of that in academic environments comes from, of course we have it under control because we are very smart people who know all the [00:45:00] things. And so if I were to open up as a manager, for example, or as a department chair, or even on a smaller scale as a faculty member in a classroom or on maybe a high stakes scale as a president in front of a council and say, this is really hard and I'm not entirely sure right now what the best course of action is.

And I would appreciate wise counsel from my colleagues. Like that feels, I think, to a lot of people, like just unzipping their skin. Being incredibly vulnerable and yet and yet, this is where I think a coaching mindset helps. Yeah. And that the coaching mindset and also just the language of there is an established way of doing this.

I'm not just wishy-washy, don't know what I'm doing. [00:46:00] I'm using a coaching approach, Uhhuh. I'm not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying, what do you think guys? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good thing to point out that talking about a coaching approach isn't, as much as I love me some woo.

Like it's not woo. It's based in psychology. It's based in organizational science. There are all sorts of research behind why coaching containers and coaching conversations are structured the way they are, look the way they are. And what mindset helps the person in the role of coach have those conversations successfully?

What's the name of your program? Angela Lead with Curiosity Coaching Skills for library Leaders. I Love which. And I will say, if any academics out there are interested, it doesn't have to be just library leaders. I admit to that, right? Like I think that [00:47:00] you and I are speaking to particular audiences because we know their language and we know how they are likely to experience their job.

But we also know that, especially when it comes to coaching, please just come we'll work with your context, but you can leave some of that identity at the door 'cause we're all dealing with the same stuff. Yeah. I library specific stuff. There's, so academic libraries, you have that wide range of staff, administrative faculty, tenure track faculty, and then you have the public librarians.

Oh yes. And I, for a previous. A while back I had an enrollment call with a public librarian who was very concerned about the mix of types of librarians. And [00:48:00] because it was going to include academic librarians, they said, Nope, I'm not interested. Because of like feeling judged of oh, why are you doing that?

Because public librarians do so many things that academic librarians don't do, and so much like community outreach. And my academic library never talked about having Narcan to administer in case of an overdose. Like public librarians deal with a lot of situations. Academic librarians generally don't.

Yeah, but also what a loss because to the leadership conversation though, to not have that person in there. Yeah, and I was a lot more like paying attention to whether anything ever came up in that cohort between the public and the [00:49:00] academic librarians. And it was nothing ever came up as anything more than the structures of how people are reporting to people.

Yeah. And that's so different between library to library of even in the same category and because it really is how you have conversations with people on your team about helping them take ownership of. Their work, helping them decide which projects they wanna take on, how they want to take on, how they want to move from point A to point B, whatever relevant topics, and it and so whether you're in a public library, in a downtown core dealing with the social environment of a downtown core, or you're on some, [00:50:00] ivy drenched campus you're dealing with human beings inside your organization.

But this the, I can understand why the public librarian was really worried that they would be seen as less than. And I think that, and I really extrapolate that to, community colleges and undergraduate teaching intensive institutions. Nurses are one is right. There are all sorts of ways in which we create pecking orders.

And the beautiful thing about coaching is it's a very human thing. And one thing that I've come to realize is that all of those nice little platitudes and people's email signatures about, you never know the fight that other people are fighting. And we're all just it's actually true.

We're just people. Yeah. And yeah.

And that's another part of the way I talk about having a coaching mindset is [00:51:00] just understanding. You never know what happened before somebody came in that day. You never know what they're not comfortable talking about. At work. And, a lot of trauma informed Absolutely. Approaches of, yeah.

Especially since we have such open conversations in libraries about toxic leadership. If somebody worked with a micromanager, an abusive micromanager before coming here, you're gonna have to take a lot more time building trust before they're gonna engage in a coaching conversation. But you can still benefit them by keeping your coaching mindset in place.

Yeah. And to go back to the name of your program around leading with curiosity one a great touchstone in being a trauma informed leader is don't assume you know what's going on. [00:52:00] So really leading with curiosity as in oh, what does this look like from where you're sitting? What's your perspective on this?

Let me, let me hear how you think about this. Not only is that really good, are those really good entry points into coaching conversations, but they create a sense of safety where you're not assuming, you're not creating the narrative that other people feel like they either have to fit into or resist in ways that are potentially damaging themselves or their careers.

And the other facet of that is you're actually getting to what the root of the challenge is instead of just, so an example that came up in the past that I refer to regularly is a supervisor noticing that one of the people at the front desk. Was engaged in a long conversation with somebody [00:53:00] while there was a big, long line building up and the other person's getting stressed out, dealing with this huge growing line and feeling like they need to address that behavior.

Like, why didn't you jump in and help? Assuming that the problem is that this person needs to do their share. But if you start with, Hey, I noticed you were in this conversation while this line was building up. What was going on there? Maybe they don't actually need correction. They need help figuring out how to get out of a conversation with somebody that just will not shut up without being rude.

Like I'm assuming it's student workers, right? Yeah. Yeah. There. Maybe they need training, maybe they just were doing everything they could to not break down in tears and they [00:54:00] don't need to be corrected. They just need compassion today. Yeah. Yeah. And permission to be like, oh, I hope this conversation has been helpful.

If this is a good place to wrap up, I have, there are other users that need some attention here, like permission to, oh, to be autonomous per permission to step into their authority and how that sets somebody on a trajectory of trust with their manager. And maybe attitudes about work is gonna be super different than, Hey, that was, that conversation was too long.

You need to move along and serve the next user. Like those things. Leave traces, they have ripple effects. And in both cases, the manager is paying attention to what they need to pay attention to and cares about the ultimate outcome. But the process of getting the employee to be the kind of person, to have the kind of competencies that allow them to get to that outcome, like those [00:55:00] processes are very different.

And that's easy to see on like that front desk customer service, but also somebody just is not publishing the amount that they need to publish what's going on. Somebody is struggling with their classes, what's going on? Yeah. Where's the rub for you? Yeah. I think those are really I really appreciate like, just boiling it down to the coaching mindset of curiosity, not.

Assuming, and not holding onto that expert identity so tightly that it hamstrings you from not only growing as a leader, but helping the people you work with grow in their own capacities. And that's where confidently leading, I think building that confidence is a challenge that people don't come in saying, I need to build confidence.

They say, I'm dealing with this problem in my department, but a lot of times it does come [00:56:00] down to building that confidence that, oh, it is okay to not be that strong man leader. Yeah. I can ask questions and listen to what's going on for them. I can be trauma informed instead of just, I push, push.

Absolutely. So I feel like you and I haven't gone all sorts of places we could go. 'cause I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about your decision to leave the United States and what it is like to coach people who are primarily in the US when you are six hours apart, away from the eastern time zone.

And how flexibility is built into your life now, whether you like it or not. And and I also we didn't get around to addressing based on your past career and your current career, what sort of practices you employ now to keep you in a space where you're [00:57:00] available to be your best self for your client and for your community and for you.

So I, I feel like maybe we should schedule a 2.0 conversation for, a way down the line here. But I am hoping that whether you are an academic or an academic librarian or a professor or a public librarian, or however you may have found your way to this conversation, that like for me, the takeaways are leaders lead with curiosity and there are multiple ways to grow into a new role, and coaching is one of them.

I would like you to reiterate how people can reach out to you, learn more about this group program. I know you and I are both active on LinkedIn so I know they can follow you there, Angela Asha, P-A-S-H-I-A. But tell people how they can reach out and find you so they can follow along until such time as you and I revisit the nuts and [00:58:00] bolts of being well at work for ourselves.

So continuing the conversation will be awesome. I did not realize how much time had flown by already. I know I just looked at the clock too. The easiest way to find me is lead with curiosity.org, and if you go there, there's a link at the top right now, it says about your facilitator. I'm probably gonna change it later to just about Angela and that will take you to my homepage, which is angela pasha.com.

Lead with curiosity is a lot easier to spell if you're listening. And so yeah, that will take you to everything. And I do also do a newsletter that comes out every other week talking about some aspect of either. You [00:59:00] developing skills to lead your team using more of a coaching approach or some sort of coaching related topic?

It depends on whether the individual coaching or the group program is at the forefront of my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much. I'm thinking back to the beginning of our conversation and talking about vocational awe and the moral compass of the institution. And for, if you're listening and those were like, oh, that's an interesting conversation, or, oh, why did it go there?

I think that let's just acknowledge as we close out that. Higher education in the United States, and neither one of us is in the United States. You're in Portugal. I'm in Canada. But man, there's a big blast radius there. And there's a reason I'm in Portugal, right? Yeah. I am.

But things are rough. Funding is rough. The moral compass of the institution may feel under [01:00:00] direct assault depending on where you are at. And even if it doesn't feel under direct assault, it may feel underfunded, underappreciated, under supported. And when you carry the weight of the moral compass of the institution with you, and when you carry the personal weight of vocational awe that's really heavy.

And so if you are looking at ways to. Not stick your head in the sand and unburden yourself in that way, but to acknowledge the heaviness and work through it, working with a coach like Angela might not be the worst decision you would make. That is a, it is a good time to have a sounding board, to have somebody help you access your own wisdom for yourself, and so that when you show up at work, you're better for the people who are there with you.

So thank you so much. [01:01:00] Thank you. Yeah. The news out of the US is like a fire hose itself, and it's really easy to get overwhelmed and paralyzed and being able to focus in on what you like the one little thing you can do to make a difference. Is what's gonna help you actually make a positive difference instead of staring at your phone dissociating because it's too much to cope with.

Thank you for the honesty there because man I do not read the news in the morning anymore. Yeah. Like I don't even open the CBC in the morning because I can't start my day that way. Not a good thing. So everybody who is listening, thank you so much and this is gonna be on YouTube as well.

I think most people are still listening on the podcast, but we are up on YouTube if you are of the type that appreciates a [01:02:00] video to go with it. Thank you so much for lending us your ears. This week, and I look forward to being back in your ears either on my own or with another delightful guest.

I've been lining up some peop, some interview guests who have fascinating careers, who bring coaching into their leadership in super interesting ways. So I'm talking to more people who are internal in institutions in the upcoming months. But I'm loving the series of conversations about like how we serve academia in its various forms to be ultimately a better place to work and develop careers like Bottom line for me.

And I appreciate you being part of that conversation, Angela. And if you are looking for lead with curiosity.org, which also says volumes, right? It says that there's a mission behind that. So thank you again, Ash. I was gonna mash up your names and you were gonna be ashia, so I, you just woo. More [01:03:00] coffee.

Thank you again, Angela. Thank you. And we will see each other on LinkedIn and we will see all of you all out in the wild. Take care everybody. Talk to you soon. Thank you.

Sounds good. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Mindful Academy Podcast. Thank you again for joining me. And I have a guest this week with whom I'm going to have a conversation about coaching in higher education contexts. And my guest is Angela Pasha, and she is a coach and a former librarian, and currently an expat from the United States.

And we there might be people who are jealous of that and maybe we'll ask her a little bit about how that's going, but we're gonna talk about all sorts of things, coaching and taking care of oneself in the increasingly complex, fast moving, I don't know, insert the adjectives of your choice, landscape of higher education.

Angela, [01:04:00] welcome and I'm gonna pass the virtual mic over to you and ask you to provide us with a little introduction about who you are and what you do. Thanks, Jennifer. So I, my like tagline is I help library leaders confidently manage through the change in conflict that you're dealing with so that you can feel better about going to work.

I focus on library leaders there because I was an academic librarian for 12 years and there's like a sense of a division between librarians and academics, but I was even within academic librarians, there's this huge range from staff to administrative faculty to tenured faculty. And I was all the way at the extreme end of tenured full professor, when I left my position, my first leadership roles were like chairing a faculty [01:05:00] senate committee and.

President of the local A UP chapter for a year. So there's a close connection there, right? Yeah. And for our listeners who aren't super familiar with the landscape of academic libraries what, so I am married to a library administrator. He has PhD as an MLS and started as a librarian and has now worked his way up to a position that in the United States would be called Dean of Libraries.

Here it's university librarian in Canada. And it differs from institution to institution, but there are a number of, colleges and universities where librarians go through ranks, like professors do that, they have tenure, they have research obligations. What, and then there are institutions where that's definitely not the case where they aren't tenured.

And where research obligations are not non-existent and sometimes even discouraged. And, but parallel to that, like the notion [01:06:00] of service is let's say the volume on that is turned way up compared to even the service obligations of a faculty member. So they are analogous in that, they share a context, they share often a union or bargaining structure.

They share concerns but their reward and evaluation criteria are not always the same. And so I come from the humanities and what I will say is one of the things that if you as a listener come from the humanities, one of the things that you and librarians will have in common is there, there are two phrases I'm going to use and Angela, I'm gonna use these phrases and then I'm gonna bounce it back to you to see what your responses are there.

The two phrases, one I think comes from Kathleen Fitzpatrick's first book, generous Thinking, where she talks about humanities faculty feeling very much like the moral compass of the institution, right? Like the, this notion that when the institution. Veers [01:07:00] off of a moral course, a culturally cons, a cultural moral course that humanities faculty take that very personally and feel it is their obligation to perhaps call that out or call that in, or alert the institution to the fact that it is veering from its moral mission, social, ethical justice oriented, knowledge oriented, enlightenment oriented mission.

And librarians often share that notion of being the moral and ethical compass of the institution. And the other thing that they share is the notion of vocational a and that term, if you're not familiar with it, comes out of actually library research. Like it was a librarian who first coined that.

And then I hear it used now in humanity spaces. Because this is very much your wheelhouse. I'm gonna ask you to what are your thoughts on those two terms, maybe as a framing device for how we think of coaching leaders in [01:08:00] contexts where pe, where employees, faculty, and staff come with these notions of moral compass and vocational a So when you were talking about the moral compass thing, my brain went to vocational awe, because that's, that is such a powerful way to get you to overwork and burn yourself out.

But like looking at, I'm gonna talk about libraries because I know libraries is a lot better than humanities. All good. What does it mean to be the moral compass of the university? So

Edar came up with vocational awe, and that came into the lexicon around the time that there was a lot of [01:09:00] critical librarianship going on, which is like research on the ways that the library has supported oppressive ideologies throughout our history. Collections are not neutral. Managing access to resources is not neutral.

Deciding to keep or discard information is not neutral. Yeah. And even historically libraries were considered like supporting democratization. But when you really look back at those projects, it was. Americanizing assimilating immigrants with lighter skin. And during that period they were segregated.

So if you didn't pass the paper bag test, you didn't get included there. So that narrative is really [01:10:00] complicated. And that's probably like a whole different direction than when you, what you had in mind there. But that we have to go in and really interrogate what is the moral compass that we're talking about.

And thank you for bringing that up because when I said moral compass, I'm like, oh, I'm like, am I gonna define what I think the moral compass is or should be? Or what people who share the job I once had might say because one person's moral compass might not be another person's moral compass, which is probably where this conversation gets so complicated, right?

Because I would, I don't think anybody at university is thinking, oh, here we are supporting fascism. And yet the what one notices in looking at increasingly acrimonious relationships between boards and presidents and faculty is the notion of the moral direction of the university is very much up for grabs in certain places.

But it would be probably my [01:11:00] Wednesday morning preference to, to not dive headlong into that. Because that is a different discussion. And although I think that coaching leaders in developing a coaching culture can actually help navigate those things I'm not gonna take on that challenge today.

What I'd like, okay so we're, what I'd like you to define from your perspective and your knowledge is this notion of vaca vocational awe. Because this gets in people's way and this is a really good entry point and lever point for coaches, for people who are having collegial conversations to get at what change might look like.

So what's vocational? Awe. So it's this idea that, and coming out of libraries like we are. Doing this important service. We [01:12:00] are the foundation of democracy, or we are supporting all of these amazing initiatives. And it's a vocation as in it's a calling is like a spiritual calling. Yep.

And that idea one, sets you up to be exploited because if you don't work this weekend, then the students are gonna suffer. The students aren't going to get the benefit of this thing if you put reasonable boundaries around your time. And it also makes it really hard to fix those structural issues because you're so focused on.

This is such a good, magical things. It's so beneficial. Yeah. And [01:13:00] it's like my mantra in life is that perfection does not exist in the real world. And if you are not willing to look at areas for improvement, then you're hurting this thing that you really claim to care about. You value it so much that you want to hamstring it from being able to be better or adapt and change as the context in which it exists, adapts and changes.

So thank you for the. The librarian take on vaca vocational awe. And if the term is new to you as a listener it is so rich to explore if you're, if you're an academic, regardless of discipline. To what degree have you self-defined your [01:14:00] role? Or is your context defining your role as this like selfless, holy calling?

I think that this shows up in K through 12 education all the time, right? Like, how dare you want money? You do this for love, right? Yeah. That's, you do this because you love knowledge, you love the kids. I'm going to, for the librarians, like I'm making the hand motion. If you're not watching it on video oh, the book, right?

There, there are these cultural narratives around oh, we're not in this for filthy luker. Our fulfillment comes entirely from serving a higher purpose. And so it come, there's this monastic or spiritual or wholly element to to the pursuit or to the discourse around this pursuit [01:15:00] that if you solely it with things that appear selfish, like wanting to be paid adequately, wanting adequate vacation time, wanting boundaries not wanting to be bothered on email or text at 10:00 PM whatever it may be that you are somehow spitting in the face of a who opportunity slash duty

and that. I see it in higher ed faculty. You see it in K 12 teachers. You see it in healthcare, you see it in social work, you see it in so many fields. And like healthcare is the exception to what I'm about to say. But if it doesn't get done, nobody's gonna die. Er healthcare workers. Okay. Yeah.

There are a small number of roles where if you're not on it, somebody might bleed out, but [01:16:00] for most of us, that's not the case. And it is interesting. In all of those professions that you listed, what do they have in common? They're feminized. And that is a whole other rant that we could go down because but I get right.

So if we are talking to listeners of the podcast, if we're talking to people who are thinking about coaching as a modality for change, I think maybe we've painted a nice back, nice a backdrop for this where we have professional roles that really could ex expand like foam insulation to fill all available nooks and crannies of your life because they are often thought of as vocations.

And then for, and I know there are, there's a whole discussion about leadership and authority and power in higher ed and how it is gendered and the paucity of female leadership in higher ed. But if you look at [01:17:00] the rank and file. Especially at the assistant and associate level. Since the nineties, higher education PhD programs have been become, in most disciplines, not all increasingly feminized as, for example, the tech boom in the early two thousands drew tons of young men out of graduate school in order to like, oh, I don't need to go do that.

I'll go make my millions. In Silicon Valley. There was research about that in the early odds about how this is really changing the demographic of PhD programs, which in turns change, which in turn changes the demographic of higher education. So we have a bunch of women on average who are in jobs that have, could have no boundaries, and then something snaps or a slow realization, dawns that maybe this isn't a tenable way to live and work, and maybe they call you.

And [01:18:00] what are, what do you find that your clients library leaders, like when they decide to work with a coach, what do they present with as this needs to change as their problem? So I, because I focus on the like help you manage confidently, manage change in conflict, people are coming to me more figuring out how to be the kind of leaders that they want to be, how to navigate some legacy toxicity in this department that they just moved into.

Which is can also take over your whole life, but also like just. We have so many narratives around what it is to be a confident [01:19:00] leader, and I don't, I had a conversation with somebody recently and it, because I spent so much time in the coaching and leadership development space, I'm like, this can't just go out without saying, right?

But we were talking about leadership as a skill that you have to actually develop that is on top of all of the other work you're doing. Because even in the library I worked at, our dean still taught a class. Like it wasn't like moving up into a leadership position takes you away from all of your other responsibilities necessarily.

But then you have this extra layer that. It's, if it's your first time in a leadership position, you may have never needed those skills before. You may be an amazing [01:20:00] teacher and researcher, but then how do you get a whole department of people to work together effectively? It is not just something that comes naturally.

And that was

like a, that's why I'm struggling, kind. So your client was like, oh, I had never thought that I had taken on an entirely new job at which I was expected to be proficient from the jump with zero training or prep and maybe depending on where you're at, minimal modeling of what that might look like.

Minimal. I'm so happy that we've landed at this awareness in our conversation that before anything happens if we're, if you're in a leadership position, what is your, what's your preparation? What's your take, what's your [01:21:00] philosophy around leadership? How do you start with, like yourself as a leader?

And work from there in terms of what's in my control as a human being, what's in my control as a leader? How do we start off from there? So in your experience, both in the library and now as a coach, this is maybe me just being nosy how much tr leadership training is out there in your experience for people who are moving up into library administration roles?

So there are some like big name well-known programs. There's a CRL, the, it's the a LA section for college and research libraries association of College and Research Libraries. That's what it's called. Yeah. A CRL. Yeah. And they collaborate with Harvard University for a [01:22:00] leadership institute that's like prestigious.

It does the whole, here's everything, need to know to be a leader. I think a one week crash course. It is not free. It's far not every institution far from free, right? Not every institution can afford to send every department chair to that. And, this conversation, we can parallel it over to higher ed too, right?

There are all sorts of things about how to be a leader in fundraising, how to be a faculty leader, right? What do they cost? How many of them are there? But also when I was a brand new baby librarian, I went to A CRL, does a similar one week immersive program on being, teaching information literacy. And it was such a whirlwind wind.

I barely learned anything 'cause it was like trying to drink from a fire hose. So I never went through the [01:23:00] Harvard training, the A CRL Harvard training. So I can't speak from experience, but that. Getting an overview of everything in one week is hard, and that doesn't give you space to go into specific skills for actually dealing with those, with your situation, your context.

With your context, what's happening in my library today that I might need to confront or work with? And one of my last role in higher education was doing leadership development programming internally on campus for chair chairs, vice provost, deans, and not every university does in-house leadership development.

The universities that do it like depend how much money, how much staffing do we have, how seriously are we taking this, right? So the offerings are super scattershot across institutions and within the institution. [01:24:00] Who get who's invited to show up. Like our department heads and libraries invited to show up to the leadership training that the department heads on the AC in academic units are invited to.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And that, like in libraries, state organiz state chapters of the a LA or state consortia. There's so many acronyms and different ways we organize ourselves. Different state organizations will do some leadership trainings and sometimes that's available. Sometimes it's not.

It's not, it depends on the state. Yeah. So that scattershot is really the right word. Yeah. So if you're out there and thinking like what leadership training? Doesn't everybody have that? Or what leadership training? Is that a thing like. There are people on both ends of that spectrum as a coach and as somebody who was a practitioner where do you come in [01:25:00] when it comes to leadership training or leadership skill building, competency building.

So I, when I moved into leadership roles, I looked around and was not really interested in the options that were available. I was interested in coaching and what that offers is a way to have conversations and, facilitate growth in a way that was consistent with my values. And so I went and got coach training and developed a program for librarians to bring some of that back.

Managers are not going to be like full ICF coaches. You don't have time for that. And you have a lot more complicated [01:26:00] relationships than an external coach who only does not have to write somebody's annual evaluation. But so I developed a small group program to help library leaders learn the core skills that are most relevant to managing a team.

And be able to look for any places where they can give their employees autonomy and then support them in taking ownership of those decisions and work through what's going to be most meaningful for them. Again, managers are not gonna get to dig into deep values as often as we get to, but you can still talk about like, why do you actually care about this?

Yeah. And how's that gonna support your goals? Yep. So [01:27:00] I wanna circle back to the program that you developed, but before we get there I wanna dig in a little bit to the timeline. When you became a library leader and weren't in love with the offerings for leadership development that you saw around you, did you first work with a coach and say, oh, this isn't what I want.

I want to hire a coach to be my sounding board as I go down this path. No. So I I have an aunt who is a coach and is very much in the new agey woo space. So I was a little bit prejudiced against coaching. I, when I realized I wanted to make a change, I started exploring other possible career paths and came across book [01:28:00] coaching. Oh, okay. And like a whole video of here's how you get into this. And I'm like, that would, that sounds awesome. Because the way this video series presented it, it sounded a lot like the mentoring that I loved doing. Okay. Yeah. While leading a department. Yeah. And.

That led me down the whole rabbit hole into learning about ICF and how coaching is different from mentoring and we're not just, here's the process I'm gonna tell you to follow. Yeah. And I backtracking as a librarian, like I said, I was like much more like faculty than most librarians. We had a credit bearing information literacy course that I taught one or two sections most semesters.

I, that was an [01:29:00] incredible space to practice critical pedagogies. And like I got into that in the early 2010s, 2015 ish and. That's a lot of, facilitating difficult conversations, bringing in conversations about the ways that structural racism has shaped what's even available in the library.

And then how do we have a conversation about that in a small town, about an hour outside of Atlanta, Georgia. So like the values that came out and why I taught the way I did and really practiced building up those critical pedagogy skills, I shaped how I led my team, why I wasn't interested in a lot of the established leadership programs.

And then when I saw, found out about book coaching instead of [01:30:00] just woo, new agey coaching, I, that's, I fell in with it that way. Yeah. Yeah. And then it clicked. I, I find when rewind, approximately what year did you start your coach training? 22. Okay. I ask because when I started mine in 2016 I knew after and I started coach training because I had worked with a coach because I had left a tenured position, moved countries.

Tried various things, really unhappy, needed to reinvent myself. I felt and knew somebody socially who was a coach, and she was like you need to come talk to me. And after working with a couple coaches, this consensus was, maybe you should look at this might really suit you. And after my first intensive coaching weekend, and it my [01:31:00] program was five in-person or six in-person, weekends, over half a year halfway through the first one, it was like, holy crap, academics need this so badly.

Nobody has ever asked me these questions. Holy cow. Like I was just floored. And I'm like this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to work with academics to get in touch with their values, to do all the things. So I started looking who else does this? Who else does this? And in 2016 I felt like I was screaming into the void.

So there's Jen Polk, who has been on the podcast recently from PhD to Life. There was Joe Ben ever, who's also been on the podcast recently, who is a writing coach and like really maybe one of the OGs in this space. Very writing focused. And Jen is very career transition focused. And what you and I have in common is okay, you [01:32:00] have a job and you probably wanna keep it, at least for now.

And you also want to be fulfilled and happy and sleep at night and manage what comes at you in your role. All of that to say like the, how long did it take you to figure out like, oh, I'm gonna coach these people. I'm gonna work with these people because there, there was, it is gaining, there are more of us now, like in my series of podcast interviews this year has all been people who have academic backgrounds and are now providing some sort of essential service, but they're not in the academy.

And some of us do coaching, and even people like Jen Ben Alstein, who does PR and websites she asks really deep and profound questions to help you present yourself. So this is a growing a growing field. And I'm just curious, what, how did you wind up doing what you're doing now? Going from, oh, I'm a library leader and I want some training and maybe coaching is what it's gonna look like but I'm [01:33:00] not gonna coach people to write books.

I'm gonna coach people to lead or coach people who are leaders to be more effective leaders. What did that transition or timeline look like for you? I. I think it was,

I forget if it was 21, or No, it was January 22. I was just like, I had been grouchy and miserable for a while and I went out for a walk with my dog one day and I was just like, started out grumbling about stupid things in my neighborhood and by the end of I, we walk for about an hour every evening, afternoon, whatever.

And by the end of it I realized I need to make a major change. And I had been offered the opportunity to, find a leadership [01:34:00] development program that I wanted to actually enroll in because I was in this leadership position. And I started doing this research on what do I want to actually do? And I found out about coaching and then I convinced my employer to enroll me in a coach training program as leadership development as part of my exit plan.

And I, as part of that planning, so there's a platform for continuing professional development for librarians called Library Juice Academy. And I've been teaching there since 2016 on various topics. And once I was [01:35:00] wrapping up my coach training and starting to like, I. Map out my departure. I proposed a whole bunch of new classes on a bunch of things that I thought I might wanna coach people on.

So I've built a course on coaching as a leadership skill, a course on transitioning out of libraries, that career focus. A course on getting started writing for publication because a lot of librarians have to do that, but have, do not have as much training as the average academic.

Absolutely. So if the average academic is struggling with that, librarians are just I forget, there were a couple of others that I put together as a sandbox to see what I wanna do. Nice. In May 23 was the first time I taught the coaching as a leadership skill class, and I had, I [01:36:00] think it was 23 people in the class.

And it was amazing. I, it's an online, completely asynchronous class using discussion forums and those usually suck. Yeah, it was the, it was amazing. It was the best discussion board I have ever been in, and I've taught that class a few times since, and that's consistently, the feedback is oh my God, I've never been in a discussion board like that.

And working with a group of, most of them are middle managers. It's. By the time you're in the dean's office, you're probably not taking a library juice class unless it's right with your team. But working with this [01:37:00] group of managers that really cares about trying to create a healthier culture in their library.

And this in libraries, there's a lot of discussion about toxics, toxic workplaces, low morale experiences legacy toxicity, all of that. And this is coming back around to vocational awe except not doing the boundary or I'm not. Not doing that whole thing, I'm maintaining my boundaries, but like this is a way that I can actually help to make things better in libraries.

In a way that I never could as a librarian. Great. And that, yeah. So [01:38:00] that alerts me to the fact that one of the things that you and I have in common is not only working one-on-one with people on their own, intentionality around their career, around their own navigation of difficult contexts and their own leadership philosophy, persona, whatever, but have.

The added joy of working hope, either with groups or it with institutions on bringing a co coaching culture into what leadership looks like. And I agree with you wholeheartedly, like your average department chair is not probably interested in pursuing a coaching credential.

Although, like back to my comment about, the difference between 2016 to to 2025, like a lot is shifting. And I think that our con, our higher ed context, people are seeing more the value of, oh, whether it's writing, whether it's leadership, whether it's [01:39:00] difficult conversations. There are lots of opportunities for coaching conversations, whether that happens with a credentialed coach in, a highly confidential transformational conversation or whether it's whether we bring some of those skills into our daily work so that maybe things like legacy toxicity don't have as much of an opportunity to grow and take hold and sink in.

So when you think about offering coaching skills to leaders what are, gimme your top few hits, like what are the big points that you, that in your course and in your work you really nail for leaders? Here's some things that we're gonna talk about, think about work through when it comes to coaching skills.

So in, so I started with that class and then I. Realize the asynchronous was really limiting and expanded into a small group program. And [01:40:00] we start off with what even is the coaching mindset and really 'cause that, like the client or the employee is responsible for their own choices is such a big one for so many library leaders that like, I want you to thrive, I want you to succeed and I want this so much for you that I'm gonna wind up tipping over into micromanagement to make sure that you succeed.

And that's no. Giving them that autonomy is important. Okay. And librarians like. We have the reference desk, we give you the answers. You come and bring your questions to us and we give you answers. This is this. On a personal level, this has also been an ongoing transformation.

For me that one of my very early realizations [01:41:00] when I started training as a coach is that when you spend an entire career getting all the gold stars for being the person at the front of the room who knows the answer, that shifting into a mindset where not only do you not have to know the answer, but knowing it like doesn't help you at all.

It's a radical transformation. And that as for librarians, like it's not just the gold star, it's your job is to job provide these answers. Yeah. And now all of a sudden you're in this position where your job is actually to help that other person get the answer. And when it comes to organizational dynamics things, there isn't, the encyclopedia answer there, there's more than one way to do a thing.

And so this notion of stepping into leadership and taking the subject matter expert framework of I know everything there is to know about this thing, or I should, [01:42:00] and I have the answer and right, like that subject matter expert mindset is not a great leadership mindset because it puts you in, in, in the position of being the expert.

And that decreases your ability to hold boundaries because gosh if like it has to happen and you're the person, and so obviously you need, but it also, yeah, it takes away autonomy from others if you are the expert and that, so in. In the program, we start with the mindset focus and then build focus on active listening and asking coaching style questions instead of leading questions instead of, yes, no questions.

All of that, and

actually work through [01:43:00] practicing that and the framework of a coaching conversation. And we just had the current cohort had a jumpstart week in July and Monday was like, get to know you talk about coaching mindset more. Tuesday we focused in on asking, practicing, asking questions and talked through some of the instructional materials and all of that.

And then on Wednesday they started actually doing a coaching conversation with another partner. And then Thursday was pretty much just practicing actually coaching one another and getting feedback on how well you [01:44:00] did. And it, that was the first time I did that format instead of meeting every other week.

It was intensive, but less fire ozy because you get to sleep and reset between, and it, we only met for an hour and a half on Zoom, and then they had homework that they could work through at their own pace. And so we do, we had the jumpstart and then we're meeting twice a month for three more months because I actually, this was the first time I did the jumpstart.

And so I sent request for some feedback with, a Google form and somebody waited until just a few days ago to respond and was like, if I had filled this out when you first sent it, I would've said yes. I felt very confident that I would regularly practice coaching my team just based on the jumpstart.

[01:45:00] But now that we're actually back into it and I'm realizing how much we have these established patterns, I don't know if I would have, and that's if you dig into the literature on managerial coaching training. That's a big issue. People, it's so easy to get through a one week intensive and then you go back to real life and you leave it on a shelf to collect dust.

Precisely, precisely. And that is the transformational potential of coaching because it is both you as a manager with your team or you and I as coaches with our clients, like it's a relationship of a certain duration. And so it is, so I can have an aha moment as a coachee and be like, oh gosh, I keep doing that thing interesting.

It's getting in my way, I'm getting in my own way by doing whatever I'm doing or thinking whatever. I'm thinking I'm gonna change that. [01:46:00] And you talk with your coach about how might I change that? Maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try that. And maybe you set up an experiment. Often in sessions with my clients, but okay, is there a way you want to experiment with this new way of being in the next few weeks?

Okay, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna do this, and this. Okay, so then we check in a couple weeks, how's it going? What have you noticed? And you notice that you're human and you have default patterns, whether they are managerial patterns, whether they're self-talk patterns, whether they're action patterns, right?

We have default patterns and you cannot just learn your way out of a default pattern. And so there's the group program, but also rewinding to what you said before about the image of the leader as the subject matter specialist, that also comes up a lot in individual coaching where you've seen this, these examples, and they [01:47:00] seem so confident and you're having questions and you're doubting yourself. And how do you build the confidence to say, no, that isn't necess, that's just not the kind of leader I want to be. I want to be a more collaborative leader and what does it look like to lead confidently in a collaborative way, because that's more in line with my values and that's that image of the I know everything and I don't need to ask any questions.

Just do what I say, leader. Leader. That's seen as so strong, but it's not great. Yeah. Yeah. And what that comes with the, I know it, I got it under control just. Don't challenge me, don't ask me questions. I don't need to ask you questions. We got this unlocked. I find, and I chalk this up to the academic [01:48:00] mindset as well and I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

I think part of that in academic environments comes from, of course we have it under control because we are very smart people who know all the things. And so if I were to open up as a manager, for example, or as a department chair, or even on a smaller scale as a faculty member in a classroom or on maybe a high stakes scale as a president in front of a council and say, this is really hard and I'm not entirely sure right now what the best course of action is.

And I would appreciate wise counsel from my colleagues. Like that feels, I think, to a lot of people, like just unzipping their skin. Being incredibly vulnerable and yet and yet, this is where I think a coaching mindset helps. Yeah. And [01:49:00] that the coaching mindset and also just the language of there is an established way of doing this.

I'm not just wishy-washy, don't know what I'm doing. I'm using a coaching approach, Uhhuh. I'm not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying, what do you think guys? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good thing to point out that talking about a coaching approach isn't, as much as I love me some woo.

Like it's not woo. It's based in psychology. It's based in organizational science. There are all sorts of research behind why coaching containers and coaching conversations are structured the way they are, look the way they are. And what mindset helps the person in the role of coach have those conversations successfully?

What's the name of your program? Angela Lead with Curiosity [01:50:00] Coaching Skills for library Leaders. I Love which. And I will say, if any academics out there are interested, it doesn't have to be just library leaders. I admit to that, right? Like I think that you and I are speaking to particular audiences because we know their language and we know how they are likely to experience their job.

But we also know that, especially when it comes to coaching, please just come we'll work with your context, but you can leave some of that identity at the door 'cause we're all dealing with the same stuff. Yeah. I library specific stuff. There's, so academic libraries, you have that wide range of staff, administrative faculty, tenure track faculty, and then you have the public librarians.

Oh yes. And I, for a previous. [01:51:00] A while back I had an enrollment call with a public librarian who was very concerned about the mix of types of librarians. And because it was going to include academic librarians, they said, Nope, I'm not interested. Because of like feeling judged of oh, why are you doing that?

Because public librarians do so many things that academic librarians don't do, and so much like community outreach. And my academic library never talked about having Narcan to administer in case of an overdose. Like public librarians deal with a lot of situations. Academic librarians generally don't.

Yeah, but also what a loss because to the leadership conversation though, to not have that person in there. [01:52:00] Yeah, and I was a lot more like paying attention to whether anything ever came up in that cohort between the public and the academic librarians. And it was nothing ever came up as anything more than the structures of how people are reporting to people.

Yeah. And that's so different between library to library of even in the same category and because it really is how you have conversations with people on your team about helping them take ownership of. Their work, helping them decide which projects they wanna take on, how they want to take on, how they want to move from point A to point B, [01:53:00] whatever relevant topics, and it and so whether you're in a public library, in a downtown core dealing with the social environment of a downtown core, or you're on some, ivy drenched campus you're dealing with human beings inside your organization.

But this the, I can understand why the public librarian was really worried that they would be seen as less than. And I think that, and I really extrapolate that to, community colleges and undergraduate teaching intensive institutions. Nurses are one is right. There are all sorts of ways in which we create pecking orders.

And the beautiful thing about coaching is it's a very human thing. And one thing that I've come to realize is that all of those nice little platitudes and people's email signatures about, you never know the fight that other people are fighting. And we're all just it's actually true.

We're just [01:54:00] people. Yeah. And yeah.

And that's another part of the way I talk about having a coaching mindset is just understanding. You never know what happened before somebody came in that day. You never know what they're not comfortable talking about. At work. And, a lot of trauma informed Absolutely. Approaches of, yeah.

Especially since we have such open conversations in libraries about toxic leadership. If somebody worked with a micromanager, an abusive micromanager before coming here, you're gonna have to take a lot more time building trust before they're gonna engage in a coaching conversation. But you can still benefit them by keeping your coaching mindset [01:55:00] in place.

Yeah. And to go back to the name of your program around leading with curiosity one a great touchstone in being a trauma informed leader is don't assume you know what's going on. So really leading with curiosity as in oh, what does this look like from where you're sitting? What's your perspective on this?

Let me, let me hear how you think about this. Not only is that really good, are those really good entry points into coaching conversations, but they create a sense of safety where you're not assuming, you're not creating the narrative that other people feel like they either have to fit into or resist in ways that are potentially damaging themselves or their careers.

And the other facet of that is you're actually getting to what the root of the challenge is instead of just, so an example that came up in the past that I [01:56:00] refer to regularly is a supervisor noticing that one of the people at the front desk. Was engaged in a long conversation with somebody while there was a big, long line building up and the other person's getting stressed out, dealing with this huge growing line and feeling like they need to address that behavior.

Like, why didn't you jump in and help? Assuming that the problem is that this person needs to do their share. But if you start with, Hey, I noticed you were in this conversation while this line was building up. What was going on there? Maybe they don't actually need correction. They need help figuring out how to get out of a conversation with somebody that just will not shut [01:57:00] up without being rude.

Like I'm assuming it's student workers, right? Yeah. Yeah. There. Maybe they need training, maybe they just were doing everything they could to not break down in tears and they don't need to be corrected. They just need compassion today. Yeah. Yeah. And permission to be like, oh, I hope this conversation has been helpful.

If this is a good place to wrap up, I have, there are other users that need some attention here, like permission to, oh, to be autonomous per permission to step into their authority and how that sets somebody on a trajectory of trust with their manager. And maybe attitudes about work is gonna be super different than, Hey, that was, that conversation was too long.

You need to move along and serve the next user. Like those things. Leave traces, they have ripple effects. And in both cases, the manager is paying attention to what they need to pay [01:58:00] attention to and cares about the ultimate outcome. But the process of getting the employee to be the kind of person, to have the kind of competencies that allow them to get to that outcome, like those processes are very different.

And that's easy to see on like that front desk customer service, but also somebody just is not publishing the amount that they need to publish what's going on. Somebody is struggling with their classes, what's going on? Yeah. Where's the rub for you? Yeah. I think those are really I really appreciate like, just boiling it down to the coaching mindset of curiosity, not.

Assuming, and not holding onto that expert identity so tightly that it hamstrings you from not only growing as a leader, but helping the people you work with grow in their own capacities. And that's where confidently [01:59:00] leading, I think building that confidence is a challenge that people don't come in saying, I need to build confidence.

They say, I'm dealing with this problem in my department, but a lot of times it does come down to building that confidence that, oh, it is okay to not be that strong man leader. Yeah. I can ask questions and listen to what's going on for them. I can be trauma informed instead of just, I push, push.

Absolutely. So I feel like you and I haven't gone all sorts of places we could go. 'cause I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about your decision to leave the United States and what it is like to coach people who are primarily in the US when you are six hours apart, away from the eastern time zone.

And how flexibility is built into your life now, whether you [02:00:00] like it or not. And and I also we didn't get around to addressing based on your past career and your current career, what sort of practices you employ now to keep you in a space where you're available to be your best self for your client and for your community and for you.

So I, I feel like maybe we should schedule a 2.0 conversation for, a way down the line here. But I am hoping that whether you are an academic or an academic librarian or a professor or a public librarian, or however you may have found your way to this conversation, that like for me, the takeaways are leaders lead with curiosity and there are multiple ways to grow into a new role, and coaching is one of them.

I would like you to reiterate how people can reach out to you, learn more about this group program. I know you and I are both active on [02:01:00] LinkedIn so I know they can follow you there, Angela Asha, P-A-S-H-I-A. But tell people how they can reach out and find you so they can follow along until such time as you and I revisit the nuts and bolts of being well at work for ourselves.

So continuing the conversation will be awesome. I did not realize how much time had flown by already. I know I just looked at the clock too. The easiest way to find me is lead with curiosity.org, and if you go there, there's a link at the top right now, it says about your facilitator. I'm probably gonna change it later to just about Angela and that will take you to my homepage, which is angela pasha.com.

Lead with curiosity is a lot easier to spell if you're listening. And so yeah, that [02:02:00] will take you to everything. And I do also do a newsletter that comes out every other week talking about some aspect of either. You developing skills to lead your team using more of a coaching approach or some sort of coaching related topic?

It depends on whether the individual coaching or the group program is at the forefront of my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much. I'm thinking back to the beginning of our conversation and talking about vocational awe and the moral compass of the institution. And for, if you're listening and those were like, oh, that's an interesting conversation, or, oh, why did it go there?

I think that let's just acknowledge as we close out that. Higher education in the United States, and neither one of us is in the United States. You're in Portugal. I'm in Canada. But man, [02:03:00] there's a big blast radius there. And there's a reason I'm in Portugal, right? Yeah. I am.

But things are rough. Funding is rough. The moral compass of the institution may feel under direct assault depending on where you are at. And even if it doesn't feel under direct assault, it may feel underfunded, underappreciated, under supported. And when you carry the weight of the moral compass of the institution with you, and when you carry the personal weight of vocational awe that's really heavy.

And so if you are looking at ways to. Not stick your head in the sand and unburden yourself in that way, but to acknowledge the heaviness and work through it, working with a coach like Angela might not be the worst decision you would make. That is a, it is a good time to have a sounding board, to have somebody help you access your own [02:04:00] wisdom for yourself, and so that when you show up at work, you're better for the people who are there with you.

So thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. The news out of the US is like a fire hose itself, and it's really easy to get overwhelmed and paralyzed and being able to focus in on what you like the one little thing you can do to make a difference. Is what's gonna help you actually make a positive difference instead of staring at your phone dissociating because it's too much to cope with.

Thank you for the honesty there because man I do not read the news in the morning anymore. Yeah. Like I don't even open the CBC in the morning because I can't start my day that way. Not [02:05:00] a good thing. So everybody who is listening, thank you so much and this is gonna be on YouTube as well.

I think most people are still listening on the podcast, but we are up on YouTube if you are of the type that appreciates a video to go with it. Thank you so much for lending us your ears. This week, and I look forward to being back in your ears either on my own or with another delightful guest.

I've been lining up some peop, some interview guests who have fascinating careers, who bring coaching into their leadership in super interesting ways. So I'm talking to more people who are internal in institutions in the upcoming months. But I'm loving the series of conversations about like how we serve academia in its various forms to be ultimately a better place to work and develop careers like Bottom line for me.

And I appreciate you being part of that conversation, Angela. And if you are looking for lead with curiosity.org, which [02:06:00] also says volumes, right? It says that there's a mission behind that. So thank you again, Ash. I was gonna mash up your names and you were gonna be ashia, so I, you just woo. More coffee.

Thank you again, Angela. Thank you. And we will see each other on LinkedIn and we will see all of you all out in the wild. Take care everybody. Talk to you soon. Thank you.