Webinar: Manager Training - Soft Skills Development

Job descriptions often emphasize functional skills—such as the ability to handle, inspect, and repair audiovisual media; perform appraisal and collection management tasks; write grants; apply metadata schemas; or use open source digital tools. However, these “hard” skills are only part of what’s needed for success on the job. Soft skills like interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence, and the ability to work effectively in teams are crucial for the problem solving, advocacy, and management of people and projects that managers do on a daily basis.

Fine-tuning those soft skills is increasingly important for those moving away from hands-on work with collections and into more strategic leadership and supervisory roles. Regardless of your role or title, though, improving soft skills can have a positive effect on productivity, well-being, and job satisfaction.

This workshop will explore the interplay between soft skills and hard skills, introducing a number of important frameworks for understanding how soft skills impact professional practice. Through self-assessments and interactive exercises, attendees will deepen their understanding of their own (and others’) communication, management, and decision-making styles. Attendees will be motivated and supported in doing hard work on their soft skills—building on strengths and addressing weakness for a happier, healthier working life.

Topics That Will Be Covered

• What are soft skills, and why are they important?
• The “big 3” of soft skills: Communication, decision-making, and management style
• What are YOUR strongest skills? What are your weakest ones?
• Complement or clash? Understanding how your work style and theirs interact
• How do soft skills and hard skills come into play in the workplace?
• Managing people—from above and below
• Developing a plan for continuous self-improvement

Who Should Attend

Anyone who would like to develop or strengthen soft skills for more effective working relationships. If you currently manage staff/volunteers, or are interested in moving into a management role as a next step in your career, this workshop is for you!

No prior knowledge is necessary to attend this workshop; however, participants will be asked to complete one or more self-assessments prior to the session and be prepared to discuss their results as part of the interactive exercises we will do together.

Learning Objective

Soft skills are honed over time. Attendees should not expect to acquire or perfect specific skills as a result of this workshop! Instead, participants will acquire new tools and resources that will assist them in further developing the soft skills they already have, and motivation to identify weaknesses they want to address in how they manage, communicate, and work with others.

Buy tickets here.

Presenters

• Snowden Becker, Consulting Archivist & AMIA Board Member (she/her/hers)
• Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty, Associate University Librarian, Cornell University (she/her/hers)

Moderators

• Brianna Toth, Preservation Archivist, Academy Film Archive; AMIA Program Manager for Online Education; AMIA Continuing Education Advisory (CEA) Task Force Member (she/her/hers)
• Miranda Barnwall, Graduate Student, John Carroll University (she/her/hers)

Snowden Becker holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Maryland Institute, College of Art; an MLIS from UCLA; and most (but not all) of a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her professional background includes over 25 years of experience in higher ed, libraries, archives, and museums, with particular emphasis on the intersection of heritage collections and information technologies. From 2012-2019, she managed UCLA's graduate programs in Moving Image Archive Studies and Library & Information Science. She has developed and taught over 50 graduate-level courses, workshops, and continuing-education webinars, including a range of offerings focused on professional development and career planning for information professionals.

Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty serves as Associate University Librarian at Cornell University Library with responsibility for Rare and Distinctive Collections. Her portfolio encompasses oversight of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Kroch Asia Library, the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, and the division of Digitization and Conservation Services (DCS). Since 2015 she has served as a faculty member of California Rare Book School at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) teaching the course "Developing and Administering Ethnic and Cultural Heritage Collections". She currently serves as a member of the New York State Regents Advisory Council on Libraries and is a Board of Trustee Member of the American Printing History Association. Tamar's previous positions include Director of Collections and Services at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at New York Public Library; Executive Director of The Black Metropolis Research Consortium at the University of Chicago; and the Herbert H. Lehman Curator of American History at Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science (MS) degree with a specialization in Rare Books, Archives and Preservation Management from Simmons University and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science with a minor in Japanese from the University of Houston. Her research interests include medieval manuscripts, collective memory and the Black diaspora, historical trauma, artists’ books, book arts, and papermaking. She is a proud Black birder and a native Chicagoan.

Brianna Toth is a Preservation Archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Film Archive and the Assistant Archivist at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. As an archivist at the Academy, she works exclusively on the Blackhawk Films Collection. Her current research is concerned with the obsolescence of technical expertise within the field of moving image archiving and preservation. ​Brianna holds a Masters in Library Information Science with a focus on Media Archival Studies (MLIS MAS) from UCLA and a B.A. in Art History from the University of the Pacific. As an undergraduate, she also studied at Goldsmiths College in London in their Visual Cultures Department. She is the recipient of AMIA’s George Blood Women in Technology Scholarship, member of the Continuing Education Advisory (CEA) Task Force and serves as AMIA’s Program Manager for Online Education.

Miranda Barnewall graduated from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2017 and worked as a film archivist before going back to school for her Masters in Nonprofit Administration in the fall of 2020. She also serves as a member on AMIA’s Advancement Task Force and RAVA Committee.