Whether you call it bullying, harassing, intimidating, stalking, threatening, tormenting, browbeating, needling, or pushing people around, commonsense calls it bad behavior. What steps need to be taken during your library’s employment cycle and regarding the culture of your library to prevent bullying behavior? To address incidents with staff and library users, particularly young people? If managers and leaders don’t step up in a timely fashion, it’s easy for library personnel to think that the higher ups are intimidated, or, at worse, support bad behaviors.

Topics include establishing enforceable policies that focus on addressing behaviors in a timely fashion, norms for evaluation, preparing for pushback, the “reasonable” test, the role of supervisors and managers, codes of ethics, conflicting cultures regarding workplace and customer behavior, hiring for emotional maturity, and ensuring everyone is subject to the same guidelines and consequences.

At the conclusion of the webinar, participants will be able to:

▪ Create a workplace culture that discourages bullying and harassment

▪ Review and strengthen orientation of new employees regarding unacceptable behaviors

▪ Establish ethical, legal, and respectful ways to deal with workplace mistakes

▪ Provide a bully-free space for young people

Pat Wagner -- Biography

Pat Wagner and her husband Leif Smith own Pattern Research, Inc., a 45-year-old training, research, and consulting business. She has worked for libraries and higher education as an educator and consultant since 1978, focusing on behavioral and organizational skills that support institutional and personal success.

Her specialties include conflict management, customer service, marketing, supervision, project management, and ethics. She lives in Denver with her husband and 3000+ books.