Conference on Academic Library Management 2026

Formal career review and advancement, such as the tenure and promotion process, can be a celebratory and/or soul-sucking time for candidates, their colleagues, and library managers. The presenters, three current or former academic library unit heads, know this first-hand from their experiences facilitating sometimes heavenly, sometimes hellish promotional meetings. While the policies and standards surrounding these reviews are crucial to prevent intentional cruelty or harm, culture plays a large role in how those policies are carried out: a successful promotion does not always mean a successful process, and we have seen how positive intent can cause negative impact in the form of microaggression, poorly worded questions, and lack of engagement. What can those of us participating in or facilitating the review or promotion process do to create a supportive, kind, and clear culture of review in our libraries, especially when two candidates may experience the same review cycle in vastly different ways. We will discuss both cultural and structural elements of promotion, highlighting important frameworks and strategies for the planning period, including mental models, psychological safety, and giving feedback. This goal of this session is to collectively contemplate how not to be the a-hole, facilitated by three a-holes trying to do better.