Cheryl Gould is a learning facilitator and training consultant who believes in the transformative role libraries can play in their communities.  Cheryl’s professional role is to help libraries with the culture shift required to move from an institution that provides access to resources to one that promotes conversation, learning and engagement at all levels.  Cheryl’s ability to connect people and ideas, to facilitate conversation and to enhance learning has been demonstrated through 17 years of working with libraries in thousands of hours of consulting,mentoring and training.  Her passion for learning, crossed with current developments in neuroscience and her involvement with Applied Improvisation to create library cultures of “Yes, And…” defines her work.

Fully Engaged Libraries brings together a deep understanding of how we learn with social cognitive neuroscience research and the skills of improvisation to build competencies create relationships and allow people to think in new ways.  It is no longer sufficient to be good at what we already do, we need to learn new ways to work together to create innovative solutions to today's and tomorrow's challenges.

In a world where multi-tasking is the norm, the skill of being present is getting lost.  Being fully engaged ensures that your organization will be ready to meet challenges and see opportunities.  To be fully engaged either with a community,a customer or a co-worker, we need to understand and practice the skills of being present, listening, risk taking, flexibility and collaboration.  To find creative solutions to problems we need to be aware of our own attention blindness and when our bias or judgments are getting in the way.  Cheryl works with managers and leaders to support and coach, build high performing teams, and develop leadership at all levels.

Current Projects

Creating a Collaborative Culture Through Community Engagement - Omaha Public Library IMLS National Leadership Grant

Our communities need neutral, trusted institutions with no agenda to facilitate engagement and bring people together to participate in shared learning and help them achieve their goals.  We are training a group of library staff to be facilitators.  They are designing, developing, delivering and evaluating progressively more complex community engagement projects over two years. 

Leadership and Staff Development -County Los Angeles Public Library

Year long project to design and pilot a sustainable leadership and staff development program with followup cohorts planned.  Over one quarter of the initial cohort was immediately promoted and the organization is already shifting how it runs meetings and seeks to support leadership development at all levels of the organization

Expect More Speaker Series

I am part of a panel of "Industry Experts" along with keynote David Lankes, the auther of Expect More, travelling to different parts of the country to facilitate conversations with library leaders to talk about what Expect More means to libraries and their communities.  The series is sponsored by Tech Logic with it's motto of "People First."

Facilitation Skills

I am doing several 3 day trainings for different organizations to teach facilitation skills to run both internal staff meetings and external community meetings.  The format is 2 days of training followed by a facilitation assignment.  Each attendee gets individual feedback and support from me and reports back following their facilitation.  There is a follow up day of training to address more complex facilitation skills and the challenges people experienced in their work.  

Multiple small projects in the areas of creativity, teamwork, leadership and customer service.