Mason's Morning Minute

Building Talent With Honesty

"My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too." – Jack Welch

I love Jack Welch. Don’t know the man, and know his reputation as “Neutron Jack,” who seems to have downsized half of America, but there’s more of a balance to his thinking than just that. Unlike the green eye-shade myopics of consolidated radio, Welch has a focus on developing people too.

His thoughts on development revolve around being candid with people, and “differentiating” them by performance, through his 20/70/10 plan.

The 20 are those in the top 20% of performers in the organization, and you pay them well, love them, bonus them, and give them attention. They are your difference between success and failure, and they reside at ever level and in every department.

The 70 are the 70% of people in the middle. With them you tell them what they need to be in the top 20%, and give them the tools to make it happen. You encourage and coach them to be better on an ongoing basis.

It’s the bottom 10% where the controversy begins, because Welch suggests you be completely honest and open, and council them to find work elsewhere, and in some cases cut them loose. But that doesn’t mean mass firings, it means giving them candid feedback and a chance to improve, and if they don’t helping them find work elsewhere.

Welch is right that radio, like most other businesses, isn’t candid with its employees, especially on-air talent. Not everyone is a top performer, and if we can’t help them get there, we have to let them go. To do otherwise is a failure on our part.

Managing Talent

"When the truth is missing, people feel demoralized, less confident, and ultimately are less loyal."—Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, authors, "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em"

I was part of a team who did a presentation on talent this week.  We talked about a wide range of things, and it started me thinking about talent.  Since then I’ve developed a list of observations to think about:

1.    The absence of truth is a lie.  Someone asks, “How was my show today,” and you respond, “Great,” when there’s really something you wanted them to change, but you didn’t have the time to get into it.  Or you just never comment on anyone’s show.  That’s the absence of the truth, and your people know it.  You don’t mean to be a liar, but you are.

2.    The purpose of a coach is to encourage.  Isn’t it interesting that we go into a “critique” with it in mind to help the talent, and then we tell them all the things we didn’t like, one-by-one.  The end result is discouragement, which isn’t what makes people grow.  What if you pointed out what you did like?

3.    Your airstaff needs to be fearless.  Do you have your airstaff’s back?  Do they know they can trust you to let them fail in their attempt to grow, because initial failure is always a part of growth?

4.    Does your airstaff know what you want from them?  I don’t mean in the general sense, but specifically, through goal setting, know what you want them to do.  Do you want them to just be quiet and do the formatics, or do you want them to stretch into personality?  Do they know that?  If asked by a friend, would they be able to state the three top priorities they’re working on right now?

5.    How do you compete with “continuous partial attention.”  It’s a matter of unfortunate fact in 2007, but we’ve moved beyond multi-tasking to a world where people are always paying attention to more than one thing at a time, and it’s more difficult than ever to cut through the clutter and get their attention.  How do you plan to have them hear you as well as listen to you?

These are just some of the ideas generated at that session.  I think we’re way out of sync with talent coaching.  We aren’t really coaching, we’re critiquing; we aren’t encouraging, we’re discouraging, and the talent is afraid to stretch and try something remarkable because they think they’ll get hammered.  Most PD’s spend more time with their computer than they do their talent.

What’s it like at your place?

Coaching Anyone?

"Companies are getting worried that they're not going to be able to find enough good employees." — Mary Cullinane, director, Microsoft's Partners in Learning program

Looked for a new morning show lately?  How something simpler, like a good afternoon person?  If so, you know how difficult it is to find the right talent any more.  We can find plenty of DJ’s, but the natural personalities who are audience magnets are much more difficult to find.

I used to blame consolidation for this, because we cut out an entire generation of talent and replaced them with voice tracking.  The available pool of talent diminished overnight.  But lately I’ve come to the realization that, while fewer people is one of the problems, the true culprit is you and I. 

PD’s aren’t coaching talent to full development any more.  Many on-air people never get a word of feedback.  Some get an occasional, “Great show today.”  Others find email instructions from time to time, and the rare ones have regular sit-down sessions with the PD and “go over a tape.”  Except that it’s not tape any more.  And the sessions are “critique sessions,” because everyone knows improvement comes from criticism. 

Very, very rarely, you run across someone who actually coaches their talent, who builds on their strengths and puts minimal effort into mistakes and what they don’t like.  One reason these people are so rare is that it’s often a natural talent they have, not a learned one.  There hasn’t been a training ground or strategy developed to help PD’s learn how to coach.  So, PD’s are uncomfortable with working with the talent, and they avoid it.  It’s much easier to tweak Selector than it is to talk to that crazy morning guy.

It’s also much more difficult, because talent development takes more time than an email or monthly aircheck session.  We’re dealing with strengths, egos, and motivation here, things that are messy.

But until we do actually start developing talent, beginning with a process and strategy PD’s can use to coach, we’re going to be limited in the number of people we can shuttle around.  We’re going to continue to have talent that is “good enough,” because we don’t yet understand that in the near future the talent will become the number one draw and differentiator for a station.

Judging The Judges

"A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are." - Ara Parasheghian, Notre Dame football coach

Which American Idol judge do you like?

Even  American Idol is an adventure for me.  While watching Paris, Chris, Kelly and the others, I'm thinking of how the judges are like different kinds of programmers in a coaching role.

We're all familiar with Simon Cole.  He can usually find something to criticize, as if he's obligated to criticize.  Sometimes it seems he's just moody and unhappy.  When he does say it's a good performance he's so generic you can't learn from what he says.  You leave not knowing what happened, but with a vague impression you need to have a back-up career.

Paula Abdul is the coach we always thought we wanted.  She's so positive, and obviously on our side, that you can't help but feel good.  She always gives you an audio hug.  On the rare occasions when she's negative it's always with regret and compassion.  Sometime I feel bad for her having to point out problems.

Randy Jackson is a coach who always tells you what he feels about your performance.  when you've done well he says so, usually in an enthusiastic way.  You know he's happy for you.  When he thinks you can do better, he tells you so, making sure you understand the correction about the performance, not the performer.

Which one makes the performers better?

The Simon Coles' of the world rarely improve performance.  Everything is so negative and picky you can't take him seriously, but at the same time he does serious damage to your confidence.

Paula is wonderful and she works so hard to make us feel better.  Unfortunately she's so glossy and Pollyanna that she loses effectiveness.  It's hard to believe anything when everything is good.

Randy is the one you'd gain the most from.   He's supportive and helpful most of the time, and balances it with ways you can improve. 

Next time you watch the show don't judge the talent, instead judge the judges.  Which kind of coach are you?

April 20, 2006