• Getting Them to Listen is Not Enough!
• Using Conflict to Create More Compelling Content
• Getting More Out of Brainstorming Sessions
• Conducting More Productive Meetings
• How To Create An Air Coaching Plan for 2004
• Does Your Morning Show Content Make the Grade
• Making time to Praise
• My morning show could be much more compelling
• 10 Steps to more effective radio air check and critique sessions
• Changing Air Personality Performance Behavior
• Improving the Creative Process at your Radio Station
• Air Talent Coaching Tactics that get results
• The Difference Between Speaking and Being Heard.
• The Morning Show as Improv
• American Culture Post 9/11
• Coaching Air Personality Development
• Building Better Time Spent Listening
• How to Increase Audience Passion for Your Radio Station
• Techniques for Managing Air Personalities New to Radio
• Maximizing News On a Music Radio Station

1. Lack of Manager's Credibility.
   Having a title alone does not guarantee credibility. As unfair as it might seem, this is particularly a problem for younger, first-time managers, no matter how smart or talented. Credibility is born out of a combination of experience, track record and time. No matter how valid the change might be, managers who are not viewed as credible by their talent will find it much more difficult to get the change to happen.
2. Weak or Poor Relationships.
   Trust is critical to the change process. If the manager has a bad relationship with the talent, the talent will not trust that the manager has his or her best interests at heart. Think about it. Would you take advice from someone you didn't like or didn't like you?
3. Punitive Critique Process.
   If the product fails, it is usually not the fault of the product. The success of the product depends upon the quality of the process. If your critique process feels critical, personal or punitive, your air talent will learn to shut out everything you say, even your most brilliant ideas! Their minds grow "scar tissue" to protect their psyches.
4. Perceived Condescension.
   Even the most well intended input can be perceived as ondescension. Whenever you tell people precisely how to do anything, whether it's golf, parenting or radio, the assumption is that you don't think they know what they are doing. This usually occurs in the air talent development process in very innocent ways. Rather than suggesting concepts, conclusions are offered. When you tell an air personality to do something without clearly explaining why, it is like trying to teach math solely through memorization of tables. ("Four times four equals sixteen. Trust me.") If you really want talent to change, you have to present the entire equation you used to reach your conclusion. Otherwise your talent memorizes your formula, but doesn't really understand its intention.
5. Nitpicking.
   Air talent are often accused of not being able to see "the big picture." One of the reasons they do not always see the big picture is that they are managed in a very non big picture manner. When you bring a list of seemingly small issues to air talent and give them all the same weight, that process is viewed as unproductive nitpicking. Unless you put each issue in perspective and establish why it is a big picture item, you will have little chance of achieving a lasting behavioral change.
6. Lack of Preparation.
   Effective persuasion is rooted in the quality of its preparation. Too many air check sessions are done on the fly without any preparation whatsoever. This is a textbook example of the principal, garbage in, garbage out. When you do not take the time to listen carefully to an air check, make detailed notes, review the notes and thoroughly think about how to best present your ideas to the talent, you leave success to chance.
7. Poor Timing.
   We are all human. This means some days we are more open and ready to look forward than others. If you pick the wrong day to present the right idea, you will be less likely to achieve your change goal. An inability to accurately read air personalities' changing moods or inflexible meeting schedules can sabotage the best planned air personality development session.
8. Fear of Career Damage.
   Not all of the elements of behavioral change are completely in your hands. Most air personalities come to work for you after working with at least one other manager. Unfortunately, all air personalities carry bits and pieces of what they have been told by everyone they have ever worked for. Almost every air personality can tell you the story in vivid detail of the bad direction they got from a previous PD and how it negatively impacted their career. The farther they fell as a result of taking advice that time, the less open they will be to your suggestions this time around. Probing talent to tell you their story is often the first step to getting past this issue.
9. Character Disorders.
   Knowing what you can and cannot change is critical. Some things, like basic psychological makeup, are completely out of your control. According to psychologists, there are essentially two types of people who make up the world, neurotics and people with character disorders. Neurotics take responsibility for just about everything in their lives. People with character disorders blame everybody and everything but themselves. Fortunately, most of the world is made up of neurotics, who are fairly open to change. But, every radio station has at least one person with a character disorder and trying to change his or her behavior can be an exercise in sheer torture. That is because people with character disorders don't see the need to change since everything is about somebody else who should change.
   
   The best strategy for working with talent with a character disorder is to be patient, persistent and only hope to win some small battles. Large scale change is difficult to achieve with people who have character disorders. That is because there is very little chance of getting people who can't even see themselves clearly to see and buy into your big picture. When dealing with your station's character disorder, remember this: in life, some things are the province of mental health professionals,
   not program directors.

If you want to put this information into the context of your life, consider this exercise. Give yourself a rating on a scale from one (very negative) to ten (highly positive) for barriers one through seven. If you score highly positive on all seven, congratulations! But, most of us will probably be weaker in one or more areas.

This exercise can help you identify your weaker areas and help you set personal, future career developmental goals. The good news is that all management skills are learnable.

All you have to do is decide what you need to learn and seek sources of that knowledge. One excellent source of information to help you work on your leadership skills is the Harvard Business Review's paperback series including Change, Leadership and Managing People.