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| Newsletter |
10 Steps to more
effective radio air check and critique sessions
Fall 2002
One of the processes
most commonly taught in basic college business schools is
called success factors. Basically, success factors are all
those things you must do well in your business in order to
succeed. If you were to list the success factors of today’s
radio Program Director in priority order, most of us would
list effective air personality coaching at or near the top
of that list. Yet, because of time considerations, far too
often the air check and critique processes are done on the
fly without any forethought or planning.
As a result, there is a lot of time and effort going into
air checking talent often without a satisfactory return on
that investment. But, as the old saying goes, garbage in,
garbage out.
In order to be successful as an air talent coach, it is important
to stop thinking in terms of the process as a critique, but
rather as persuasion.
The Harvard Business Review on Managing People says, “Persuasion
does indeed involve moving people to a position they don’t
currently hold, but not by begging or cajoling. Instead, it
involves careful preparation, the proper framing of arguments,
the presentation of vivid supporting evidence, and the effort
to find the correct emotional match for your audience.”
With that thought in mind, here is a ten-step process by which
you can more effectively persuade your talent to make meaningful
changes in their performances.
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- Identify Key Issues –
Take the time to get out of the office and listen to tape
of your talent’s shows. Listening in real time does not
allow you to go back and hear breaks a second or a third time,
which is a critical element of this process. You need time to
stop the tape, think about what you heard and make notes before
you move on to the next break. After you have finished listening
to the tape, make a wish list of all the key issues you would
like to address with that air personality.
- Prioritize Issues by Impact –
Go over your list of issues and ask yourself this question: which
one issue will do the most to improve this air personality’s
ratings position starting today? Number the issues from one to
however many issues you heard on the tape and plan to start your
coaching process with the ones on the top of your list.
- Pick One or Two High Impact Issues –
Pick no more than two high impact issues to work on in each persuasion
session. One of the big mistakes some programmers make is to approach
the air check process like the typical management quarterly review.
They bring long laundry lists of lots of issues to their air check
sessions mixing minutia with what really matters. Human beings
have a hard time dealing with change in general and the more changes
you ask for at one time the less likely you will get any.
- Identify Intentions –
Radio air personalities do everything they do on the air for a
good reason. Unfortunately, as they say, the way to hell is paved
with good intentions. We can have good intentions and get bad
results. One of the keys to finding “the proper framing
for your arguments and the correct emotional match for your audience”
is to first understand why the air personality might be doing
what you want to change. It is also a way of preventing defensive
behavior from occurring in your coaching sessions. When you express
understanding for your air talent’s good intentions it demonstrates
that you see them as well meaning human beings.
- Look for “Big Picture” Context –
How you introduce and frame each coaching point will do the most
to determine the success or failure of your effort to persuade.
So, it is critical that you think this part of the process through
to its end before beginning each coaching session. Try to find
a quantifiable way to express your coaching point that demonstrates
how it fits into the big picture of building ratings, revenue,
community good will, etc. For example, one of the most common
challenges Program Directors face with talent is too much material
or too many words crammed into single sets. Framing this issue
from the perspective of the listeners and how difficult it is
for them to comprehend unfocused sets while functioning in the
real world makes it easier for talent to see why better editing
matters.
- Prepare Specifics –
Transcribe on paper at least one hour of the talent’s show
for each coaching session. When you transcribe you accomplish
two things. First, you have indisputable evidence of what was
actually said on the air. Highly creative people, like radio air
talent, have no clear sense of what happened in the past. They
are always focused on the future. Transcripts give you and the
talent an actual “script” of the show to work from
instead of potentially differing perspectives of what might or
might not have aired. The second thing you accomplish with transcription
has to do with basic human emotion. In order to comprehend words
on paper, we have to use the part of our brains that is rooted
in logic. This helps prevent incidences of emotional hijacking
from occurring as often in air check sessions.
- Build Your Case –
Review your transcriptions and pick out several examples which
support your coaching point. If you only bring one example you
run the risk of being rebuffed with a response such as, “Well,
you just picked a bad break.” Gather any other data or material
that supports your point. One of the key components of persuasion
is perception of your level of expertise. Data from credible outside
sources helps fill in any personal credibility gaps you might
have with the talent.
- Think Process, Not Product –
In your coaching sessions, think in terms of altering the talent’s
process, not their product, the show itself. Focus on possibilities
rather than hard solutions. If you change the process, the product
follows. Life long learning only occurs when we change how someone
thinks. And, no one wants to be told precisely how to do their
job.
- Assume Success –
Approach each coaching session with the assumption that what you
have asked of the talent will happen on the air. Say to them things
like, “I have total faith in your talent and know you’ll
make this happen on your show.” This requires a bit of a
leap of faith for programmers. But, people tend to rise or fall
in an organization depending upon how managers treat them. If
you treat people as though they cannot fail, they seldom do. If
you treat them as though they can never succeed, they never will.
- Monitor for Progress –
Don Schula, the long-time coach of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins
said in his book Everyone‘s a Coach, “The only thing
I never want to be accused of is not noticing.” After each
coaching session make an effort to find your talent doing something
right, even if they are not doing it completely to your satisfaction
yet. Too much criticism de-motivates people and can cause creative
paralysis. Appropriate encouragement and praise for progress is
your most powerful and cheapest motivational tool, yet many managers
fail to take the time to use it. Taking the time just to notice
alone will help make you a much more effective radio air talent
coach.
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