Coaching Talent When We Need It

March 21, 2016 Alan Mason 1 Comment

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that’s assault, not leadership.”
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Pray for me, I’m having an aircheck tomorrow.”

That, I thought, was a strange prayer request. But then again, maybe it’s not. I thought about some of the aircheck sessions I’ve been subject to… and, I’m sorry to say, some of the ones I held when I first became a P.D.

I’ve never seen a talent managed, bullied, or threatened into becoming better. In every one of these cases it’s more about control than development. Unfortunately it’s more prevalent than people want to admit. I’ve seen talent reduced to tears, made to feel like a failure, and even pushed into depression. As “Ike” says, “that’s not leadership, it’s assault.”

Talent is coached, fostered and led. If you want to help someone improve, be it talent or your direct reports, you have to be their coach. Don’t think Bobby Jones, think John Wooden. He was demanding and tough, but also loved and respected. Every player knew where the boundaries were. I’ve never heard of a Wooden-coached player who didn’t respect Wooden’s way of strengthening their lives while he made them better.

What’s the difference in mindset? Those who try to manage talent are all about what they want. Talent developers are all about helping the other person grow.

I have a simple solution, but no one has ever tried it. If the “coach” was told that for everyone they couldn’t develop, and wound up firing, deduct 10% from their annual salary. You might also try the “I suck” award. If someone has not grown after 6 months the award goes up on the wall… and stays there. You’d get 10 awards if you had to fire them or they quit.

If you were working with me, and you wind up having to fire someone for anything but moral failure or insubordination, you’ve failed, not the other person. Blame everyone else for everything, denigrate the other person all you want, but you’re the one who loses.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #301 – Will This Stuff Make A Difference?

March 20, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

The knee-jerk reaction is to come up with STUFF! We pay far less attention to whether that STUFF makes a difference.

“In the share of every station there are two numbers, the number to the left of the decimal point and the number to the right (e.g. 6.0, 6.3, etc.). The number to the left is affected by the big things that a station does, like what it is known for and the big benefits the listener gets from the station. The number to the right is based on the tweaks and minor modifications that the station does to the music, the commercial sequencing, etc. You can make a mediocre station only slightly better by working on the number to the right all the time. You can make a mediocre station great by working on the number to the left of the decimal.”
~Michael O’Shea

lock-on-door

I first stumbled over this thing called STRATEGY when programming a Smooth Jazz station in Dallas in the late 80s. After twenty years in the business, well, I knew how to make the station sound slick and smooth and all that stuff, but until I met Alan Mason I didn’t know how to make a station matter.

I’ve come to learn that EVERYONE lives in the world of TACTICAL. The tactical approach is “what things can we do?” That’s the world of Jack in the Box, Radio Shack, and probably your station.

The world of STRATEGY is a different kind of thinking. That’s the world of Apple, Starbucks, and Tom’s Shoes. That’s the world that asks, “will this stuff make a difference?”

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #146 – Yet Another Lesson from John Wooden

March 16, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden has influenced people in all walks of life. On the surface, I guess it’s easy to think that this may not include Radio, but there are things he preached that we can adopt to our benefit – and the listeners’ benefit.

Re-examining his “Pyramid of Success” today, I saw two items of significance:

Industriousness: “Success travels in the company of very hard work. There is no trick; no easy way.”

Above that, on the next level of the pyramid, is Alertness: “Constantly be aware and observing. Always seek to improve yourself and the team.”

What this means to those of us in radio is that talent is not enough. We’ve all known jocks (or Program Directors or General Managers) that had amazing skills, but didn’t keep working at getting better.

Back in the Dark Ages when I first worked in Dallas for radio pioneer Gordon McLendon, we had a guy who did weekends and occasional all-nights named Nick Alexander. Nick was the low man on the KNUS totem pole. (That staff had more people inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame than any other.)

We did group aircheck sessions regularly, where all the jocks listened to a tape, and gave their observations – some pointing out good things, and some pretty blunt assessments of what didn’t work.

Nick got beaten up pretty badly in a couple of those sessions, but he took the whippings like a man. He worked hard to become a better air talent, and eventually became a fine jock, then went on to become an extremely successful Voice Actor, heard on hundreds and hundreds of commercials, and making about ten times more money than I will ever make.

…and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. He deserved every break he got, because he understood what Industriousness and Alertness were all about.

I’m sure Coach Wooden would have liked him.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Mason Morning Minute

Leading Change

March 14, 2016 Alan Mason Leave a comment

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
~Socrates

Change is not easy. It’s confusing, unclear and perplexing. It’s hard to pursue something when it means what you know, and have become expert at, is becoming less and less relevant. It’s natural to fight change, to deny it and ignore it.

However, every leader is a change agent, for better or worse. They can move their organization forward, or keep it where it is. Either one is change, because as the world morphs and grows, if you do nothing, you’re effecting change. Just not in a positive way.

The most fundamental principle of change can be found in your mirror. When we’re not looking into the mirror it’s easy to fool ourselves that we’re the same people we were 10 years ago. But we’re not. If change were’t a real factor, we’d still have 8 tracks and AM radio would be on top. People wouldn’t be watching TV less to an alarming level (which they are), Netflix would have failed, and no one would “get” Pandora.

Real leadership is understanding change, and adapting to the opportunities it offers. Those who can do that will survive and thrive, those who can’t will be forever cemented to a past that doesn’t exist any more… and is being outdated everyday.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #300 – If I’d Known Anyone Would Read This Stuff…

March 13, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

…I’d have paid more attention to what I wrote, to paraphrase the great philosopher Groucho Marx.

Malcolm Gladwell suggests that if you do something 10,000 times you’re an expert. I’m not quite sure how 300 of something stacks up but I’m honored to know that I may have helped some folks along the way with my 5.769 years of insights, allegories, and umlauts into the fascinating world of strategy and programming and stuff like that.

Frost Advisories have been penned in the middle seat on Delta and the back seat of Uber; on mission trips to the Dominican, and poolside at the Motel 6 in Denver.

Since I can’t think of something worthy of this historic milestone I’ve tapped into the talent of my friend Nelson at The Fish in Portland.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mppDhpvrLo4

Click here for the video edition of Frost Advisory #300!

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #145 – Einstein Lesson

March 9, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

Albert Einstein said, “You can’t solve a problem by the same thinking that produced it.”

I wish everyone in radio – particularly Program Directors and General Managers – had that written on his or her desk.

You have to think through things with a “What if…?” mentality. What if a competing station changes to our format tomorrow? What if my morning show takes a job somewhere else? What if our Imaging that we think is so great isn’t of any real Benefit to the listener? What if the only thing I can grab for lunch is the seven-year old Zagnut in the candy machine?

Thinking “what if?” is a good start toward warding off future problems, or coming up with a fresh idea.

Like “What if I ignored the PPM weeklies for just a moment, and tried something new just to see if it flies?” or “What if I brought someone aboard to help my air talent get better, instead of just assuming that we don’t need it?”

I have a feeling that if Einstein were still alive today and listening to radio, he might say “It’s not just ‘think outside the box,’ it’s ‘throw the stupid box away.'”

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #299 – Where’s the Standing Ovation

March 6, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

It was a rude awakening. How could they not know something so familiar to all of us at the radio station? A tour of schoolchildren made their way through the production studios, the FM control room, and down to where the AM stations are located.

We then heard the words. “AM station?”, one youngster inquired. “What is that? A station people listen to in the morning?”

Perspective.

On the recent 9-11 anniversary my friends Ellis and Tyler at Z88.3 shared how the University of Central Florida displayed American flags all over their campus. But the reason why is what amazed me! They shared because incoming freshmen are too young to remember the events of September 11, 2001. They would have been only 3 years old. Do the math.

What’s your listener’s perspective? What do they feel at their core? What makes them stand and cheer?

mockingbird

At a recent Houston Rockets’ game the loudest ovation – a standing ovation – wasn’t for the home team or their bearded superstar James Harden. No, the loudest ovation was for the six airmen that walked to center court during halftime. And it had nothing to do with basketball.

When was the last time your station did something worthy of a standing ovation? Perhaps your station needs to stand for something they care about.

*Next week’s Frost Advisory is #300, a milestone perhaps, and a surprise, no doubt, to my 5th grade English teacher and anyone that worked with me at my first few radio stations. It’s also the debut of my first video! (That’s a tease, don’tcha know).

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #144 – A Series of Little Plays

March 2, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

In a recent tip, I stressed being visual in what you do on the air.

Here’s something that will help you get your arms around that. Think of your show as “a series of little plays” every day. My whole career was based on this, because it kept the show relatable and human. This “warts and all” approach takes away the posturing and bravado many deejays cling to, and there’s a residual bonus, too. Little stories you tell, if done the right way, get great phone callers with their own “takes” on what you’ve talked about. So now your show is more interactive, and becomes what I’ve referred to often as a “visit-driven” show, instead of a “bit-driven” or “agenda-driven” show.

When you reach the stage where your listener tunes in to visit with you, now you’ve got something tangible, something that no “55 minute music hour” or “12 in a row” claim across the street can make a dent in. And because you’re not competing with another station to see who can be the funniest, necessarily, you occupy a different space in your listener’s mind. You’re a FRIEND who happens to be visited by turning on the radio. Believe me, it works.

NOTE: There are specific techniques to use in sharing the little episodes of your life, one of which is to NEVER start into something by talking about yourself FIRST. For more on this, just call me.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #298 – Lessons Learned From The Donald, A Never-ending Series

February 28, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

My, the lessons we can learn from this remarkable time in political history from a certain Donald John Trump, Sr., and Bernard “no middle initial” Sanders.

This tip of this political iceberg can start with the notion of common ground. Both the Donald and the Bernie have tapped into values that already exist, not that which Madison Avenue has to concoct like the Super Bowl commercial that showed three dogs hiding under a trench coat to buy Doritos. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld would say.

Donald Trump has created common ground by creating a common enemy – Washington insiders with perceived failed promises. In 2004 Barack Obama created common ground by proclaiming “the audacity of hope.” Ronald Reagan created common ground in 1980 by asking, “Are You Better Off than You Were Four Years Ago?”

Our format’s shared values run two thousand years deeper than any other format, and yet I find stations frequently miss the opportunity for common ground by defaulting to the smallest possible audience – those who are already fans of the Christian music industry.

If the answer to your quiz is “Building429”, guess who will participate? Those who know and love Building429. If you talk about a Christian music industry cruise, guess who’s interested? Those who are already fans of the Christian music industry.

BREAKING NEWS: Most of your listeners can’t name their five favorite songs, much less name the individual members of Hercules and the Chicken Fat People. (It’s what the songs mean to them that matters, but that’s a Frost Advisory for another week).

“Where you consistently begin and what you consistently assume determine who consistently shows up. Why? Because your assumptions create the common ground for the journey.”
– Andy Stanley

lucado-compassion

This just in: We’re just a couple of weeks away from Frost Advisory #300 (a milestone unimaginable to my 5th grade English teacher and the guys in the fantasy baseball league) and the world premier of my first video! Yikes! That’s a tease, don’tcha know!

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #143 – The Conscious, Unconscious, and Subconscious

February 24, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

In becoming a great Talent (and certainly in coaching talent), it’s important to understand just how the mind works. If you don’t, you can spend years working on things that can’t actually be accomplished.

You rehearse consciously.
But you perform unconsciously.

The mistake people make by not rehearsing (at least mentally, if not actually physically) is that you can’t be consistently great if you’re just winging it all the time. Watch NBA players. A guy works on his free throws or jump shot consciously, so when it’s time to take that shot under pressure, with the game on the line, it happens Unconsciously. The last thing they want to do is think. In the millisecond it takes for a conscious thought to pass from the brain to a nerve or a muscle, the timing and rhythm are disrupted. And the odds of making the shot get worse.

So let’s bring it back to on-air performance. I’m sure someone reading this is thinking “So where’s the opening for spontaneity? Where does the spur-of-the-moment inspiration come from?”

Well, magic moments happen subconsciously, when you’re so in sync – so confident and SURE of what you’re doing that you don’t HAVE to think consciously – that’s when that great line or that perfect reaction flashes into your brain. The magic isn’t likely to EVER happen on a consistent basis if you haven’t put the work in first.

You have enough talent, I promise you. You CAN be great. You just have to understand how to put the pieces together.