In the last tip, I referred to basketball coaching legend John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” – something you should read, if you haven’t already done so.

Here’s another prime tenet of his teaching: Team Spirit.  About that, he says “The star of the team is the team.  ‘We’ supercedes ‘me.'”

So ask yourself this: When’s the last time you even MENTIONED someone else on your station?  And even if you did, did you offer any real insight as to why I should listen?

We’ve all heard those “Rocky Gomez plays more of your favorites this afternoon at 3” plugs, and these do NOT work.  The fact that Ol’ Rock is gonna show up for work is NOT a reason for me to listen to him.  I can “play more of my favorites” on my phone.  I don’t need him.

Radio pioneer Gordon McLendon used to say “Make stars of the morning show.  Then they should make stars of everybody else.”  This seems to have been forgotten.  And great staffs carried it much further; we ALL made stars of everyone else.

And it wasn’t just perfunctory mentions of a name and when he or she would be on the air.  We’d borrow quotes we heard them do, joke about quirks in their personalities, share little things about our relationships, eating out together, what they wore to work.

Back during the final throes of the Viet Nam conflict, I even promoted Christopher Haze, our night guy on KNUS in Dallas, as being ABLE to show up for work because he had swallowed some aluminum foil coated in peanut butter to get out of the draft.

WE… are a radio station.  YOU… are one person on it.