QUESTION: What is the most valuable lesson you have learned in a leadership role?
During my junior year of college, as Director of [deleted](Sports Radio Broadcasting), I expanded our broadcasting realm from the traditional [deleted] men's football, baseball, and basketball, to other, lesser known sports such as field hockey, women's basketball, and soccer. The broadcasting team consisted mainly of sports junkies who simply wanted good seats during sporting events. Little did I know of the true challenge this plan presented. After a few months, I had a real disaster on my hands. The expanded coverage flopped as the staff consistently embarrassed [deleted] during the broadcasts of these smaller, non-traditional sporting events. The announcers showed up late, mocked many of the women players, forgot to mention certain sponsors, and mispronounced names. The [deleted] Athletics Media Relations Department grew increasingly angry, since it jumped through hurdles to help us announce those games. The station, which was already annoyed that I had requested twice the amount of time away from their precious programming, received numerous complaints from angry parents and fans. Two sponsors said that if things did not improve then they would not renew their contracts for the spring. I began to think that I would have to give up on my plan for change.
Blindly trusting the staff to do the job right led me down a disastrous path. To ensure these smaller sports stayed on the air, I realized that I needed to introduce team accountability. I set a new ground rule: to get the assignments they wanted, the announcers needed to make the effort to learn these smaller sports. I held pop quizzes during our weekly meetings. Poor performance on these quizzes was embarrassing to broadcasters among their peers, so they quickly learned the material necessary to cover games properly. I listened to announcers during games and gave them direct feedback when they made mistakes. To engage the staff in helping me with my quest, I met with each one individually to enroll them in our new direction. Within a month I knew who would make it and who would not. I slowly but surely knocked my staff down from twenty to eleven. This process left me with a core team of dedicated announcers. Once the staff's performance improved, I started to give them more control. I let two handle the advertisers. I encouraged the team to negotiate with each other to determine what broadcasts everyone would do. I knew things had finally improved when the staff started to hold each other accountable for performance. The impact was enormous. Within two months, I received no more complaints, and I even started to hear numerous positive comments about our programming from the athletes who played in these smaller sports.
My experience at [deleted] taught me an important lesson about teams. You rarely get to select your fellow teammates, so you must make the most of the team you have. To maximize team performance, I have learned to identify gaps in team processes and skills and then fill these gaps. Whether the team is lacking in leadership, knowledge, support, or communication, I must strive to somehow meet this need to ensure successful teamwork.
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