A few years ago I was caught up in the hustle and bustle of Christmas. It was just after Thanksgiving and my 6 year old son asked me to go get a real Christmas tree with him. As we put up the tree, I was getting visibly frustrated with making sure it was straight and the lights were put on properly. As my frustration mounted, my son lightly put his hand on my arm and said, “Daddy, Christmas is not about the stuff, it's about doing it together.” This little child instantly re-framed my mind and thinking when it came to the holidays. As I thought about this story, I wondered how many of us recruit people for our Christmas productions, but make it such a stressful environment that they never want to come back.
Of course, Christmas has built in stresses. It's very important that we work hard to make sure we not only get the job of production done, but we do so in a way that calms the environment. Easier said than done, right? I would agree. So knowing that, here are some items that help me stay on point:
Everything is not an emergency
When a problem comes at you, be sure to listen to the entire issue and communicate a reaction that moves towards a solution. If you don't have a solution and you are facing a big problem, pressing pause and re-grouping is totally fine. As an example, one of our campuses recently called me just before service and reported that they had locked up the video switcher and could not get it to respond. Instead of barking orders and risk coming across frustrated, I calmly thanked them for the information and then I told them I would call back with further instructions. I then took 30 seconds to calm my internal frustrations and sent one of our knowledgeable techs to their location. After getting that going, I called back and calmly gave them some instructions, backup plans and some tests they could run. It's always good to realize that the time to deal with the mistake is most likely not during the service. Deal with the problem, get things moving in the right direction and deal with any human error or mistake later or during the week. This doesn't mean you should never be intense or motivational in your directions. There are clearly times on headset or during a service when a tech needs to be pushed or motivated. That brings me to the next point, talent ceiling.
Talent ceiling
As I look back over my life and think about who motivated me the most to do better, it's always been a teacher, coach or parent. In the heat of the moment, these personalities would sometimes need to motivate me through an intense conversation. I think the same holds true for techs. Sometimes, you have to bark orders or intensely count loud to make sure a cue is hit. So then why are these intense orders received well from a teacher, coach or parent, but with tech leaders, it's received harshly and turns people off? The answer is one word, relationship. You have to have a before, during and after relationship with your techs. For every time that my coach barked an order or told me I could do better, I can count at least 10 times that he put his arm around me and said, “don't worry about it, we will work harder in practice to get you to the level where this works.” As a matter of fact, from the outside looking in, my coaches seemed intense. For me, they knew exactly when to push and when to soothe. They did so because they had a relationship with me and they knew my talent ceiling. Although my coaches wanted to see me get better in every aspect of the game, they never asked me to do something I couldn't do and then barked at me for it. They understood my talents, then they developed, cared for and utilized those talents to help me be a better person. They did all of this by maintaining a relationship with me, organizing the system so I knew my boundaries and by preaching what a “win” was.
Knowing the win
What was great about my coaches is they always knew the “win.” It wasn't always winning the game. If you win the game, but everyone on the team hates each other, was it a win? I think this is missed by tech leaders. We never talk about what the “win” is. In my world, getting all the tech right is not a win. A win is having a service that provides an atmosphere that allows people to enter in to worship. I have seen people enter in to worship and get saved in a total power failure situation. Even though tech was a disaster that day, ultimately that was a win for the church. Once you know the win, point it out, talk about it and praise the team for it. If you don't point out the wins, your team will stagnate and leave.
Review the service
The last point I will leave you with is reviewing the service. If you want to learn all the above and how to react to your team, reviewing the service and understanding success or failure is important. I would encourage you to only look at “Audience Noticed Mistakes” and not every mistake. Too many times we focus on every mistake and that can be a problem. You also want to look for not just technical successes, but successes that went over and above the standard. As you talk to the team or team member, package your talk as 70 percent success and 30 percent improvement. Reviewing the service and talking to your team members is important. It's how you help them know the win, build relationships and assess their talent ceiling.
Know this and you will succeed at keeping a team through your productions, the holidays and long term.
Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (GNT)