In the last post, I talked about people being motivated to do great work through the fear of failure.  This post will talk about motivating people to bring their best work to the table.

A few years ago, an audio engineer I used to work with came to the booth at Willow Creek.  He started to tell a few people about his most memorable moment working with me.  I began to brace myself for what he was going to say.

I was TD’ing an event where the band kicked in and it sounded amazing, except the string section was muted.  I leaned over to this guy and calmly whispered “String section.”  He figuratively kicked himself and unmuted the strings.  As he was dialing it in, I then leaned over and calmly whispered “Lead vocal.”

He was devastated that he had ruined that moment, and was so appreciative that I didn’t jump all over him while it was happening.

What a relief!  There were many crazy moments over the years we had worked together that he could have chosen to talk about.

We had worked together for about 5 years, over 15 years ago.  The fact that this was what he could remember tells me a few things.

This guy had a sense that he deserved to be yelled at for is poor performance.  What he did was unacceptable.  I agree, it was.  But my history with him told me that he wasn’t characterized by missing audio cues.  This guy normally nailed it every time.  Knowing this was the key to my response.

If he was known for forgetting to turn mics on, I wouldn’t have entrusted our main service to him.  I would have put him in a lower priority room where there was space to learn the basics of production.

How a person performs is in many ways, a leadership issue.

One one hand, I need to determine if someone is ready to perform a particular task.  Anytime someone starts doing something new, there is always a level of risk.  My job as a leader is to determine if the risk is worth it based on the long term gains.  In this example, this wasn’t the first time he had mixed FOH, so the risk vs. benefit assessment had already happened.

On another hand, what do I do when mistakes happen?  Do I just let them go?  Do I assume the person making the mistakes  is OK with it?  Or do I assume that they are as frustrated as I am?

Since assuming is always a bad idea, a conversation needs to happen to clarify what is important and to restate  any values that need to be brought to the surface.  However, for me, when I do have the conversation, my starting point will be that the other person is as disappointed with the mistakes as I am.

Once I’ve put someone in the seat, I want to empower them to do their best.  I didn’t want this audio guy’s motivation to come from how I might respond if he messed something up.  I wanted him to do his very best because he wanted it to be the very best.

Once we have defined the essentials of what needs to happen, I want him to be freed up to go with his instincts.  I want his first thought to be “How can I build the best mix that represents what the band is doing and that can engage the congregation the best?”  Instead of “What am I forgetting this time that will send Todd over the edge?”

The don’t screw up version of this get his mind off of doing his job and making someone not mad.  The bring your best version puts his mind on the things he needs to do in order to do amazing work.

Are you volunteers worried about making a mistake more than they are worried about doing a great job? 

As a leader, have you set them up to succeed or should they be learning the basics of production in another environment?

I think there is another post involved here, about how to respond in the moment when mistakes do happen.  You can either make things worse or just less worse.  There is no real way to make things better, it is just about minimizing the damage done.

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Why do you do a good job?  What motivates you?  In the realm of live production, different things drive different people.  In the church setting, you have people who are motivated by the chance to help spread the Gospel through the use of technology.  Some people want to fly under the radar and not take risks.  Some are so burnt out, it is hard to figure out why they are still doing it at all.

But what about doing great work?  I mean doing some amazing work.  For those who are doing it, what motivates you to perform at the top of your abilities, to do your very best?

This is not a “Jesus” answer, question.  I’m not trying to over spiritualize the topic here.

As a leader, I’m often thinking about how to get the best out of people.  In my experience with live production, I have noticed leaders motivating their production teams to great performance in one of two ways:   out of a fear of failure, or freeing people up to bring their very best of who they are.

Let’s tackle the first one:  Doing great work by not failing

This is almost like the idea in sports, playing not to lose instead of playing to win.  Playing not to lose in a production setting means I’m just trying not to screw up or make a mistake.  I’m playing everything safe because I don’t want to cause something bad to happen.

If creating a distraction free environment is one of the things you are trying to create, of course you don’t want mistakes to happen.  We’re attempting to remove all obstacles from people’s experience.  If you are a gifted technical artist, this should be one of your core values.  However, not making mistakes is not all there is.

We used to have a joke here that would involve someone saying right before we started an event “Don’t screw up!”.  It was meant to be funny, but as my wife would say, all kidding is half truth.

Whether we mean to or not, we had created a culture where fear of being yelled at was the motivation for doing your best work.  I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure nobody does their best work by wondering when they are going to screw up next.

I believe that doing great work comes from a much deeper place than the immediacy of potential failure.  We’ll talk about that in the next post.

As you lead your teams, what motivates them?  Is it a culture of the fear of failure?

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This is the second of two posts based on reading Daniel Pink’s book “To Sell is Human”.   In the first post, I talked about Dell’s consulting practice value of having a bias for action.  Their second value is:

Be Easy to Work with.

This is like a serious one-two punch.  Being motivated to get stuff done, and be great to work with!  Are you kidding me?!  I want to work with those people! 

Why does this sound so refreshing?  When you are talking about the people I want to work with, of course I want them to be easy to work with.  When you are talking about me, it seems a little trite:  “Just be easier to work with.”  If it sounds refreshing to me, why wouldn’t it also sound refreshing to someone else who has to work with me.

I don’t often think about how easy I am to work with, I usually just fixate on how difficult other people are.  If being easy to work with were a value of mine, would I behave differently day to day?  For the people that I find easy to work with, what are the characteristics that I appreciate?  What is it about them that makes me want to work with them?

Here are just a few ideas:

Solution oriented.  Like I mentioned in the last post, are you a problem solver or do you just like to point out problems?  Coming up with answers puts you in the “easy to work” with category.  Being someone who likes to roll up their sleeves and figure stuff out makes you someone that people want to work with.

There is also a component of being solution oriented that involves learning how to give feedback well.  Sometimes an idea just won’t work.  How am I communicating that information?  Does the other person still feel like I am for them?  The people that I don’t enjoy working with, make me feel stupid with their feedback.  Their point might be accurate, but I generally don’t like working with those people.

Life is hard.  Have fun.  Normal, everyday life can be a drag sometimes.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could work hard solving problems and have fun along the way?  To build some margin into the schedule to leave some space for not taking ourselves too seriously.

Sometimes fun can take over and we aren’t getting serious work done.  I’m not suggesting we go that far, but when we say every weekend is like the Super Bowl, and every little thing is an opportunity to lose this big game, that’s just not sustainable in my opinion.  Let’s enjoy ourselves while getting some serious work done.

Common agenda.  For those of us a part of a larger organization, being on the same page is critical for being easy to work with.  I have worked with people in the past that have their own agenda.  Sometimes this would line up with the common purpose, but every now and then it would be very difficult to get work done because they had an alternative agenda.

For the technical artists amongst us, are you more interested in your own boundaries than the mission of your church?  Are you driving for the best equipment over any other concern your church has?  Does technical excellence matter above all things?

Having boundaries and driving for the best equipment aren’t bad things, but if they exist has your highest values above the common good, you might need to take a look at why you work there.  These things get in the way of being a person that others want to work with.

I love working with people that have a bias for action and are easy to work with.  Why wouldn’t I try to be one of those people also?