Coaching. Some have it, some don’t. Other’s get bad coaching, even today, from peers who’ve been at this radio thing for decades.
In every field, from boardrooms to break rooms, football sidelines, and chef competitions, no one achieves brilliance alone. A true coach is a trusted partner that helps us grow. No matter where we are in our growth development.
True Growth isn’t an accident. Growth is intentional both using and deploying a step by step process to increase a talent’s confidence and potential.
The number one golfer in the world has a team of coaches. Scottie Scheffler’s swing coach is Randy Smith (since he was seven). The coach behind Sheffler’s brilliant putting is Phil Kenyon. To stay in top physical shape Scheffler turns to Dr. Troy Van Biezen. Those who swing a club know the mental game is a huge part of the game. Scheffler stays fully present on the course by following the teachings of Mental Coach Dr. Karla Steingraber.
In radio, especially among Adult Formats, consistent coaching is nearly non-existent. However, as a talent or programmer, you can find affordable resources to assist in staff advancement.
Coaching isn’t a one or two session thing. No matter the ratings season or system, every day your audience votes with their attention. Not just during a “big” ratings book.
Listener perception never goes on hiatus. What you execute today becomes tomorrow’s reputation. Every element of your brand as a talent weaves into the long-term impression that drives audience recall, preference, and daily visits to your show.
As programmers, you are their coach. Create the time to invest in your most important asset – Talent.
Here’s a starter kit check list:
- Equip talent with the tools they need to win.
- Define and share a clear picture of success.
- Coach consistently and with purpose.
- Encourage talent to build a Personal Promotional Strategy.
- Hard schedule team updates that keep talent aligned.
- Partner with key brands to maximize shared exposure like Chambers of Commerce or local travel bureaus.
- Create the atmospherics that make your event feel like a political rally with eye-catching signs, swag that sticks, and show business.
If you’re budget-challenged, affordable sources for talent and programmers are a click away. This list includes the still relevant and decades old “Personality Radio” from Dan O’Day, Tracy Johnson’s “Morning Radio Revisited: A Guide to Developing On-Air Superstars” and the talent staple handbook “Creating Powerful Radio: Getting, Keeping and Growing Audiences” from talent coach Valerie Geller.
At times, you catch sage advice from unconventional places. Here are a few.
Before moving onto writing and publishing, Rick Kaempfer made great radio as the guiding rudder as show producer behind the legendary duo Steve Dahl & Garry Meier on WLUP-FM/Chicago (The Loop) and WJMK/Chicago’s John Records Landecker.
Rick is now a publisher and author of several bestselling books including The Radio Producer’s Handbook (with WTMX/ Chicago John Swanson). In it, they share in which they share their legacy knowledge of all things-morning-show-producing. Rick’s just curated the exhibit “Five Decades of The Loop Radio: Where Chicago Rocked” at The Museum of Broadcast Communications in downtown Chicago.
I’ve come to know that radio producers make superior coaches. Nearly two decades back, Rick was a Guest Host for my weekly column “The Robinson Report”. What he wrote then applies still today. Here are a few excerpts:
“I was a radio producer for twenty plus years. I always got along well with both sides because I’m a natural right brained person and could think like the talent, but I was raised in a very strict German family of left-brained thinkers. Therefore I could also understand where the programmers were coming from.
I heard what programmers were trying to say during coaching sessions, but I also heard what the talent was hearing. It wasn’t the same thing. Ninety percent of those problems could have been avoided by following three simple rules.
1. Leave your anal tendencies at the door.
In your job, attention to detail is a necessity until you apply it to your coaching sessions. You must let the little things go. When the talent hears you constantly harping about something that he or she considers completely meaningless (you know what I’m talking about here—the stuff that makes them roll their eyes), your chances of getting them to listen to your advice on any other subject is gone forever.
2. Use the proportional rule.
Yes, talent is sensitive, but you don’t need to deal with them with kid gloves. You can say what you really believe. You just need to convey the positive as enthusiastically as you convey the negative.
If you think 90% of the show was good and only 10% wasn’t, then you should be spending 90% of your time praising the stuff you liked, and only ten percent critiquing. When you only accentuate the negative, you’re subliminally telling them that you hate the show, even if you don’t feel that way.
3. Listen to their ideas, don’t immediately judge them.
Way too many great ideas die because programmers don’t listen. Often a creative person can see the potential in an idea before he or she is able to put it into words. That needs to nurtured, not squashed. Restrain yourself from pooh-poohing ideas you don’t understand. Help them talk through their ideas instead. When the talent is unable to verbalize it to you, he will realize that it needs to gestate in his brain a little longer. Eventually, he’ll come back to you later with a great idea, or he’ll kill it himself.
The key is being non-judgmental. You’re not against it. You’re just trying to understand it. That’s it. That’s all you need to do. If you follow those three simple rules, the talent will believe you are on the same team, which of course you are.
Once the talent believes he has a teammate, he or she will be more confident. Once they are more confident, their natural creativity will flourish, and once that happens, everyone wins.”
Comedian Nate Bargatze is barn-storming his way through America on a sold-out arena tour. So when we saw THIS CLIP of how he writes comedy, it hit home. He doesn’t write his jokes word-for-word. He keeps content conversational and “knows how to get out of the joke” when the timing or audience shifts.
“I always have how I would start the joke and how I would end the joke. It’s when I don’t have the ending that’s where I could lose the steam in the joke. To me, it’s always you’ve got to know how to get out of the joke so you can riff. As long as you start the joke, then you can play and have a dismount.”
We coach talent to write the exit FIRST and assign the exit in an ensemble environment. It’s like building a roadmap for your storytelling.
Coaching styles and presentation tips are vast. Your style should be customized by talent personality and format. Each coach has a different perspective on how to get to the shared ratings win.
Starting with small, meaningful steps with YOUR style builds confidence, trust and results. You get to witness real growth. You might even surprise yourself with your own growth.
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Kevin Robinson is a passionate award-winning programmer, consultant and coach – with multi-formats success all over the country. He has advised numerous companies including Audacy (formerly Entercom Communications), Beasley Broadcast Group, Westwood One, Midwest Communications, Townsquare Media, Midwest Family Broadcasting Group, EG Media Group, Federated Media, Kensington Media, mediaBrew Communications, Starved Rock Media, and more. He specializes in strategic radio cluster alignment, building lean-forward tactics and talent coaching – legacy and entry-level – personalities.
Known largely as a trusted talent coach, Kevin is the only personality mentor who’s coached three different morning shows on three different brands in the same major market to the #1 position. His efforts have been recognized by The World Wide Radio Summit, Radio & Records, NAB’s Marconi, and he has coached CMA, ACM and Marconi Award-winning talent. He is also in The Zionsville High School Hall of Fame as part of the 2008 inaugural class. Kevin is an Indiana native – living near Zionsville with his wife of 39 years, Monica and can be reached at kevin@robinsonmedia.fm.
