More than 15 years ago I was handed the keys to my very first radio station as a program director. I had been in radio for a bit, and was the #2 guy in the programming hierarchy for a few years, but this was the first time I got to be the boss. The person responsible for every aspect of the long term and short term planning of the radio station. Every sound that came out of the speakers fell upon my shoulders and it was hard not to be a bit giddy at the possibilities to come! Yes, this is cooler than creating your own playlist with an app on your phone!
Prior to this promotion I had almost always been the #2 guy at the station. The buffer. The guy who did the leg work and worked as the liaison between the boss and the staff. The guy that would help lobby for the morning personality to get a raise and at the same time planted seeds with the staff on behalf of the boss that kept the "troops" from revolting. It takes a bit of gamesmanship to be the #2, but if done right, you become the most popular person at the station and often the most valuable asset to the team. You feed each side information and remain loyal to both parties. You are not the guy that says "no", so naturally people like you.
After years of being the #2, I leaned that when you become the boss, depending on the staff and the environment, you can be the most hated man at the radio station and most of the time it's just due to the title you hold.
On my first day as the boss, the GM of the station (my boss) threw a welcoming party and invited the entire staff from all departments. We had it at this really classy place called Applebee's. Yep, spare no expense, but we were “eating good in the neighborhood” and it was free, so I shouldn't complain. Having moved more than 1000 miles to take the job, I guess showing me the local culture and cuisine wasn't important at the time?
I sat down at the bar and one of the on air talents sat down next to me and ordered a round of beers for the two of us. He welcomed me to town, as we had not yet met prior to this moment, and said to me these words within the first 30 seconds of our meeting. "Kid, I've been doing this longer than you've been alive so if you are here to teach me things, don't bother".
It was true. He was older than me and there was a strong chance that he had been doing radio as long as I had been alive. Less than a day into the job, this became my first challenge as a manager. This was a moment of defiance and flexing. An attempt to set the tone for the relationship moving forward. If this was a scene from National Geographic's Wild Kingdom, this would have been where the older gorilla beats his chest and yells really loud. Most relationships start with a handshake and a "how's it going?", but not this one.
My response? I took a long sip of beer, swallowed, smiled, looked him in the eyes and said "I'm here to have fun and win. If you happen to learn something in the process, cool".
He didn't exactly set the tone for how things were going to work between the two of us, but he did help to alter the way I communicate with people I work with or manage. It could have been easy to fire back at him with something equally as ignorant or arrogant and challenge his attempt to be the alpha, but what good would that have done at the time? This was a first encounter and a measuring stick of how our relationship was going to operate. We were stuck with each other in this arranged marriage and it would be weak of me to march into my manager’s office and demand we fire the guy after only knowing him 24 hours. Perhaps he didn't know how to talk to a younger manager? What tone would that have set with the rest of the staff? What buy in would I really get from others? I wasn't there to turn the place upside down, I was there to make the product better and in order to do that, I needed the help of the biggest and most important assets in the building-the people that worked there; Regardless of how they felt about me or about learning.
In the two years together, he and I never really saw eye to eye, but I was perceptive enough to figure out what worked and didn't work when it came to coaching and teaching him. He taught me a lot about patience and how to be a better manager. Although he didn't need to learn anything, he sure did recite back many things to me, not truly realizing that I was the one that planted that seed in his head. I don't play mind games with anyone, but I do know how to get people to buy into something without having to beat them over the head or scream.
My father has been in construction since he was a teenager and when I got the promotion, he gave me this advice. "You're not there to make friends and if you fire someone, do it on the first floor". In construction, the second part is very important because you don't want someone throwing you or themselves off the side of the building, so firing them on the first floor is the safest and they have a greater chance of not wrecking things on their way out. In short, I don't know how well his advice applied to this situation.
#Tryharder to keep a cool head about you in times of confrontation or challenges from your staff or even the people around you. The challenger wins if they get a rise out of you and throw you off your game. All great boxers have a plan going into a fight that often gets altered when they get punched in the nose for the first time. Let's be honest, you look stupid when you flail your arms around in the air as your face gets red in anger. We make horrible faces when we get angry and people remember more of how you looked and less about what you said. Just ask children what they remember most about the time you yelled at them and it won't be the words (because they will do it again, always) but it will be how you looked at the time. I'm not saying that we should be robotic or void of passion and emotion, but I believe you get a stronger buy in from others with a disarming tone, opposed to frothing at the mouth and screaming. Your team does not need to see you rattled and if you are already the outsider walking into a new situation, it's important that you hold composure. There's always time to have a meltdown, but pick and choose those times wisely.
In case you are wondering about that employee; he is still working at that station doing the same exact thing he was doing when I met him and probably continuing to learn nothing from anyone. Yet, through his behavior (and there are a lot of stories to tell) he taught me a lot about how to deal with people and situations and I think that made me a better manager.
Are you sitting down?
I started this blog 8 months ago and then put it down and moved on to other blog topics. It's been in the back of my brain for a while now and I just couldn't seem to cobble the words together to make my point. This offering has a lot of pain attached to it and perhaps I just wasn't in the proper mindset at the time to do it justice or had the right emotions in the tank to get all the words and feelings out all in one sitting.
I don't usually start and stop a chapter, as most of my stuff is "stream of consciousness" style and I start and finish a topic all within a 24 hour period and most of the words are typed on my iPhone as my daughter swims for an hour in the morning on Saturdays.
So today, after changing the name of the chapter, I will give it another go.
We often recall where we were when something amazing or traumatic occurred in our lives. People often ask each other "do you remember where you were when..."
A few things off the top of my head would be:
Challenger exploding-I was standing in a single file line waiting to go back into class when I heard one teacher whisper to another that the Challenger shuttle had exploded. I'm pretty sure I was the only kid that heard the whisper exchange and I rushed home after school to turn on the television to watch the news. At that age, it was probably one of the few times, if not the only time, I rushed home to actually watch the news. I didn't know how big of a deal it was at the time, but I knew it was something that everyone seemed to care about, so I paid attention.
When 911 happened I was working in Worcester, Massachusetts. I remember walking into the radio station studio and telling the morning show what I had just heard and asked them to stay on the air till further notice. I remember walking across the street to the radio shack to buy a TV for the studio so we could see what was happening. I stood there in that Radio Shack for probably 20 minutes, with a bunch of strangers, just watching the video coverage over and over again. Numb. So very numb at that moment and not knowing what the hell any of it meant. Just a room full of strangers, staring at the TVs on the wall with eyes and mouths wide open. That’s the only way I can explain it.
When Barry Bonds hit #700, I was drinking in the ESPN zone at Disneyland with my best friend. Neither one of us really liked Bonds, but we both appreciated the moment as we drank. I also had onion rings.
And now to the events that really changed my life...
My brother Michael and I were sitting along the side of the street after football practice, waiting for my sister and younger brother to come get us. We waited and waited and as it got darker, we started to think our sister had forgotten to come and get us. I assure you, it was within the realm of possibilities as she is quite capable of forgetting such an important task and not above leaving us to sit as payback for some terrible thing we did to her. After a few hours, and after every other kid was picked up, a police car drove up and asked if we were the "Murphy boys". The officer asked us to get in the car and he took us back to the police station. We had no idea why we were there, but we sat patiently and waited. I'm not gonna lie, I started to think about all the things that teachers told me would be on my "permanent record" and imagined that all that stuff finally caught up with me.
The officer then explained that there was a car accident and that my sister Kim had to be taken to the hospital because she was in bad shape and that my little brother Jimmy had died. The officer wasn't supposed to tell us the news. He was actually supposed to wait for another person to arrive, as it was her job to convey this message, but I guess he couldn't wait and his bedside manner was terrible. He told us like a career cop who had been rid of all tact and sensitivity that comes with doing a tough job like this for 30+ years. Didn't matter that we were 11 and 13 years of age, he dropped the news on us and expected us to take it like men. Michael took it like a man. Didn't cry. Didn't flinch. Just took it. Me on the other hand, I cried harder than I had ever cried before and I didn't stop for days. I was sitting down at the time and later I was sitting in the lap crying in the arms of a complete stranger. It was the woman that was supposed to deliver the message.
A few years ago, our house phone rang while we were eating dinner. We don't answer the home phone because it's always a bunch of telemarketers, but we especially don't answer it during dinner. It was my dad. He left a voicemail. "Hey it's Jim, call me back". And then hung up. My parents never call the house phone. My dad never says he's Jim, as I know him as "dad". I called back and he said “Mike died. He's dead". The first words out of my mouth were "What? Is mom ok?" That was the day I lost my 2nd brother and the day I started really writing and sharing my story to the world. The day I became more sensitive to things around me. I was sitting down.
We are not defined by the events in our lives, but we are altered by the results of those events and how we react to them. Like a river that changes the location of its banks through erosion, time tends to take its toll on all of us and leaves our feelings and emotions both smooth and jagged over time. My brother Michael bottled up his initial sadness and pain after Jimmy died and I don't recall ever seeing him break down and cry like I had done upon receiving the news that Jimmy, then Michael, had died. Honestly, Michael was never the same after the death of Jimmy and I often wonder if it was because he felt the need to bottle things up, be a "man" and carry the weight for the rest of us. Sadly, I will never know.
As we get older, we tend to be hardened by the world and the scars of yesterday as they often make us less sensitive to the world around us. With the media and our channels of social communication, we ingest more news and information than ever before and that can cause a numbing of emotions over time. #Tryharder to understand that you are allowed to occasionally crack. You don't have to always carry the weight for the rest of us and that thickening of our skin puts us less in touch with much of humanity. I'm not saying that we need to become fragile people that cry after every movie or change of season, but we do need to emote and occasionally be bothered or moved by things that happen around us.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/285011412" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="600" height="250" iframe="true" /]