After the last 2 posts, “Don’t screw up” and “Don’t, Don’t screw up”, it seemed like there was another dimension to the idea of creating a culture of people doing their best out of fear of failure or because they are freed up to bring their best to the table.
As a leader, much of that culture is created in the heat of the moment. During a live production, when things are going great or going down the tubes, how are you dealing with these situations? Not only how you are treating your people, staff, or volunteers, but how are you personally handling all the moments that make up a live event, good and bad.
One huge way to create a culture where people aren’t scared into doing their best is when things are going really well during a service. It is important to celebrate the wins.
When people are doing a great job, following the worship leader to a song that wasn’t planned, a lighting look that exactly matched the moment, or the perfect mix (not really possible, but you get the idea); do you let the members on your team know that they are killing it?
Sometimes I like to respond in the moment with a “Great job”, but not at the expense of distracting that person from the task at hand. Over the last few years, we have been doing what we call “Time of Affirmation” at the end of our Saturday night service debrief. I noticed that we were spending lots of time talking about what wasn’t working and we never talked about all the great things that had happened because people were doing great work.
There are a couple of things I love about the Time of Affirmation. Knowing that we will be publically talking about things that went well helps me and others on the team be more aware in the moment, looking for great work. It helps us see the good during the event instead of just the mistakes. The other thing I love about it is that people are being publically affirmed.
I don’t do my job so that people say “way to go!”, but it is great to hear, and motivates me to keep doing my best. The people on your team need to know that someone noticed their attention to detail, or their hustle at a particular moment, or passing on word from the band that the monitor mix was like bathing their ears in champagne.
As a group of people that are always trying to eliminate distractions, we tend to only focus on the distractions. While it is part of who God made us to be, we can’t survive long on only pointing out all the things that were done wrong.
Do you take time to celebrate the great things happening on your production team?
