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Jill Geisler teaches and coaches managers worldwide and is affiliated with the Poynter Institute. She’s the author of the book, Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know, and the What Great Bosses Know podcasts on iTunes U. CJR editor Liz Spayd asks her questions each month on media leadership issues.
Liz Spayd: The highly-touted First Look Media seems to be thrashing in choppy waters lately. The most recent evidence came when top editor John Cook left in quick succession to former Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi. Taibbi’s noisy departure came after clashes over management style and other issues. It’s pretty clear that First Look and other startups are struggling to find a functioning workplace culture in newsrooms that often didn’t exist a year ago. What’s your advice on creating a successful newsroom culture from scratch?
Jill Geisler: Here’s the short answer. Keep three things in mind:
- Know what you stand for and how that translates into everyday behavior, from decisions to communication to resource allocation. Then choose to act accordingly. If, for example, your startup’s mission is to “stitch together all the people and the entities in the city that are producing good journalism and providing good information” as founder Jim Brady says of Billy Penn, and you believe in openness and transparency, you create a pop-up newsroom on election night and invite other area journalists in for the fun. Then you share what you learned.
- Startup cultures are often a merry band of misfits at the start, and may celebrate their lack of formal structure and guidelines, but without clear understanding of roles and responsibilities, teams flounder and fail.
- Giving high-profile performers or producers the title of manager may give them status and higher pay, but it doesn’t give them the skills needed to lead. Give them help, or just give them the money and put real leaders in charge.
LS: I often hear journalists from legacy print newsrooms bemoan the fact that all the new hires these days are for “digital” jobs with titles and roles they don’t even understand. What are the best tactics you’ve come across to help these journalists appreciate the importance of the talent walking in the door?
JG: Leaders in newsrooms need to remember that change involves helping people learn what they need to push forward, and then letting go of what they’ve been clinging to. The legacy journalists on their teams need to let go of the old notion that it’s okay to be a journalist trained in only one medium. To help, managers need to guide them from digital ignorance to awareness of what adaptation looks like–and for some, even mastery. The best managers help reduce the fear of learning digital skills by developing a custom-tailored training, whether it’s side-by-side coaching on an intimidating new CMS or lunch-and-learn session to play with free, easy-to-learn production apps like Videolicious. (Then, the manager immediately integrates the newly acquired skills into the employee’s work. Otherwise the knowledge never moves from a staffer’s short- to long-term memory and gets lost before it’s ever used.)
At the same time, smart organizations now realize the value of integrating digital and legacy staffers into work teams, rather than separating them. But they make it clear that the digital specialists, even if they lack the journalism chops of their legacy colleagues, are not there as “support staff” to others. They are full partners–and leaders–in creating content.
Raising the digital proficiency of legacy journalists, then teaming them with digital experts in a culture that values and rewards collaboration can decrease anxieties and accelerate change, even if those new titles still don’t seem to make sense.
LS: I went to former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee’s funeral recently, and the moving eulogies from Bob Woodward and others reminded me of the unsurpassed leadership gift that Bradlee possessed. Is charisma like his innate to personality or is it something you can teach people?
JG: Ben Bradlee was extraordinarily gifted in what I’d call the 3 C’s of charisma:
- Competence: Expertise in craft, depth of intellect and critical thinking.
- Command: Complete comfort in assuming authority.
- Connection: Ability to read people, read a room, or read a situation, and deliver a message that effectively elicits the desired response.
Can you teach that? People try to.
I’ve helped more than a few managers who knew they needed to be better communicators, develop stronger emotional intelligence, or understand how to motivate and inspire.
There are coaches who specialize in what’s called “Leadership Presence” or “Executive Presence,” the ability to look and sound like you deserve to be followed. A team of professors published a Harvard Business Review piece about “CLTs,” Charisma Leadership Tactics.
So yes, aspects of charisma can be taught, but for a few memorable mortals it all comes naturally, authentically, and elegantly. That’s why I can imagine Ben Bradlee reading this with great amusement, and responding simply: “CLTs? BFD!”
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