Demonstrate the actions of a person who is completely devoted to creating the best-run service of the decade. They should be able to see your attention to detail, and they should feel your intense desire for perfection.
We obviously don’t need to hold everyone to the quest for a perfectly run service, but everyone must know that we’re always trying for that very goal.
When the person does sound and you watch, take notes and make constructive comments about what they could do to provide a better service for the church. Most people will want to know the truth about their performance of the sound operator.
Tell the truth in a positive way. Avoid degrading and cutting comments.
If someone did a really bad job of riding the leader’s vocal mic level, instead of saying, “You did a really bad job of riding the worship leader’s mic,” you could say, “Try to focus on the leader. Keep your attention on the mic level and tone, adjusting it so it is always audible and pleasing to the ear.”
This suggestion is full of doorways to further instruction, it doesn’t degrade the person or their skills, and it contains keywords (focus, audible, and pleasing) that will help produce positive results.
Training volunteer sound operators is an exercise in motivational procedures. On one hand, the leader wants them to do an excellent job soon. On the other hand, they are volunteers, and this is an optional activity—if the leader is negative, harsh, and critical, the volunteer might just stop volunteering.
The best leaders show people what excellence is—they either model it themselves, or they bring in outside help to give the trainees an idea of what it looks like to do a great job.
Next, they’ll break the job up into bite-sized pieces—tasks that are not so daunting that they present an insurmountable challenge. As the trainee builds confidence through the successful performance of each portion of the overall job, he or she will soon be functioning far beyond even his or her own expectations.
In addition, a good leader demonstrates that he or she cares about the person doing the job.
We’ve all had teachers, leaders, or bosses that we would do anything within our power for. Though we might have been impressed with them because of their excellence or charisma, the ingredient that leads to loyalty is care—they genuinely seem to care about us as people.
Yes, they’re interested in us as workers or volunteers, but they take an interest in us reaching our full potential for our sake more than theirs. They take joy in our professional and personal development, achievements, and successes.
However, they often share in our pain. They show compassion when we hurt, they help us up when we fall, and they have genuine expectations that we will excel—that we’ll succeed at what we do, and that we have value and worth whether we’re at the top or bottom of our game.
If you care about your team, if you’re willing to help them achieve, and if you provide sufficient resources for them to learn, you will develop a strong team over the course of time.
Next time I’ll talk about developing job descriptions, scheduling and more.
(Click here to go to part 2 of this article.)
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