Staci Brown Brooks
By Staci Brown Brooks
Contributing writer
Some people just know what they are. My mother is a born nurturer who wears a perpetual smile. She’s a nurse. My sister has the patience to deal with other people’s children all day. She’s a teacher. Me? I guess I was built to be an editor. As I child, while reading, I would circle words beyond my young vocabulary and create new endings to “improve” my storybooks.
But after being in the newspaper business for eight years, I was in serious need of a boost to prepare me for the next level. There are classes and seminars on editing and managing all the time. But I began to wonder: What can I do to further develop my leadership skills?
Enter the Maynard Media Academy, a selective training program for emerging newsroom leaders. I applied, and a fellowship from the Freedom Forum graciously covered all costs.
The primary purpose of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education is to help the news media reflect America’s diversity. My 17 Maynard classmates and I gathered for two weeks earlier this year in the hallowed halls of the Neiman Foundation headquarters at Harvard University.
The Academy’s goal is bold: We are each expected to take all we’ve learned, along with our various talents and raw ambition, and lead a news organization one day. The goal isn’t middle management; it’s masthead.
Another one of the Academy’s mandates is that its alumni share the knowledge. So, here are the top five things I learned or that I’m thinking about since my time at the Academy.
1. Nobody in their right mind would ever want to be a manager.
But that’s OK, a little crazy never hurt anybody. Being a manager requires a lot of investment and a lot of faith in other people. Your individual accomplishments no longer really matter. As a manager, one is judged by her products and her people.
2. The key to success is starting with a goal you can measure.
Michael Roberts, the deputy managing editor of staff development at the Arizona Republic, one of the presenters, advised setting SMART goals:
- Specific — Each goal frames a single outcome that is observable.
- Measurable — Success is described in quality, quantity, frequency, etc.
- Action-oriented — The goal should contain action verbs.
- Realistic — Don’t aim for things that require resources, abilities or skills you know you don’t have.
- Time-dated — When’s your deadline?
3. A team needs a variety of functional players to work.
Sometimes someone’s a point guard; sometimes somebody’s coming off the bench; you have to have a coach. That being said, some people shouldn’t be allowed on the court until they have an attitude adjustment: the buck-passer, the nitpicker, the martyr. It’s the rest of the team’s responsibility (and especially the leader’s) to nudge those people into functional roles.
4. Difficult conversations are often necessary to keep the train moving.
All managing is, is dealing with people — and often people have problems. Still, in any situation, if basic rules of professionalism and common courtesy are followed, all parties can end the conversation with their dignity intact and be able move on.
5. Are surprises really surprises?
We studied and discussed a number of case studies with Harvard business professors. One of them was “Predictable Surprises: Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming.” It talked about Shell’s botched handling of a major environmental protest. Of course, it talked about 9/11. It didn’t talk about the news media, but it could have.
Larry Olmstead, a former Knight Ridder executive VP and now a leadership consultant, gave us an exercise. He asked us to predict Time magazine’s cover words on the state of the media in 2013. The two predictions we agreed on: more digital and less filtered.
What do you think our future is?
For information about about the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, visit the Web site maynardije.org.
Staci Brown Brooks is the assistant features editor at The Birmingham News.
