The Holy Spirit of Competition

Living in the tension.

As a program director you are well-accustomed to this. ?In fact, perhaps you have grown to thrive in it – like me, feeling like you do your best work in the midst of it. At a radio station, tensions are everywhere – 2 conflicting ideas or forces, both with merit and value, pulling you in contrary directions.

Here is what I mean:

·???????Since you can only play one thing on the radio at a time, there is the tension of “Is thing A (or song A, or feature A) better than thing B?”

·???????The tension of revenue is soft, so your sales director wants to add another :60 to the 2nd stopset of the hour, while you’re trying to reduce the length of stopsets.

·???????The tension of a star air talent who says “I want to share my life with my listeners” against the reality of “Listeners who are busy with their own lives don’t really care about EVERYTHING you did last weekend.”

·???????The tension of “your current music playlist is 100% full, but you are one of the last 3 stations nationally that have yet to add that one song…”

I could continue laundry-listing the tensions that exist in our work for days, but you know what I mean – the best Program Directors and the best leaders learn to use the tensions, live in the tensions, work with others in the tensions – continually managing all the tensions, every day making small course corrections to ensure that no one thing is pulling too hard to throw the radio station off course. Managing all of the tensions well is what points a radio station toward success. ?

There’s one tension that is unique to Christian radio that we never talk about though…

If it’s all about introducing people to Jesus, is it bad to want to beat the competition?

This is the tension I struggle with the most. Ultimately, I do want people to have their lives changed by the music and message of Jesus that we share – no matter what station they hear it on. But humanly – I want to win. And if I am honest, sometimes I want to win so bad, that I can lost sight of the big GOOD – hearts transformed – because at the end I want all the marbles, or gumballs, or certificates, or people, or ratings, or whatever we’re playing for, which is a little scary if I don’t manage this tension closely.

I believe this tension can be a really good thing for your team and for your programming, as long as you channel your desire to win into constructive growth that makes you want to be better than you were yesterday, rather than just “better than the other station”. In the paraphrased words of about 2,000 coaches, when you focus on “playing a perfect game of basketball (or football, tennis, soccer, etc.,) just executing everything flawlessly, the score takes care of itself”.

A healthy desire to beat the competition can be beneficial to growing your team in many different ways, but here are 3 key outcomes:

1.?????Healthy Habit #1 – Working HARD and SMART to innovate: When you have a strong competitor that brings their A game each day, that alone should incentivize you and your team to work harder and smarter to always make sure you sound and look your best, and to come up with something fresh each day. When you’re not chasing or being chased by a worthy opponent in which every listener and every second matters, complacency is common, and you can quickly lose the snap, sparkle, or shine that makes your station sound great.

2.?????Heathy Habit #2 - Doubling down on your advantage: Competition should bring clarity to you and your team about your unique competitive advantage. What do you do well that they can’t do? Chances are it has to do with talent, promotions, marketing, or community engagement, rather your music mix (although your music HAS to be spot-on). Once you really understand what your competitive advantage is, design a plan to do that twice as much in the coming year.

3.?????Healthy Habit #3 – Unity throughout your team: When you manage this tension well, the growing spirit of competition in your team as they do battle to win will draw out creativity, collaboration, and ?community among them the likes that you have perhaps never seen before. ?As their leader, it is important to regularly remind them of the vitalness of the role they play as part of the big picture, and that the heart and soul of the competition is to grow as a team and to be better than yesterday, not better than the other guy.

Did you know that the guy who created Dropbox launched that company even after realizing that BOX was already in the cloud services business, and GOOGLE had just launched their cloud service? Nonetheless, he had a vision to make storage on the cloud super easy for people, but he had grow these habits in his team to take on Google to get it done. Now he’s worth over a billion dollars, and DROPBOX is the first name most people think of in that space.

Competition is good, as long the spirit of competition motivates you and your team to be better, rather than creating in you a desire for the other guy to lose. Mastering that tension will bring fantastic dividends to your team and your station. So get in the game, and try to win it!

If you need help, please call me.?