The Young Technical Director

[StJamesTech]

Hi Guys,
I work at a church of approx. 2200 members we have both contemporary and traditional services. I am the Technical Director at the Contemporary services. We have good equipment and 3 or 4 very dependable volunteers and a few others, and overall I enjoy working there.
My problem is that I am 20 years old, and while I am more than qualified for this job, being both a professional vocalist and going to school for theatre, volunteers in both the tech booth and in the praise band ignore most of my direction.
If I am nice I get ignored, and if I switch over to Mean Stage Manager Mode in an attempt to get something done on time I am met with obstinance.
I have had a conversation with the pastor about this before but so far nothing has come of it.
How do I keep hold of my job, my authority, and my temper when dealing with those who view me as unexperienced because of my age?
All advice is very welcome.

[Esoteric]

I don't know if you have tried, but make it like about relationships with people. Get to know them, find out what motivates them, care about them, love them.

Mike

[shayward]

There are a couple of things.

First of all, some people just will not respect young people period. They're older, they have more knowledge, more experience, what does this kid know, etc., etc. Some of them will change their mind, given time and witnessing your expertise. Some of them will not change their mind but change their behaviour if someone in authority tells them to. Some of them are lost causes, save for Holy Spirit intervention.

Second, some people with tremendous experience and tallent, just do not have the charisma and personality to command respect. Sometimes others who are incompetant, self-serving and narcissistic have a tremendous amount of charisma and personality to command respect.

Sometimes having the charisma or personality to command respect and be an effective leader comes with... (wait for it)... age.

While not at church, I have run into the same kinds of issues at my current place of employment. I started as a junior programmer when I was 20 years old. At age 32, I'm extremely experienced and capable, but I'm still treated very much like a junior.

You need to discuss this with your Pastor again and ask for his advice. The praise band is understandable... musicians are as much a pain in the backside as techies. And so the answer there is to meet with the band leader for the praise team and discuss the issue.

As for your own team, that is a bigger problem. Consider this:

A manager is a person that sends you to difference places whereas a leader is someone you will follow into places you wouldn't go alone.

Seek to be a leader, not a manager or a director. And anything you do to foster leadership will take time. If there are specific issues then you need to discuss them with your team. You can't have 5 people stearing the ship. On the flip side, you also can't micro-manage the team.

For example, if you are having problems with song slides getting up late then you need to craft a "rule", such as "always change to the next expected slide as the last word of the current slide is being sung" and you have to remind people when they don't do it. But people also have to have enough freedom to make mistakes and learn from them.

Each situation is different and it's hard to say from one situation to another what the right answer is.

[Paris MkVI]

I fully support what others have written above.

God bless you, brother, for seeking counsel! Your heart desires to serve with excellence the God who loves you.

See people, not problems. A friend of mine wise in God's Word reminded me once, "People are people and problems are problems. People are not problems. When I start thinking people are problems, then I have a problem!" When I altered my way of thinking on this, it was another important step in the journey of being transformed by the renewing of my mind (Romans 12:2).

Does your team understand your authority is covered by your pastoral leadership? If that covering is not made clear by your leadership, then your position of authority is not clear to them.

Are authority and responsibility connected in your position? One way to tell is - when a problem arises, does leadership come to you, or are you bypassed while those you are supposed to lead are addressed directly? The latter undermines your authority, and tells your volunteers you can be ignored.

A church with 2200 souls and four or five volunteers on your team sounds way out of balance on the surface. Might the root issue possibly be that folks on your team are difficult to work with because they are burning out? Is resentment of being over-used a bitter root forming in their hearts?

I know, I know - more questions than answers. I can only share what I sense the Holy Spirit whispering.

[[Director] Joseph B]

When I was in my mid to late 30's I was sent by my denomination to train with two "techxperts" from the home office. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and there were two kids less then half my age. Not only did I have to take orders from them, I had to shuttle them around when needed because they were too young to drive.
As good as they were in the tech areas, they were also more gifted as teachers and managed to impart a great deal of knowledge on me without making me feel stupid, incompetent or old.
My understanding is that there were problems with the first few people they trained, but they learned to deal with us "old timers" in a way the worked.
You will too.

[[Admin] danroth]

Perhaps you might want to consider going to them with the issue. Explain that you have a responsibility you need to fulfill, and that you want to know how you as a group can be more of a team rather than individuals.

Additionally, clear job descriptions - both for yourself and for volunteers - can be very helpful.

[jeremyb503]

Originally Posted by danroth

Perhaps you might want to consider going to them with the issue. Explain that you have a responsibility you need to fulfill, and that you want to know how you as a group can be more of a team rather than individuals.

Additionally, clear job descriptions - both for yourself and for volunteers - can be very helpful.

I would create a flow chart showing your chains of command and share that with your team. Make sure that they know you are not trying to micromanage them or just lord your authority over them but there are established positions and jurisdictions for different members of the team.

If you have the responsibility for the show you need to have the authority to lead/manage the show in a way that makes it come off well.

[WORDpictures]

My gut reaction is that the band members and tech crew have been accustomed to running the services fairly independently prior to your coming into this role... and that you're seen as rocking the boat with apparent demands for authority. I've found there are ideal approaches to set up, and then there's reality. For example, from my experience, the tech staff has always followed the music team leader in a role of assisting "his/her" requests rather than the other way around. Tech does their checks on the fly without any direct requests of the musicians. So as a video director, it would be out of place for me to request the band or pastor get in position for a preliminary lighting check although that makes best sense from the tech side.

This tech team does sound very small for the congregation size, and often with small teams, volunteers have more ownership of their respective roles as opposed to larger teams where volunteers have more minimal contributions because more people share the same roles. If this is the mindset, it would be difficult for anyone to turn around the way things are functioning regardless of one's age or expertise. Of course, such dedicated volunteers offer many positives to count your blessings upon.

Many tech matters are subjective. . . matters of preference, so be careful that you are respectful of the volunteer's expertise & long-held preferences in turn. They probably don't see any reason to do things different from ways that have seemed most reasonably workable to them through the past.

As a woman working in the male-dominated area of tech, I've encountered something similar a few times... as some guys act as though they know more about what I do for a living than I do just because they've used a camcorder a few times. Most people respond well to mutual respect... and keeping a light attitude to your interactions can help. Perhaps not any real suggestions, but presenting a different perspective.

[prochlea]

All said above is great...

I have a question though - that might shed a little more light on the situation: What sort of direction are you giving that is being ignored?

When I need a musician or tech person to do something different than what they're doing, I usually frame it like this: Hey - can you do (this) for me instead of (what you're doing now) because (then give a valid and logical reason for what you're asking them to do). We have to setup and tear down every week, so I'm constantly having to remind people to do things in a way that protects themselves and other people, but also protects the equipment.

Or, you can give them a couple of options that both suit your purposes - For instance - when my electric guitarist has his amp too loud, I ask him if we can put his amp back stage and mic it from back there, or he's going to need to turn it down alot because it's so loud that it overpowers everything in the mix. If he says it needs to be loud to get the sound, then it has to go back stage - or if he really needs it close, then it needs to be quieter.


The biggest part of the whole thing is that you need to convey to people your attitude towards the band and tech... (and you should have this attitude if you don't) You need them to realize that you are trying to run a service that facilitates worship. This is really the whole point of the band and the tech teams, and if you make it clear that facilitating worship is your goal - then people should be a little more willing to do what you need. That said - you also have to humble yourself. Sometimes someone else has another way of doing something that gets the job done just as well - and if it's not really hurting anything, let them do it. I'm pretty anal and like things done my way, but I've had to step back on a few things because I can't control everything. Luckily I'm blessed with a team(and band - it helps that before i was the tech dir, i was in the band for a number of years) that recognizes me as the leader and usually ask me how something should be done.

[Steven]

Don't forget that in Matthew 20:26, Jesus said "Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant." It goes a long way when you help the band members carry their equipment in, talk to them in between sets and give compliments for jobs well done. It takes a long time to earn respect, and demaning repsect never works.

For your team, one of the things I would strongly recommend is that you lead by person, not by power or position. Leading by power is saying "I sign the checks, so you do it my way." Leading by position is saying "I am the director, you do it my way." Leading by person is saying "We can do it better if we try it this way. I am willing to put in the effort to make it happen." Often, the best way to lead, is to plant seeds in other people then get them to come the same conclusion you arrived at.

To follow Pat's example above, you could go up that same guitarist and say "Hey, you know what, I was sitting there in the last row of the room, and all I could really hear is your guitar. Do you have any suggestions for helping it fit better into the mix?" He may volunteer to turn it down or move it on his own, and the problem is solved. He may be apathetic, so make a few suggestions. "What if we turned down your amp, or turned it to face the other direction. Do you think that would work? Maybe we could put an acoustic pad behind it to absorb some of the sound. What do you think?" It takes longer, but in the end, you get what you need, and didn't make an enemy.

Ultimately, your team needs to trust you. I only know of one way to earn trust: character. Character leads to consistency. Constistency leads to predicability. Predictability leads to confidence. Confidence leads to trust.

[tedanderson]

This situation kind of reminds me of when I worked in the service industry and we would get new supervisors on the job every so often. Sometimes a new supervisor came on the job and said, (paraphrasing) "I'm now your new supervisor and you will do what I say or you will be looking for a new job. Anyone have a problem with that?" and other times we had a new supervisor that would come on the job say,(paraphrasing) "Look, I'm new at this, I don't really know what I'm doing, I don't know much about your duties, but I hope to learn from each and every one of you.

In the first example, we tried as hard as we could to give that supervisor as much grief as we could! In the second example, we would do whatever we could to make the guy look good, and even tell him exactly how our jobs are supposed to be done and how/why we did or didn't accomplish the task. So a lesson to be taken from this is that if you rule with an iron fist as the new guy, everyone else is going to try their best to try your patience.

The second thing that I'd like to share with you is that experience, a willingness to learn, and putting yourself in a position of influence will get you much further through life than your resume. You are a professionally trained vocalist? You are an expert in theater? That's great and all but most times people don't care about how much you know until they know how much you really care. And this is a people oriented business where your technical background means very little.. at least to the people that you have to deal with.

They don't care that you know how to run an RTA and ring out the FOH and that you can transpose music for any instrument and you know the standard for the I, ii, III, IV, vii chord progressions. But what they care about is whether you can be of any accommodation to them making their job easier or better. Show them that you know what you are doing by fixing and addressing their problems first.

I first started in media ministry at age 22. The first thing that the MoM said was, "What's Ted doing behind the board?! Get that rookie out of the driver's seat!" and then the praise singers kept asking where the more seasoned guy was. They didn't care that I was trained in a state of the art digital studio. They didn't care that I worked on projects that made it on the radio. They didn't even care I knew how to evaluate frequency time responses and echo timings.

Their biggest issue at the time was the fact that everyone had a hard time hearing themselves as it was and then when the pastor got on stage near the end of the music segment, he demanded to be louder than everyone else making everyone else's job much harder. So when I broke the stage part of the system down to two separate monitor mixes, then I started earning their respect. "ohhh.. now we can hear! What did you do?"

[prochlea]

So when I broke the stage part of the system down to two separate monitor mixes, then I started earning their respect. "ohhh.. now we can hear! What did you do?"

Ted makes a good point here... In my situation, I have earned everyone's respect over a number of years by showing them that I can make things better for them. For example - when people complain that they can't hear well on the Aviom system, I often volunteer to go up and mix it for them. I use a headphone splitter and re-mix the whole thing, and they're usually very happy. The problem is that they just keep turning everything up, and never turn anything down. Obviously, that's not how you construct a mix. Anytime you have an opportunity to humbly show your skill/knowledge, that is a good opportunity to earn some respect from people.

You also have to show that you're willing to work as hard or harder than everyone else. I'm always the first one there and the last one to leave, and I rarely stop working. You don't want to be the guy who's micromanaging everything and doesn't appear to be doing anything... i'm not suggesting that you are doing that, but I have been in work situations where it was hard to respect the boss because he always told everyone what to do and never seemed to be doing anything himself(except criticizing his workers).