AV Team Credibility Issue

[TechPastor]

I am attempting to "raise the bar" for my team but one issue keeps coming up: They keep making mistakes!
I know mistakes are bound to happen from time-to-time but it is the exception to make it through a service without some type of snafu. Today for instance - my sound tech forgot to shut off the DVD audio after a clip and during the middle of the sermon the DVD reset back to the menu and we had a nice interruption in the middle of the message.

How do you help them stop making such mistakes short of running everything myself or corporal punishment ?

Our techs have little to no credibility with the congregation, staff or worship team members because of the years of mistakes. I have quite a bit of credibility with everyone but my job/department is expanding exponentially and I simply am not able to run every service and the constant mistakes by my team will soon degrade my credibility.

Here are some of the changes I am planning to make to help resolve the issue. 1) Each service will have a primary and secondary tech. The primary will be responsible for that service each week and the secondary will cover when they are not available or need assistance. 2) For the next month I will act as primary for all services and the techs will shadow me so I can walk them through step-by-step on what I am needing/doing and expecting of them. 3) Quarterly training meetings.

To borrow a concept from Maxwell - I'm paying change out of my pocket much faster than I earn it because of the ongoing mistakes.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[Gene]

I think corporal punishment might cut down on techs if nothing else

Are they volunteers? Are you a volunteer? How complex is the tech side of your services?

[waynehoskins]

If it's really complex (as you make it sound), you being primary tech for everything for a while may be problematic.

Goodness, I found out this morning that one person can't cut and run a CG at the same time. I'm usually right-on behind a CG, but I don't have any idea how many Wrong Words incidents there were second service this morning because I was distracted by cutting cameras.

[cbccraig]

I feel you pain brother. In our second service today my sound guy failed to turn on a little girl's solo mic. I have been sitting here tonight trying to come uo with ways to avoid these simple mistakes in the future. I know this little girl had been practicing this number for weeks and just one mental error on the part of a tech ruined the performance.

This could be an interesting thread and one we could all learn from as we discuss methods to cut down on errors. I am thinking of re-doing my cue sheet for each service with check boxes at each song or event, and having each tech check each song as completed and look one song ahead for cues. At the bottom I'm thinking of putting a space for the operator to log mistakes and reason and turn in completed "cue" sheet after service is over. Something like this may keep them more aware of details, but then again it could add one more distraction into their "mental cue" for the morning. Good idea or bad? I think we all struggle with trying to eliminate mistakes so I too would be interested to hear what others are doing in attempts to "raise the bar".

cbccraig

<I am attempting to "raise the bar" for my team but one issue keeps coming up: They keep making mistakes!
I know mistakes are bound to happen from time-to-time but it is the exception to make it through a service without some type of snafu. Today for instance - my sound tech forgot to shut off the DVD audio after a clip and during the middle of the sermon the DVD reset back to the menu and we had a nice interruption in the middle of the message.

How do you help them stop making such mistakes short of running everything myself or corporal punishment ?>

[tedanderson]

The long and short of it is that you are not going to forcibly make people do right. They have to want to do right and they need the time and grace to perfect their task. Also, IMO I think that it needs to be communicated to the leadership and the congregation that everyone has to be patient with the new learners. I am willing to believe that 99% of the people who complain don't have the courage to get into the "hot seat".

One thing that you have to understand (which you probably already do) is that we as senior techs meditate and think about this stuff all of the time where as your average volunteering ministry worker puts everything out of his mind as soon as he walks out of the front door.

In the professional realm, the newbies are less prone to make mistakes because they are in it 8 hours a day 5 to 6 days a week. If you take in someone who only deals with the equipment for only a couple of hours once a week, it is going to take them much longer to "remember" how to do their job.

IMO the only way to get them up to speed is to have a training session at least once a week if not more. Quarterly training is not effective for people who do not know their job. Quarterly training is only useful for those who know and practice their job on a consistent basis. The more time that they spend working with the equipment, the better they will be.

And then sometimes (worst case scenario) the volunteer just simply needs to be removed from his task. Sometimes it isn't even a training issue but a "seriousness of your job" issue. I once worked with a church where the sound people would not unmute the pastor's mic when it was time for the sermon until someone walked over to them and told them to turn it on. And their response was like, "Huh? Oh.. OK!" and this would happen EVERY Sunday!

Make sure that it's really their fault that they make mistakes. Do you train them? Do they practice? Do they get material in plenty of time? Do they know the order of worship before the DAY of worship? Do you inspire them to WANT to do well, or just rag on them all the time? Do you care about them as people or just button-pushers? Does leadership only look out for the perfection of their service or are they also concerned for the spiritual welfare of those who make the service happen (for free, mind you)? Did you pick skilled people? Or are they inherently lazy or incompetent?

As with any "corporate structure," the blame always goes to the management, not the workers. This even goes down to the McDonald's level. I was a manager at age 17. When it was my shift things ran like clockwork and very few mistakes were ever made. With others who didn't take their jobs as seriously the store would fall into chaos -- with the same workers. If a 17-year-old punk can make a restaurant run smoothly, surely someone in your church can take charge of your team and do the same for a worship service.

It's all about leadership.

[Tony Kanago]

Darn 17-year-olds.

Mistakes are inevitable to some degree. The sum of the circumstances of everyone involved will be the cause for problem as well as direct-cause mistakes like not getting material enough ahead of time. I sure know what it's like to go in to play bass in the morning having gotten -ahem- less than the best night's sleep. There's no sure cure for issues of this nature beyond making sure the people you work with are dedicated and always ready for the job. For the majority of issues those, there is a definitely trace. There is no such thing as absent-mindedness, only a lack of focus in a specific circumstance. Keep on them about focusing, always checking what they've just completed and what they're about to do, and simply minding surroundings (especially time.) Organizational issues can always be worked out ahead of time. Technical difficulties are almost always traced back to another specific action or issue, so at best you can practice things and run through things ahead of time.

The only cure is more cowbell.

[brenthomer]

while we still make mistakes, I do have some suggestions to cut down on them

1. have a written order of service with spots to take notes
2. go over the service order with everyone 10 min before service
3. pray with the crew
4. have a director cueing everyone ... we are only 1/2 way their on this one

just doing 1-3 cut down on our mistakes a lot..we probably have 90% fewer, and we plan on cutting that down to 99% fewer when we get number 4 working correctly.

I sort of now feel like not doing 1-3 puts a big part of the blame on church leadership. It's not like its to much to ask for a little prep work. It also shows the team that you are organized and that they need to get organized.

One last tip: instead of running sound, just float between all the stations, be encouraging, keep them on focus/message, and remove distractions. I made many church member and techy upset when I started throwing people out of the booth (visitors & gawkers / not techies ), but you have to eliminate as many distractions as you can.

[waynehoskins]

More cowbell, and don't forget to turn the "suck" knob down...

I personally don't work well with a check-sheet or a cue sheet. It gets in my way more than it helps, and for me it doesn't help much.

I agree training has to be more than quarterly. Remembering the routing on the video switcher is second-nature to me, who works with it several times a week and put the thing together and knows analog video. But to the guy who's a physics teacher by day and volunteers a couple of hours every couple of weeks, it takes a while to get used to it. "Oh, right, matte fill..."

Perhaps it's a too-many-things-at-once thing? Goodness, I don't screw up often, and I screwed up a lot this morning by doing too many things at once.

[Brent Bauman]

Our services got complex enough that we added a stage manager position to our technical teams...

The stage manager is responsible for running our pre-service huddle (before doors open 1/2 hour before service) which is attended by everyone involved in our services.

We have a written cue sheet and the SM goes through each item in this short meeting just to ensure that we are all on the same page (so to speak). This has eliminated a lot of potential confusion by making sure that everyone communicates clearly about what is expected to happen... of course it is also our last chance to really bring up any changes/additions/deletions from the cue sheet.

It is also our opportunity to pray as an entire team... we often pray that - even though we are going to do our very best... we realize that it is only the movement of the Holy Spirit that will truly change hearts, open doors and make the service life-changing.

Here is a training trick that I use often when I am training new sound techs.

- I let them do what they need to do... for example we might be in the second song of a three song segment... I lean over to the trainee and ask him/her... "What's next?" In other words... what is the next thing on the program?

- I have found that this really instills in them the importance of always thinking about what's next. This never fails to catch the trainee slightly off guard because like most of us they get caught up in what's happening. But it does get them into the habit of always looking forward.

The best part about this is that if you can get them in the habit of always looking at what's next... it will pay off in the future... big time.

Incidentally, we also have an emergency procedure that deals with Fire/Lost Child and Security lock down... the audio tech plays a key role in each of these (because we always have an audio tech for any large event). So I have taken the training a step further by leaning over to the audio trainee on occasion and saying "Assuming the fire alarm (or other emergency situation) occurs right now... what do you do?" Again - this just reinforces their training in a way that seems to really sink in.


The stage manager has the primary responsibility during our services to be the team leader - the go-to guy and the person providing direction to our team in the services.

Our cue sheet typically provides info on WHO is doing WHAT, WHERE and WHEN during the service... also provides info on Audio and Video sources (CD playback, DVD, RF Microphones, etc.)

[benwilhelm]

I'd second everything brenthomer said. For everyone's curiosity, Brent, about how long has it taken for you to get all of those things in place?

All of this back end organization however, is much easier said than done. And even if you come with organization and a plan, you have to get your team on the same page. So you can't just hand them a complex cue sheet and hope they can follow along, and because of that I like the advice of leaving space for the techs to write down their own notes.

Just curious techpastor, what kind of a scale are you dealing with? Multiple services? How many staff, etc.?

[cbccraig]

Hey Brent, I would really like to see a sample of one of your cue sheets if you don't mind posting one. You posts have been really informative as well as the others in this thread. One thing that surfaced in these posts is TRAINING. I think the time has come where we need to start having weekly tech meetings to just keep everyone focused and on the same page.