The Radio Jedi

My view on radio talent development

I don’t consider myself a fan of Star Wars. I’m actually more of a trekkie. I enjoy the saga though, like I enjoy most sci-fi movies (specially if they have politics as an ingredient). I think George Lukas’ universe expresses some very powerful ideas in a very digestible way.

Bloggers and experts in Star Wars philosophy say that the Jedi code has significant similarities with Taoism and Buddhism. I don’t have the knowledge to argue on favour or against this, yet. I’ll let you know when I’ve read enough about the subject for giving an opinion. Recommended readings will be welcome.

Meanwhile, I can list some of the ideas I found in the Star Wars saga worth recycling for radio talents. (I invite you to continue reading if you work in a creative industry other than radio, you might even find these ideas have a positive impact on your attitude through daily life).

Fear is the path to the Dark Side!

Yoda pronounces this sentence literally in a conversation with Anakin Skywalker, already in his way to becoming Darth Vader. Yoda also talks about the roots of fear, which bring us to one of the central ideas of Jedism: attachments turn emotions into suffering. In other words, attachments turn love into jealousy, ambition into greed, power into tyranny. In Jedism, all threats come from fear. Fear to lose, fear to fail, fear to be left alone. Fear is the main obstacle for our freedom, our growth, our creativity, our improvement, our happiness. Like Jedi’s say, it’s the path to the Dark Side.

Balance

“Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.” — The Jedi Code.

Control of emotions, is a constant in the Jedi narrative. Not in the sense of constraint to our feelings, but control in order to prevent being dragged by our emotions. It’s connected to what we described about attachments above.

Uncontrolled emotions could trigger our insecurity, our arrogance, our affliction, our hostility… You know, the Dark Side. It was love (with attachments) what turned Anakin Skywalker into evil Darth Vader. The mourning of his mother turned into vengeance. Fear to loose his beloved princess Amidala turned into an unstoppable ambition for power.

Our way of handling emotions configures our personality. Emotions drive our strengths but also our weaknesses, which are two sides of the same reality. Whether they fall on the positive or negative side, depends on our ability to balance who we are.

Focus

This is an easy one. We cannot cope with everything at once. And most definitely, we cannot have past and future at all times in our mind. It’s unbearable for any of us. And yes, you guessed it: not being able to focus on the present triggers fear which is the-path-to-the-dark-side… (Does stress and anxiety sound familiar to you?).

We need to focus on today. On the next task. On the one priority now. Let’s solve one problem at a time.

Self-discipline

There is no becoming for Jedi’s. There’s no end in the course towards harmony. You can never stop working on removing self-imposed limitations. Improvement of ourselves is continuous. And no one, but yourself, can save you from the Dark Side.

Jedism summarises this self-discipline in a few principles, which I find very simple but extremely wise:

• Conquer arrogance
• Conquer overconfidence
• Conquer defeatism
• Conquer stubbornness

Jedi model for talent development

I promise, I’m not as obsessed about Star Wars as it may sound. It’s just that Jedi imagery makes it very easy to illustrate my vision on talent development and coaching in radio.

An on-air talent who thinks “I’m already f***ing good” or “I cannot do it” is slowing down or blocking her creativity. Overconfidence and defeatism are equally incompatible with personal growth.

Please, Programme Director or Station Manager, let me share some thoughts, based on my experience. When you encounter this self-limiting attitude in a presenter, try these:

• Don’t tell your talents what’s good and what’s bad in them. Encourage them to know themselves and understand the correlation between their strengths and weaknesses. We can even stop calling them that way. Every skill, tool or resource they use, has pros and cons. Invite them to explore and find the positive and negative impact of everything they do.
• Repeat this over and over: improvement never ends. Help them see that getting obsessed with what they think they can’t do is only holding them back. They must identify what to work on improving next.
• And I said next. Not in the future. One immediate goal at a time. Help them focus on whatever they think is the next thing to work on.
• Show them the importance of facing their fears. Become the Jedi master, make them your padawans if you have to. Train them on acknowledging, expressing and confronting their fears. By removing those obstacles, improvement will become inertial.

This is not just a change in methodology. It’s a change in mindset. For your talents, for yourself, for the entire team. It’s nothing that you can introduce without working first on creating an environment that feels safe.

For starting building it, you may find my non-vertical model for self-evaluation in radio useful. Please, read more here.