Buy-In Beats Bossing Around

“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” - Theodore Roosevelt. When bosses drive, it can feel like you and your team are swimming upstream. I’ve learned you have a better chance at moving downstream with your peeps when you help them buy into where you’re going vs. bossing them to the destination.

Let’s zoom into why buy-in matters for our line of work. At the second radio station I programmed, I single-handedly decided our brand needed a fresh coat of paint. I revamped our on-air lineup, got a brand new imaging voice, made clock and rotation changes, and timed it all out to launch January 1st. The icing on the cake was slapping the word “new” onto the station’s name. Didn’t loop a single stakeholder in.

The GM came back from the holidays quite confused (to put it mildly). Our listeners and advertisers were even more confused. While our jocks were mostly cool with their new time slots, they were completely unequipped to handle listener questions. After all, unless you could read my mind, not much was really “new.” Listeners didn’t register the fresh, never-before-heard imaging. They didn’t notice the 100 songs I’d chopped from the library, since what was left was music they already knew and loved. The DJ’s were their same old friends, just at new times. The “new” gimmick fell flat.

That station was never the same. My team’s confidence in me probably took a big hit. Most importantly, the trust our P1’s had in our brand was broken.

If I could turn back time (hi Cher!), I would have invited the GM into my thought process months earlier to explore the pros, cons, possible pitfalls and ways to overcome them. We would have looped in our whole team and cooked up messaging/promotions to get our P1’s excited about the concept. Or, and this is partially why I didn’t loop anyone in, the whole endeavor might have been scrapped. I was simultaneously too insecure and too egotistical to risk that.

I now know that inviting stakeholders to buy-in can make good ideas great, or protect us from executing bad ideas.

Drill down to air talent. PD’s/talent coaches could easily roll with the old school “here’s everything you could be better at, and one thing you don’t suck at” aircheck approach. Your DJ ends up playing whack-a-mole with their mistakes, and rarely gains confidence. At best, you get jocks who might execute the basics flawlessly, but can’t make real human connections.

A more effective approach: celebrate wins, correct the rare but urgent deal breakers, and help your air talent know what winning sounds like. When they know, they’ll find their crutches, missed first-exits, etc. on their own. And eliminate them more permanently than the whack-a-mole approach. Leading them to answers, solutions, etc. and allowing room for them to have their own “aha” moment will be more impactful than forcing your preferences on them. When they have buy-in, it sticks.

One last way to think of it: I tell my kids how important it is to brush their teeth. I could (and do) insist on it. But the moment their first crush comments on my kid’s funky breath, I’ve got buy-in! Brushing their teeth goes from something Mom and Dad nag about to being an essential stepping stone towards that first kiss. (This may or may not be a real life example.)

Once in a while, your situation won’t allow for buy-in. There won’t be time. Maybe there’s no margin for error or misunderstanding. (Ain’t no kid of mine going to church with last night’s tacos on their teeth!) But those moments are exceptions for most of us.

Prioritizing buy-in comes down to trust. Do you trust your team to arrive at their moments of epiphany? Do you trust yourself to lead them there? When I reflect on the many times I didn’t try for buy-in, it’s because I didn’t trust my ability to share the vision or I didn’t trust my team to receive it. Either way, that’s on me.

"You get the best efforts from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." - Bob Nelson