#3: Growing High Performing Teams in the Arts
Talent development in the arts is critical for productivity, efficiency, and growing high-performing teams that deliver results. People want autonomy, but that also must come with accountability, and this episode puts research behind how to do that.
Aubrey also answers a question on the balance between digital engagement and in-person offerings. When streaming is often prohibitively expensive, what’s the right digital strategy forward instead?
Resources mentioned:
Talent Development: Why Most Organizations Don't Invest Much in It, And How the Investment Pays OffLearn more about Aubrey’s Summer Uplevel course and coaching
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, everyone. As this episode drops, I will be headed to the League of American Orchestras conference in LA, where I am leading a panel on the Top Five Tech Trends Orchestras Need to Know. And, can we just talk about Los Angeles for a minute? I love my home in San Francisco, but LA has LeBron. LA has Matt Stafford. LA is 74 degrees in December. We don't get that in San Francisco. Plus LA of course has the LA Philharmonic. I am going to be going to the concert on Thursday with music by William Grant Still. And I'm not going to lie, I'm super excited to also be going to opening night of the Hollywood Bowl to the orchestra playing with Gwen Stefani, my hero. I'm going with a few friends, and I'm not kidding, there is talk of wearing blonde wigs and matching t-shirts. And I'm not even sure if the group text on this is a joke or if it's real; like that is the level of fandom we were talking about here.
So all of this is to say, if you will be in Los Angeles for any of these events, please come say hi. I cannot wait to see so many friends and connections and see you all IRL.
Oh, as an aside. I said that to somebody the other day in a, in a message. I said, "can't wait to see you IRL." And then they told me that they had to Google that. So IRL means "in real life." No need to Google it .
[00:01:27] Aubrey Bergauer: But speaking of conferences, in today's episode, I'm answering a question that has to do with this topic. It's about growing our teams and helping others develop their careers. And then at the end, I answer a question about the balance of digital versus in-person content. And I explained what I think a lot of organizations have wrong in their thinking about this. And what strategy serves us better instead.
So let's hit it.
Thanks to our sponsors, Descript and Lume Cube for making this podcast possible. You'll hear more about them later in the show.
(add 'Hey Everybody back'?) I'm Aubrey Bergauer, and welcome to my podcast. If we haven't met, I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue. The arts are my vehicle to make the change I want to see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial equality, developing high performing teams and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work.
In this show, I'm answering your questions on how to build the vibrant future we know is possible, both for our institutions and for ourselves as offstage administrators and leaders. To submit a question, send a voice recording to hello@aubreybergauer.com.
[00:02:39] Archie: Hi, I'm Archie from San Francisco, and I'm applying for a director of marketing position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I'm wondering as a leader, how do you most effectively help your team grow and develop their careers, keeping your team motivated in an environment that is so fast paced?
[00:02:54] Aubrey Bergauer: Oh, Archie I've got a lot to say on this.
I have read a lot about effective management, trying to be a more effective manager myself, more effective leader. Moving teams forward. And I'll start with the overarching concept I subscribe to, which then from that we can get into how does that translate to helping the team grow and develop their careers?
[00:03:18] Aubrey Bergauer: So I believe in what I call the Spider Man principle of management. With a great power comes great responsibility. Right? Spiderman. Okay.
People want autonomy. We know this; research bears this out. This is across all industries, all employees. We want autonomy generally speaking. But autonomy also means accountability must come with it. So with great power comes great responsibility. With that as a framework, then I believe it really opens up some things into everything else I'm saying. If people want autonomy, it means not micromanaging.
I used to be pretty bad at micromanaging. I've really had to work on it over the years. And the more I've learned though, is that yes, I'm very particular about how I want things. Yes, I have a lot of opinions, but other high-performers have all those things too. And so the more I'm able -I've learned and I'm still learning -the more I'm able to let go and let people do the work that they want to do, the better. But that also means accountability. So that means I absolutely want to measure results.
I'm very data-driven as people know about me, and those two things can go hand in hand. When you're delivering great work and you can measure the impact of it. Okay, now we're really cooking. Less micromanaging is what that means. It means -I've heard it put this way -it means you don't really looking at yourself as a coach. I'm not a manager, I'm not a supervisor. I'm a coach. And I don't know, to say it, I don't know if it sounds blasé or if it sounds, I don't know what the word is, sort of cliche or I don't know. But it really was a change of mindset for me to really start viewing my role that way as coach, not supervisor or manager. So always trying to get better about that.
The other thing I want to talk about on all of this is professional development. In the same way that people want autonomy. People also want to further their careers, meaning they seek professional development.
[00:05:12] Aubrey Bergauer: And I talk a lot about growing revenue, but this is an expense line that needs to grow: professional development budget. I say all the time, our offstage talent doesn't match our onstage talent. How do we fill in this void of arts admin? Education and professional development for our existing staff is a way to do that. The timing of this question is very good with conference season upon us right now. It's summer. If you're listening to this close to its release date. And that's a huge time for professional development going into the fall as well.
And my last two roles. I created a professional development budget for everyone on the team. Everyone was given an allocation per year. At the California symphony, it started as very small because we just didn't have it at the beginning, but I was determined to start somewhere, $500 a person or a thousand dollars a person.
By the end, it was over two grand a person. At San Francisco Conservatory, the budget was enough for everybody to go to a conference. It was probably closer to 2500 or 3000, maybe. I can't quite remember. But the idea is that everyone is given a stipend. And here are the rules though.
You can use the budget however you'd like as long as the opportunity you want to pursue meets a few criteria. One, it has to relate to your contribution to the organization. So that can be broad. And that's somewhat intentional, but in both of those organizations was so amazed by what opportunities people found and wanted to pursue. So I'll come back to that list in a minute and share some of those. But for now, the other criteria was that you had to report back after the conference or after the professional development whatever. It could have been a webinar, it could have been something different.
You have to report back in a future team meeting after the conclusion of that professional development.
At the conservatory, it was at the department meeting at the California Symphony, smaller organization, so it was at the full staff meeting. Whatever that looks like, you gotta report back in a future team meeting. Why report back? One, because I want the attendee to internalize what they've learned.
Conferences, as we know, anybody who's attended one, can tend to be a blitz of information; that's by design. So to report back means you as the attendee, the participant, have to go back through your notes, find your key takeaways, and then share them. That is a very important exercise to me. It is also so you're amalgamating the information you've learned. You're cementing those learnings for yourself. Very important.
Also, I think an ancillary benefit is that it's really helpful for your teammates to hear. "Oh so-and-so is going to be working on this new thing or new idea they learned. Okay." You're signaling to the rest of the group what you're doing. Another bonus is when that person or participant reports back and they're passing on the ideas, inspiration, takeaways that they learned. This is great.
Accountability. That's another reason to report back. When you speak something audibly -this is true based on research for things like New Year's resolutions; this is true for any kind of goal setting in general. When you speak something audibly, it helps drive accountability for yourself. That's why vision boards work for anybody who's into vision boards or those kinds of things. It helps drive accountability for yourself. So great, by speaking it to the team, you're doing that. Love it.
Also, this starts to tie in a couple of things. I said with great power comes great responsibility. I really believe in performance review. I think there's a whole bunch of ways where performance review in the arts, and a lot of organizations to be fair, not just the arts, can be very broken. There's a lot of bad ways to do performance review. I am guilty of doing bad performance reviews as I've been learning this over the years. But the more I learn on how to do healthy performance reviews, this accountability piece is important. In the same way I want metrics on- here's a good example -budget management. I do not want to micromanage how somebody spends their budget anymore. I want somebody to be able to project a budget they need at any level of seniority.
If you're a manager overseeing, I don't know, 20,000, 50,000, whatever money that is, I don't want to micromanage every expense. I want you to come back at the end of the year or or mid-year, however often we're looking at our finances, and be able to stick to the budget, show that it was for your work. Fine. Okay. That should be in performance review too. If you budget responsibility, did you spend it well? Did you manage it well?
Okay. No micromanaging. I don't have time for that anymore. So same thing with this idea of professional development. I think that should be in performance review too.
If somebody did participate in a professional development opportunity, how has it helped their work afterwards? Can we see that there's been an impact on their work? Can we quantify it? If so great. If not. Did we see "oh yeah, they brought back an idea. They shared it with the team, and then sure, over the next few months, we saw them enacting that idea." Okay. Great. Check.
So those are all the things I want. I just really believe we don't do it well at organizations. So here's what I don't want. I'll put it this way: what I don't want for professional development is for somebody to go to the conference or webinar, coaching, or whatever it is they do, and feel warm and fuzzy and inspired for about a week. And then go back to the grind without any change in performance or results. No way. I want results for my investment. And that's the point I'm trying to make here. Okay.
A couple other things I want to say on this. One.
If you are listening to this, and maybe you're not in a decision-making role at an organization, and you're thinking, "yeah, they should do this." Okay, don't just listen and wag your finger at your organization, wanting them to spend all this money on you is what I want to say. Of course we want this, but it goes both ways. So try this: if you are participating in any professional development opportunity this summer or fall or next time. Even just next time you watch a webinar. Yes, even if it's a free webinar. Take the initiative to come back and do this report yourself. Next team meeting, "Hey, I watched a webinar last week on XYZ, and I learned ABC, and therefore I'm going to try takeaways one and two."
Why? All the reasons I said before, but also its signals to your team and your organization that you take this training very seriously and you are absolutely worth the investment going forward. So that's why you can do it even with a webinar. If this is now your long-term strategy to get your organization to spend on you for professional development.
So who knows? But in the meantime, you're creating a culture that values this. Maybe somebody else will come back from their next webinar and do the same. You're creating a culture around you. And that is a real contribution. Okay. I also want to address from the organization side why organizations don't do this.
But first, we're going to pause for a second to hear from our sponsor. I am super excited to be sharing this with you all. This is a brand i personally choose to work with and that I know art organizations can benefit from.
So I've been creating content for a while now. First as Manager of Audience Development at the Seattle Opera, then later as the head of marketing at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, and now as an individual creator and working with organizations on their content strategies too. And I'm not being dramatic when I say that the program that was a total game changer for me is Descript. I learned about Descript earlier this year when I was invited to join the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program. And I loved it so much because I'm not an editor, yet Descript makes editing as easy as editing a Google doc. I'm not even kidding.
Now I use Descript for all of my videos, audio content, Instagram reels, and even recording this right now. I recommend Descript for any individual or marketing team, and I'll drop the link in the show notes for you. Thank you to Descript for supporting the business side of the arts. I'm really grateful.
[00:12:54] Aubrey Bergauer: So why aren't organizations prioritizing professional development, specifically investing in professional development in this way? These are not meant to be excuses or justifications, but really just reasons or things I've heard. Okay, why don't we spend on professional development? Overhead. Dan Pallotta had a viral Ted talk on this. He coined the term, "the overhead myth." And basically the idea is that- anybody who's written a grant application knows this- we get so dinged for what they call "overhead," which is ridiculous. It's like our onstage talent is necessary, but everybody else who's off stage is quote unquote, "bad overhead." And that's so ridiculous because it takes all of us to do the work that we do.
Dan Pallotta really accelerated the conversation on this, and now the pendulum is swinging away from this. Thank goodness these watchdog organizations are ranking organizations less by this overhead ratio that's so silly. So that's the good news, but overhead is one reason why organizations sometimes tend to not to invest here. Again, not an excuse, just a reason.
Another reason is fear the person will leave. Now, this one is also totally ridiculous because I've literally heard this from other CEOs. "Yeah, but if I pay for that, then somebody else is going to go poach them." And here's why that doesn't make sense. No one has ever said. " My organization invested in me so much, I got fed up and went somewhere else." Like literally, nobody has ever said that. People want their organization to invest in them. That drives loyalty from the employees. So it's just the opposite. They're not going to get better at their job and then go somewhere else.
They get paid more money than fine. We need to figure out how to pair employees more money, be competitive on that front. But even that is not the top reason people leave jobs. It's not for more money. By far, the biggest reason people leave a job is their boss or their supervisor.
The other big driver is stagnation in a role.
Yes, we need to pay higher salaries. Yes, we need to be more competitive, but somebody leaving for higher salary, it's not usually the number one thing. It's usually these other factors too, that are a part of it is what I'm trying to say. So nobody ever says. "Oh, my god, my organization invested so much in me. I'm fed up. I quit." That doesn't happen. Okay. Fear that they'll leave is not really a good reason.
Cost of hiring is so much more expensive. So now let's talk more about the money side of it. The time of hiring is even worse, though, I think. I am hearing from so many senior leaders right now, all over the place about all of the time they don't have right now because of the empty roles that are filling.
So it's one thing to be hiring the laid off roles, our furloughed roles. It's still recovering from the pandemic, but it's another when it's this Great Reshuffle that's upon us happening. So many people are just like, "I don't have an associate director of X. I need a marketing head. I need a development person to do Y." I'm just hearing this from everywhere. So if we can retain people by a little investment in their professional development, that is worth it.
And then I guess that's the final point. It's just money in general. When the budget is tight, professional development gets cut. It tends to be one of the first things, and that is the opposite of what should happen. Lastly, not everybody in the organization is going to use their professional development stipend. It just doesn't happen that way. So fine. Great.
And then I'll also just mention, discounts are a thing. One time my entire team went to a conference for almost free because of the first timer discounts they were offering, emerging leader discounts they were offering that more junior staff got to take advantage of. At another organization, there was a conference the whole team attended with the group discount. So the whole team went for like a thousand dollars or something. This stuff is really affordable for such a high ROI. And speaking of high ROI, I blogged about this. This was a few years ago now. I actually graphed this. I graphed at the California symphony, the investment that we were putting in. Like I said, we started from very little, this professional development investment; graphed it over the next few years. How much more were we putting in the budget line each year. And then on another line, graphed by comparison, the revenue growth we were seeing those same years. And I'll put the blog post in the show notes for anybody who wants to look at that graph. But just to paint the picture of the professional development line: yeah, it's going up incrementally a little bit each year. The revenue line? Far exceeded the investment we were making in our staff talent development. Is this direct causation? No, probably not. We were doing a lot of things at the California Symphony that were really working well for us. Is it correlation? Yeah, I think so. The growth I saw in that staff during those years was just phenomenal. And their professional development was a part of that.
Same thing with other high-performing teams I've worked with. People want autonomy, people want responsibility. Pursuing their own professional development and having the freedom to do that, I think is a part of that. Okay. Wrapping up here. I said, I would mention some of the different opportunities people pursued just to give some ideas here. All right, the most familiar options: our industry conferences. We've got the League Conference, Opera America, Association of California Symphony Orchestras, the museum conferences, Dance USA, Chamber Music, Tessitura, Capacity Interactive, right? Industry conferences. We've got lots of them. Those are great options. I've also had staff- this is why I love when they get to choose on their own- say, "this year, that's not what I want to do." I had a web developer say, "I really want to go to a web developer conference. They're working on some API integrations that I want to do at our organization. They're working on some new sort of programming." I don't know if it's programming language or other tools. See, this is totally why this is not my bailiwick, but they wanted to go to the conference because it was their bailiwick. And so I was like, "Yes. Do that. Get good at that. Yes, please. Bring that back. Can't wait to hear what you learned."
Somebody else wanted to go to an entirely separate marketing conference on content marketing. Anybody who's heard me talk about content marketing knows. Yes. All the way. I was like, "learn everything you can and come back, please." And then another example, I thought this was brilliant.
This was a staff member who, this was a Latina woman. This matches representation in our hiring and why it matters. And we had been doing a lot of work with Latinx communities. We had been doing a lot of translation of our marketing ads to Spanish to reach more Spanish speakers, or at least people who were bilingual. And she said, "Aubrey, can I use my professional development budget to take Spanish classes?" She says, "I spoke a little bit growing up, but I need a refresher. Can I use the budget for that? And then I can help with all of these things we're doing. Communicating with these families. Translating ads, other things we need."
I was like," Yes. What a brilliant use of your professional development budget. And then talk about how that plays back into the performance review. What's the impact of that work? Wow. Check. A million ways that then was impactful to the organization.
So I could go on and on about this, I believe so much in this idea of empowering the people we work with. I guess that would be another word to sum it all up. How do I effectively help and grow teams and develop their careers? Empowerment, responsibility, autonomy, but that also comes with accountability.
That's the framework for all of this. Archie, thanks for the question.
Hey off stagers. If you've been listening to this podcast the last few weeks, you've heard me talk about the Summer Uplevel: coaching and mentoring to help you make your next career move or uplevel where you're at currently. I get asked all the time if I offer this kind of thing. And I often don't, but with the Great Resignation and Great Reshuffle upon us, I thought that the time was right, and I wanted to be able to help. We'll be covering topics like how to get buy-in for your ideas, how to position yourself as a candidate and stand out from the pack, how to manage up to a boss or a board. And we'll also visit a lot of the revenue generating strategies I'm known for. You'll also get a one-on-one session with me so that we can really dive into your specific situation, your goals, and strategize how you can get there. If you have an idea or goal in mind for yourself and want clarity or support in making it happen, then the Summer Uplevel is for you.
And the deadline to register is just around the corner on Friday, June 10th. It's been about a year since I've offered an online course. And I'm honestly not sure when I'll be doing this again. This is to say, if you've been thinking about it, don't wait. Any time in my life I've decided to go for it instead of waiting, it's always been the right decision. And I always think ' Why was I so hesitant to begin with?' So, if you've been thinking about this, just do it. You'll thank yourself. I know you will.
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[00:21:42] Lisa: Aubrey I have a business background, but I also have a performing arts background. And I'm quite fascinated by the crossover between the two.
I have one question. What's the balance between live versus digital experiential engagement and the ability to make people feel welcomed. You've really kind of stimulated my thinking on how all these things work together. Or maybe sometimes conflict a little bit in how you deliver that sense of belonging and that retention for the modern audience.
[00:22:14] Aubrey Bergauer: I hope everyone could hear that. I know the audio is a little challenging. This is asking a question I get a lot these days, and that's the balance or strategy around digital engagement versus our in-person offerings. I answered this question in a webinar recently, and I thought I would include it here for you because I think it applies to a lot of us.
So, here's how I think of it. I'll start with what happens that I think is not the best strategy and then flip it to what I think organizations can do instead, and then some are doing instead.
So typically what we have seen, especially with the pandemic is streaming, whether that's streaming recordings like on Spotify or another channel. Or streaming a performance that you can watch online. You know, we had to do that for about a year and a half. Right? Organizations had no other means of delivering.
Okay, fine. So the good part of that is that really accelerated our streaming capabilities, our adoption of streaming as part of our content strategy. What is not good about that is so many organizations were trying to figure out how do we monetize that? We know artists don't make a ton of money from Spotify, unless you are of the scale of, Bruno Mars or somebody like that.
You don't make a lot of money from streaming. So then you take an orchestra if you're streaming on Spotify and it's, you know, whatever the fractions of a penny are per stream divided by 80 or 90 people on the recording. You know, you just don't make a lot of money that way. So it's not about making money.
And then similarly with the streaming video . So many organizations tried to monetize that; charge for it in the same way, which we would charge a ticket for an in-person performance .And some organizations, even New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony rolled out streaming channels and they wanted us paid subscription for that. And what we're seeing all across the performing arts is that's not working because there's a whole bunch of barriers to people not wanting to pay for that type of product. And I get it. We're competing with Netflix, Apple, like these giants that are investing literally billions of dollars.
We cannot compete and deliver a product that's competitive. Therefore we cannot charge. So does that mean we shouldn't do it? No. So this gets to really the answer to your question that I think you were starting to say out loud is streaming then should, this is the change: should become a strategy, an engagement strategy.
So instead of streaming is what we do to earn money, no, no, no, no, no. Streaming is what we can offer as the beginning of the journey. " I don't know a lot about classical music. So I watched the stream online" and it doesn't have to be, we stream a whole concert and give it away for free. It could be maybe we stream the first 10 minutes or 20 minutes.
That's a lot cheaper for an organization when we're paying unionized musicians and have high production costs and all of that. So maybe we're streaming a little bit and somebody gets to see that and say, "oh, well, that was interesting. I was welcomed on the stream. I heard something I liked. I want to learn more about that."
That's what we want our streaming to achieve. We almost had it as the end of the journey. Something that organizations thought people would pay for it. And I'm saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. It needs to be the beginning where it's the open arms, welcome wagon for people to experience an easy taste of what we have to offer.
Well, And we see this with other genres of artists. We listen to their recording and then when that artist comes to town, wow, I want to buy a ticket to see them. You know, that's the touring model for like, I'm thinking, pop artist or things like that.
We want that same model for us too, that absolutely can apply. "Wow. I heard you online. And now I'm dying to see you in person because wow, 80, 90 people on stage together, there is nothing like it. There is no recording that compares." Like we want that. We want the streaming to drive the top of the funnel. That model can play out very well for us. So that's in my mind how that all starts coming together. .
That's all for today, folks. Thanks so much for listening, and keep up with more content like this by following me on LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter @AubreyBergauer. And Definitely hit that follow button to subscribe to this podcast. And I have one more favor to ask: if you liked what you heard here, will you please leave a review and rating? I've learned it really does make a huge difference, and I'd be so grateful for your help and support in that. Thanks again. See you next time on The Offstage Mic.
The Offstage Mic was produced by me, Aubrey Bergauer, and made possible by Descript. I used to Descript to record, edit, set audio levels, and make the trailer as well as the video teasers on social media. I couldn't have done it without them. And I recommend any marketing team or individual creator should definitely use this tool too. Thanks again to Descript for making this project and many others I've done possible. This is a production of Changing the Narrative