Hearing What’s Hard to Hear

“We must separate our work from our worth; otherwise, we’ll resist feedback, becoming unteachable, inflexible, and a burden to our team.”

It seems so simple, yet it isn’t easy to be vulnerable and seek out feedback from others. Getting feedback from friends, relatives, coworkers, or even people who attend your church can be helpful. Context and what I call “data points” are valuable when making decisions, and deciding where you will focus production time and resources is no exception. We have to acknowledge that we have a bias, and our biases may not be what’s best for the organization. Hearing how our decisions affect others helps give us a bigger picture to inform our decision-making. You have to know how your decisions affect the people you serve.

Avoid Taking Feedback Personally

I was mixing recently and experimenting with some different processing on the console. It was not one of my better mixes, and I knew that. Some of my coworkers were talking, and one of them made a comment that didn’t feel great to hear. They said something to the effect of “Yeah, the mix sounds brittle.” I heard those words and was immediately flooded with emotions and wanted to get defensive over this mix. But why? They were right; it did sound brittle, and I knew it! So why was I feeling so defensive over this? Why did I feel the need to justify the mix to this person?

A lot of us take great pride in our work. When others don’t like our work or notice its flaws, we feel exposed, and it can be common to take negative feedback personally. There are a few specific areas in my work where I struggle with this. In an unhealthy way, I’ll attach meaning to my work that I shouldn’t and make it bigger than it is. While my work is important, it can be hard to remember that my worth doesn’t come from it. Just because this person is saying they didn’t like the mix doesn’t mean they’re passing a negative judgment on who I am and my character. On the contrary! This person cares about me and wants what’s best for me. They want me to grow and be the best version of myself! We must separate our work from our worth; otherwise, we’ll resist feedback, becoming unteachable, inflexible, and a burden to our team. I’d encourage you to do some work and see if you feel emotions that cause you to get defensive when you get feedback. Are you attributing your work to your worth?

Get Feedback From Staff You Work With

In every job I’ve had, I’ve found it so easy to block out or silo myself from other people I work with. Maybe it’s just me, but I can fall into the trap that my ideas and opinions are more important than everyone else’s, and nobody knows my job better than I do. In reality, what we do on the weekends is a team effort, and no one person can pull a weekend service off alone. That’s why you must learn to value the ideas and opinions of the people you work with daily, especially those who do their work on the stage you manage. Talk to the staff you work with and the team you work for. Hear their dreams for their ministries and the church. Ask them what’s important to them. If technology wasn’t a limitation, what would they love to start doing in service that you don’t do now? Do they feel like Production is currently supporting their needs? Where do they see Production improving over the next year or two? How does all of this feedback fit into your team’s sandbox? Not only are you inviting the teams you work with daily into your planning, but you’re also fostering a culture of healthy communication, teamwork, and a posture of humility.

Is All Feedback Helpful Feedback?

Nope. We’ve all received feedback that was less than helpful. It is ineffective and inefficient to change course based on every piece of feedback we receive. This is why you have to understand your church's direction and vision and ask questions using that as your filter. That’s where the sandbox comes in—acting as your borders.

Let’s work through an example.

As I’ve previously mentioned, we have a clear direction regarding our audio during worship. “Our audio during worship should be immersive, like listening to your favorite song in the car. Not so loud that you’re in pain, but loud enough to sing along to it and not care how your voice sounds.” For most of our campuses, we’ve found the best dB target to accomplish this is an average of 93 dBA. We use Smaart to monitor this and the overall frequencies happening during worship. Our audio engineers know this, and they understand that it’s their target. Additionally, our leadership understands that this is our defined target.

In this example, we have someone from our congregation, let’s call him Bob, come up to the booth and say those lovely words every sound person loves to hear: “It’s too loud!” The audio engineer or producer then looks at our Smaart rig and sees that we are within our established target. They can ask themselves, “Is this feedback in line with what I’ve been asked to do?” The answer is no, and because our team has the confidence to know at that moment that they are checking the box of the overall vision we’ve established, they can rest in that knowledge and respond to Bob with “Thank you so much for the feedback! We’ll be sure to pass it on!” (Which they should do, along with what number dB level they were running)

Building the sandbox for our audio engineers to play in on the weekends gives them the freedom not to feel like they have to act on every piece of feedback. They know the target we’re asking of them and how to hit it. They can rest in that and not feel they need to appease everyone. Likewise, receiving data points and feedback can help our team pivot as needed when we identify a problem. Our team has realized that not all of our rooms can run at that target dB level, and we may need to pivot. Recently, in one of our smaller rooms, we were getting feedback from our staff that it consistently felt too loud running our target dB at that campus. Our team was out there, listened, and agreed. It was indeed too loud, and the decision was made to move the target dB to 87 dBA because it was best for that room.

Next week in part three of this series, we’ll dive into inspiration and creativity!