CHAPTER 13

Coaching, leadership, and final advice

When you think of coaches, images often come to mind of individuals who are icons of strategy and execution in the sporting world. They understand the game they’re playing, they know the level of the talent available to them, they have a plan to compete, and they’ve cleared another place on their trophy shelf. Their specialized experience and understanding of human nature help them build on an individual’s talents and prepare the individual to compete. The role of the manager as a coach, especially early in an artist’s career, is very much like that of any other coach.

Likewise, we look at leaders as people who have that special gift of being able to motivate people to become involved in ways that benefit their collective and common good. They are agents of change who can express a vision that draws people to them and inspires them. Crises are times when leaders step up and involve others to act for a solution. When things are falling apart, it becomes a time when we look to a leader to become involved. Again, leadership in a manager is important to new artists who need help directing their budding careers.

The following discussions about coaching and leadership are intended to present insight into those who successfully coach and lead. They examine some of the qualities of those who find themselves as coaches and leaders so that the artist manager can develop a strategy to build those qualities in themselves. Knowing what coaching and leadership are about gives a basis to observe those qualities in others, and then allows the manager to adopt those features that complement his or her style when working with artists.

COACHING

A coach has been defined as a business mentor, a motivator, a trainer, a tutor, and an accountability partner, but for our purposes we’ll define an artist manager/coach as someone who is seeking coaching outcomes that will improve the artistry of the artist, and help him or her reach career goals.

Depending on the managers’ backgrounds, their areas of expertise will define the kinds of coaching that they can provide. Sometimes managers will be the coach; sometimes they will seek coaches to help their artists. The earliest coaching a manager will give artists is to help them with the business etiquette of the music business. There will be innumerable meetings, gatherings, luncheons, dinners, conventions, showcases, and other functions at which artists must be coached and guided by the manager on how to handle themselves. There will also be countless public performances that will require critiques followed by feedback and coaching for improvement. The manager will also be asked by the artist for coaching in those specialized areas in which the artist manager has background, knowledge, or expertise.

Author James Flaherty created one of the best books about coaching, and ideas he presents as adapted for use by the artist manager can provide some insight to the work of the manager–coach.

First, coaching is a very personal thing and there is no reference one can use to provide coaching in a specific circumstance. People are all very different with different backgrounds and values, and they are in different stages of their lives. So there isn’t a series of bullet points to offer a coach to be effective in a specific circumstance. Despite the previous observation about bullet points, there are three products of coaching:

•    The artist manager–coach seeks long-term quality in artistry.

•    The manager seeks the situation in which the artist learns to recognize when he or she needs to correct something, and then do it without prompting.

•    The manager seeks the situation in which the artist takes the initiative to find ways to grow artistically.

These three products or objectives of coaching take the manager out of the role of coach until another opportunity presents itself.

Coaching opportunities for the artist manager can occur: (1) when artists request or need a review of aspects of their creative performance, (2) when they have a disastrous setback in their career, (3) when they ask the manager for assistance as their coach, and (4) when they need a new skill such as playing an instrument or learning to write songs. Areas where Flaherty’s book suggests that coaching would be difficult, if not impossible, include issues dealing with social identity and habits the artist has acquired. Habits that require considerably more than coaching are those associated with substances. Artist manager Joyce Moore tells of her challenges of dealing with the drug habits of singer Sam Moore, saying she “got control of his money, his drugs, his proximity—I had to play hardball, tough love” (Moore, 1993). And her approach was successful.

The foundation of coaching between an artist and manager is the relationship the two share. It has to be built on mutual trust. The artist must genuinely believe that the manager will be discreet where necessary and candid when required. Likewise, the manager must believe that the artist is open to being coached.

The relationship must also include mutual respect with a mutual freedom to express. The artist doesn’t need to respect the manager on all matters; rather, the manager must coach in an area in which the artist views the manager as someone qualified to help the artist acquire the desired competency. Freedom to express within the coaching relationship doesn’t mean each can say anything to the other without consequences; rather, it means both agree to genuinely listen to each other in the coaching environment and agree to express in total confidentiality.

Coaching conversations come in three forms. The first is one in which only a single conversation is necessary. This is where the artist requests coaching and the manager provides it. This conversation is also about standards of performance for things like writing and performing and can begin with the question, “How do you think I’m doing … ?” Or the first kind of conversation can begin with the manager pointing out mistakes the artist is making and offering ideas of how they could be corrected. These conversations are advisory as well as coaching in nature, and Flaherty labels these Type I coaching conversations.

The second kind of conversation, a Type II conversation, requires more than one meeting on the issue. It is one that begins with an opportunity to coach, but it calls for at least one follow-up conversation. For example, if an artist is disorganized on stage, doesn’t have a performance set list for the band, hasn’t memorized words to new songs, and doesn’t know where he or she should be positioned during performances, there is an opportunity for the manager to coach the artist on strategies to prepare for performances. Subsequent conversations will be needed to assure that the artist has accepted the coaching and is indeed organized for performances.

There is a third kind of coaching conversation offered by Flaherty, but it deals with fundamental change, an area that would typically not subject to artist manager coaching.

When the artist manager has established a coaching relationship, there are ways to strengthen it. One way is to tell the artist you will do something, and then do it. Following through on a commitment in the name of coaching the artist is a solid strategy to underscore how serious the manager is in the success of the relationship. Another way is to bring the artist into decision-making processes that affect the area being coached. When artists see the amount of care and consideration necessary to make decisions—and become participants for a period of time—they will clearly see what it takes to direct their careers. And finally, a strategy that will create a stronger coaching relationship is one where the manager tells the artist about how his or her opinion was changed by someone else through coaching or mentoring.

Special thanks are extended to author James Flaherty and Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann for permitting the adaptation of ideas from the book entitled Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others (2005) to this subject of artist management.

LEADERSHIP

Leadership is one of those qualities a person has that genuinely makes him or her stand apart from others. Leaders are the kind of people who quickly step up to a challenge or opportunity and say, “I’ll take care of it,” and then they do. Leaders present themselves in boardrooms, in the military, on football and soccer fields, in civic clubs—anywhere someone is needed to coordinate and direct the energy of a group or an individual to meet goals. What follows is a brief background of leadership, including some working definitions that may be useful for one who wants to understand and develop the skills and traits of leading.

The typical view of a leader is someone who is able to influence followers to act, even if “followers” is limited to one person. An artist manager has a special position of influence on the new artist who is launching a career with the manager’s guidance, and this often defines the leadership role of a manager as being the career coach for the artist. The manager also takes on the role of leadership and influence with the team of professionals and specialists that supports the artist’s career.

Leadership skills can be developed by taking on increasingly important challenges and successfully completing them. In the common team environments that many offices and businesses use today, there is opportunity for a budding leader to step up and agree to be responsible for the completion of a project. For someone new at taking on the responsibilities of leadership, it will seem risky at first. Certainly there is risk of failure, but with good planning and adequate support, these early opportunities can give invaluable experience in developing the qualities of leadership. Much of the most effective leadership training involves experiential simulations, and the best leadership training happens when the individual can become involved with a real project in a leadership role. Educators often cite the value of theory coupled with experience as one of the best ways to inspire genuine learning. Earlier in this book, we discussed how one can begin work in the profession of artist management, and a suggestion was to join an existing firm as a junior associate—perhaps as an intern or apprentice—and be placed into circumstances where elementary leadership skills can be developed.

The term “leader” is often defined by the names of those who lead because we have a sense of the traits or characteristics the individuals possess that make them effective in that role. An ongoing survey by Kouzes, Posner, and Peters lists characteristics respondents would favor in those they would choose as leaders. In descending order, the characteristics are:1

The group has found that the top characteristics people seek in their leaders remain relatively consistent from survey to survey.

Leaders also have been found to have personality traits that make them effective leaders. Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy assembled a list of those “consistent patterns of behavior” for their book Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience:

•    Dominance—Defining this trait are phrases like “confident, forceful, outspoken, and opinionated.”

•     Self-confidence—These are persons who “feel comfortable with their own judgment, abilities, or skills.”

•    Achievement orientation—Leaders who are highly achievement-oriented “complete tasks and activities primarily for the satisfaction of accomplishing a challenging goal.” The authors say they “tend to be hardworking, ambitious, and competitive.”

•    Dependability—Leaders high in this quality “tend to be conservative, careful, responsible, and reliable.”

•    Energy and activity level—Leaders who have a higher energy and activity level tend to be the most successful leaders.

•    Self-monitoring—This quality of leadership defines how much a leader is willing to modify his or her leadership style dependent upon circumstances.

•    Locus of control—This is a reference to the leadership style used to control followers. An external locus of control uses “coercive power,” whereas an internal locus of control uses rewards and the expertise of the leader.

•    Tolerance for ambiguity—This leadership quality suggests that leaders by nature are comfortable with “unstructured problems or uncertainty.”

•    Adjustment—This quality says that leaders tend to be well-adjusted and able to handle stress.

•    Sociability—The authors say leaders with this quality are “outgoing and socially adept and tend to exert greater influence in a group.”

•    Agreeableness—Research shows that leaders with this trait tend to be more effective than those who are moody or intolerant.2

Another quality of effective leadership is that of being a visionary. A visionary is someone who sees things as they should be, develops a plan to make the vision a reality, assembles the resources necessary to succeed, and draws followers to share the vision who will see it to its achievement. Although we know the artist career plan is a joint vision of the artist and the manager, it is the manager who pushes the vision toward the biggest and most realistically attainable goals the artist can achieve. As a leader in this environment, it is necessary to manage the expectations of artists, which means they must understand that their grand and shared vision will have periods of time during which their career activity becomes slower than at other times.

Jack and Suzy Welch add a few other ideas that work well in the business world of the artist manager. They say that leaders should mentor those who follow by giving feedback, suggesting ways to improve, and congratulating successes. They say that candor is “one of the defining characteristics of effective leaders” (Welch, 2006, 120). From this author’s perspective, complete but tactfully measured candor by the manager/leader with an artist is essential.

FINAL ADVICE

The final two points in this book are found in bits and pieces throughout the text, but their importance to an artist’s success requires restatement.

First, when dealing with a record company that has the resources to be able to pay an artist an advance, seek the largest amount you can get from the company. An advance is merely prepaid royalties for the artist’s recorded music project, so it will be ultimately charged back to the artist for recoupment. There are several reasons the manager should seek a large advance:

•    Advances can help offset the startup costs of preparing artists for their career and cover living expenses.

•    They can serve as an interim income stream between the time the album is recorded and released and the time that royalties from sales actually begin to flow to the artist. This gap can be two years or longer—maybe never—and banking a large advance early on can cover career development costs.

•    A large advance represents a significant commitment by the label to the success of the artist’s recording, because if the project isn’t successful, the label has no chance of recovering the money they advanced to the artist. We discussed earlier how all artists at record labels are not treated equally, so a large advance can help assure equal treatment for a manager’s artist. Likewise, a large advance from a publishing company demonstrates the commitment by them to the artist’s songwriting.

•    A large advance to an artist will help a manager begin to recoup the expenses they have had to absorb associated with launching the artist’s career. Advances of this nature to an artist are immediately commissionable to the manager based on the terms of the artist–manager contract.

The second piece of advice seems obvious but certainly deserves restatement. Find the absolute best music you can for your artists: signature songs. Nothing satisfies a music consumer like a completed album to download that is filled with masterful songs and performances, and finding a signature song for the first album can quickly accelerate a career and build a lifetime of earnings for an artist. A record company’s A&R department and the artist’s producer will find music for the recorded music project, but as a manager you can’t assume they will find the best music available that fits your artist, especially in this era of smaller label budgets and staffing. Be involved in the album production planning by refusing to accept the “acceptable.” Be patient, and find the best music. Certainly the record company has every incentive to create a good album, but the author recalls a business seminar in which veteran producer James Stroud said that one of his artist-songwriters puts only two hit songs on a ten-cut album, and saves other potential hit songs for the next album release. It is unclear how that strategy has been working for the artist because he did not identify who it is. Successful enterprises always exceed the expectations of their customers, which is a sound strategy for the music that artists memorialize within their recordings.

References

Flaherty, J., (2005). Coaching: Evoking Excellence In Others. Butterworth-Heinemann/Focal Press, Burlington, MA.

Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (1993). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. Burr Ridge, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc. pp. 150–156.

Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2002). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Kouzes, J. M., Posner, B. Z., & Peters, T. (1996). The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. Hoboken: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons.

Moore, J. (1993). Soundtrack of Only the Strong Survive: A Celebration of Soul. Burbank, CA: Miramax Home Entertainment.

Welch, J., & Welch, S. (2006, January 30). The Leadership Mindset. Business Week, p. 120.