Those who know Jacqui Banaszynski are never surprised at her genius — or her stamina. Jacqui, simultaneously, is assistant managing editor/Sunday at The Seattle Times and holds a Knight chair at the University of Missouri, Columbia. And, by the way, she’s an exceptional reporter and writer who won a Pulitzer in 1988 for a series on the life and death of a gay farm couple.
Jacqui comes up in this column because she made a presentation at the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference late last year in Cambridge, Mass., that in her creative way emphasized points I’ll make about “Coaching Your Editor” at a National Writers Workshop in Wilmington this weekend.
Jacqui talked about how, as a reporter, she built greater understanding with her editor by offering him an “Owner’s Manual” about her: what she believes in, the way she works, and what pushes her buttons.
There are lessons for editors and staff members from what Jacqui talked about. In fact, the lessons apply to any work relationship because they are about openness and about understanding the other individual.
First, journalists in any discipline or in any role need a coaching relationship with their bosses.
Jacqui told her audience that she had spent 15 years blaming her editor for not being perfect, for not understanding her. Then she decided to take action, to share information about herself and her work in order build an effective coaching relationship.
Coaching is valuable in newsroom settings because it counterbalances the reality of daily deadlines, when work often gets “fixed” in the interest of getting the paper out or the newscast aired. “Fixing” doesn’t uncover ways to improve and grow. Coaching is an exploration that:
• Allows the individual to discover how to improve his or her work in the long run.
• Focuses on building performance, not merely fixing a single piece of work.
• Strengthens the boss-employee relationship through non-threatening conversations.
• Helps distinguish individual needs.
If an editor and staff member are not open, not communicating well, or not understanding the other’s pressures, the work being done is short-changed. The rewards are harder to come by. That’s what Jacqui sought to improve in the relationship with her editor.
“No good writer is as good alone as she can be with a really good editor,” Jacqui said at the conference. “And the better writers get, the more they need good editors.”
Second, coaching can be powerful when it’s practiced in both directions.
Jacqui created the “Owner’s Manual” to help her editor understand her better. The reward for Jacqui was in helping build an atmosphere that benefited the work she wanted to do. The reward for her boss was a better understanding of her individual needs and her realization of his challenges.
Here’s what Jacqui told her boss when she presented her “Owner’s Manual”:
“I’ve listed for you who I am. I’ve sat and thought about my process as a reporter and writer, who I am, what I do….I’m trying to give you a language to negotiate with me when we have problems. I’m trying to let you know where my motherboard of push buttons are….I want it to work for you, for me, and for the newspaper. And I realize it’s time I take responsibility for that.”
Then she asked her editor a key question?
“Now, what do you need from me?”
She told her audience it’s a question seldom asked, but one that can lead to building the partnership that helps both staff member and editor succeed.
Third, explaining yourself to someone else is a growth process in itself.
As Jacqui recalled the bold move she took with her editor, she told the journalists that she found out a lot about herself and her work. To tell her boss what she needed, she had to understand herself well.
“It forced me to assess myself, to take kind of a fearless and searching moral inventory of myself as a reporter/writer. It forced me to articulate what I need, what gets in the way and what helps when I am writing. It forced me to identify gaps in the process and to take stock of who had responsibility for those gaps. Was it me? Was it the editor? Was it the system?”
What she found most beneficial, overall, was the mutual commitment between editor and reporter that the “Owner’s Manual” helped create.
Certainly one of the most important relationships in newsrooms is the one that exists between frontline editors and the journalists who work under them.
It’s a relationship that – if built around coaching, mutual understanding and openness — can kindle growth and development of the journalists, keep their passions stoked and their sights raised high.
The outcome is better journalism. We all share that goal. Commitments like Jacqui’s “Owner’s Manual” inspire us to keep looking for pathways to reach that goal together.
