It’s interesting what you can see when you change perspectives. In a recent coaching session with a very talented team show I decided to move away from nuts and bolts, planning and execution and go to a 35,000 foot perspective and discuss the show’s strengths and weaknesses. Clever, don’tcha think? Mrs. Mahan in high school drama would be proud of me.

While this exercise of identifying strengths and weaknesses can be a common one for program directors and big time consultants, this time I heard an answer I’d never heard before.

“What’s the biggest strength of the show?”, I inquired with my manly radio voice. The female co-host responded, “Our roles.” Her male co-host agreed. Curious, I reckon.

She continued.

“Because our roles are so clear, we can share almost any topic or happening in our lives with an appropriate camera angle.”

They are of different generations and of different backgrounds. One is a grandfather and the other is a surfer girl. They have different opinions and senses of humor. These characteristics allow their show to have a broad dynamic range that helps the show remain interesting from hour to hour and day to day.*

Working with this team helped me realize that almost all team shows in our format consist of two people about the same age, with similar points of view and backgrounds, resulting in nice Christian people talking about nice Christian things to nice Christian people, if you will.

Nice, but perhaps not necessarily very compelling.

How would you graph the emotions of your team shows? The clearer and broader the emotions the more compelling the show.

*In fact, I’ve recommended they do the same benchmark at the same time every day. Very un-John Frost-like, if I may say so myself. Because the emotions change from day to day.

*I listened to another team show for an entire week and I couldn’t tell you their roles. Not good.