Managing Your Desk

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Managing Your Desk

• By Vince Rinehart
• Editorial Copy Desk Chief
• The Washington Post

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1. Follow the Golden Rule

• Treating others as you would like to be treated
  saves effort, time and money.

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2. Act like a leader.

• You set the tone.
• Find solutions without whining.
• Believe in your leadership, and others will, too.

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3. Have clear expectations.

• Put your vision for the desk in writing.
• Educate bosses and your team about it.
• Be consistent and predictable.

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4. Find allies.

• Cultivate relationships with other managers on
  your level and above you. Youll find good
  teachers.
• Youll need allies outside the newsroom.

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5. Learn some history.

• How does your paper hire? Fire? Reprimand?
  Reward? Follow those examples.

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6. Make yourself known.

• Take part in newsroom life.
• Talk often with reporters and other editors.
• Attend meetings and know whats going on around
  you.

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7. Represent.

• Be your teams ambassador, advocate and
  spokesman.
• Solve problems for supervisors while treating
  colleagues fairly.

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8. Take the heat.

• Be the filter for criticism from outside the
  desk.
• When there are mistakes, keep defensiveness in
  check.

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9. Listen.

• Find out about your colleagues interests and
  experiences.
• Keep confidences. Dont gossip.

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10. Communicate.

• Have regular staff meetings for feedback and
  resolving problems.
• Praise publicly, criticize privately.

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11. Be honest.

• Speak truth without rancor.
• Dont ignore problems or sugarcoat bad news.

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12. Be a reporter.

• Find out what might be hindering a troubled
  colleague. Is it at work? At home? Ask how to
  help.

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13. Stay cool.

• If yelling begins, the discussion ends.
• Calm silence is the best response to extreme
  emotions.

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14. Provide an out.

• When theres trouble, focus on actions, not
  people.
• Ask them for solutions, make clear you believe
  they can address the problem.
• Emphasize their importance to the team.
• Set a date to follow up later.

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15. Be patient.

• In all conflicts, honesty over time, with
  reinforcement, breaks down denial.

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16. Youre the boss, not the pope.

• Admit fallibility and concede mistakes The desks
  job is to challenge things encourage them to
  challenge you, too.

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17. Evaluate.

• Grow and keep editors by being thoughtful and
  using specific examples. Dont surprise people
  with problems they havent had a chance to
  remedy.

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18. Reward good work.

• Create a public way to show great catches,
  headlines and overall editing.

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19. Remember the personal things.

• Birthdays, sympathy cards, new babies, weddings,
  etc.
• And every now and then, treat the desk to pizza.

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20. Promote teamwork.

• In proofing and headline help, and coping with
  crises, everything works better when we take care
  of one another.