Category: Personal development

As has been demonstrated in previous blog posts about Radio 1’s current podcasts here. I believe that we have created something that is innovative and experimental as Radio 1’s current podcasts bar one are not intended to stand on their own as they all accompany a pre-existing radio programme that airs daily such as the Breakfast show or Greg James’ drive-time programme. Whereas our podcast will be a stand-alone item that is intended to be a stand-alone podcast which is what the brief asked for, despite it also saying that some may be broadcast in the early hours of the morning.  There are also very few podcasts that are clip-based with the ones that I discussed in this blog post proving this point, bar We Need To Talk About which is clip based but isn’t really a comedy podcast in the grand schemes of things, however, it is panel based.

Whereas Radio 1’s older comedy output which I talk about here is much more risky in terms of what they talk about and much more spontaneous than what is outputted today and these older programmes also had a lot more political discussion within them such as skits that involved politicians whereas nowadays this does not exist.  This is where Have You Heard The News- The Year in Review can come into its own as it is experimental as Radio 1 doesn’t output any is comedy, it is more under the entertainment strand such ass the 8th by Charlie Sloth and Greg James’ programme. It also doesn’t touch politics in any of it’s output. Furthermore, not many podcasts talk about Politics or are clip based meaning that we are innovative in the way that we put together our programme as we have mixed creating a  live radio programme with a stand-alone podcast and our recording process was based on a live programme that we edited to make a podcast  utilising a different approach.

Overall I believe this demonstrates I have achieved my learning objective of the podcast being experimental and the content of the podcast is not safe as it is an unmediated conversation about topics that people have differing opinions on and the approach that we have taken in creating the podcast has also been different from content that currently exists.

As my first learning objective is centred on improving my project management skills it is vital that i understand the basics of these, however, project management skills are much more than just one individual skill instead is a mixture.

This mixture according to a blog post by the company LiquidPlanner suggests that is a multitude of six:

The first being communication as you have to be able to convey ideas and thoughts to the various teams that are involved in creating this project. According to this blog, the easiest way to improve your communication skills is to do presentations and work in various group projects, I would argue that I have however been doing this already to some extent by doing presentations within the degree programme and I work in various groups both for university projects and outside of this.

The next is leadership as you are seen as the person who is in charge of the project overall and this means that it is key to be able to delegate things to other people as well as understand what you want to achieve in the project.

The third skill that is needed heavily relates to the previous two is team management as this is needed to ensure that the project is successful as you must make sure that the teams that work for you see through their jobs and help to sort out any issues alongside being able to lead these teams to fulfil them, directly correlating to leadership.

The fourth skill is negotiation as you must be able to settle any disputes that arise when undertaking the project and making sure that all the parties that are involved in the project are happy with the final outcome, this heavily relates to being able to effectively communicate with people so that jobs are done and that you are able to talk to one another.

Organisation is the fifth skill needed to be a good project manager as you must be able to organise yourself to stand a chance at being able to organise anyone else who is working with or for you

Finally, risk management is mentioned as you must be able to foresee any potential problems that may occur when the project is being undertaken and plan to avoid them, so for us this could be the risk of us not having enough contributors due to someone dropping out, or no one wanting to be involved and we would need to  resolve this by having people on backup that we could ask.

6 Essential Skills for Project Managers

I would say that i have utilised all of these skills in doing this project as there have been numerous occasions where I  have needed all of these skills to complete things to allow the completion of the project as a whole, for example finding contributors used a combination of communication, negotiation and organisation to make sure that a date had been set and that this had been told to the contributors and that they knew about everything they were being asked to do.

I did some research on how to improve my confidence in approaching people to be involved in the project.  The first article I read was from Poynter which suggested 5 ways in which you can improve your confidence and be less shy/embarrassed in how you approach people, despite being based for a journalist there was still a lot of things to consider.

The first thing was that I have a professional responsibility to talk to people and ask people if want to be involved within the project due to it being vital for the success of the project as a whole and if I were in a professional environment it would be vital as the project wouldn’t be completed and we wouldn’t gain an income.  The next point was that the job role should be the encouragement to make you speak to people as this should act as the motivation.   The next thing I learned from this article was that it is vital to have clear-cut research around the person you are going to ask to be involved alongside having dates and times that you would like the potential contributor to be free on so that they can be involved.  The final two things that I took from this article was that it is very important for me to stop worrying about the potential outcome of an email/telephone response and just do it and I can relate to this one with particular effect as i’m guilty of doing this. Finally, the notion that practice makes perfect is referenced as the more time you ring or email people the less stigma you have about talking to people.

https://www.poynter.org/news/5-ways-journalists-can-overcome-shyness-during-interviews

The next article I read was from the website Matador network which gave me the following pointers:  The first is that you shouldn’t deliberate asking people and you should just do it as the more you ask people, the easier it becomes to do.  The second thing was that you shouldn’t apologise for ringing people or emailing people to ask them as you shouldn’t be ashamed of what you’re doing. The penultimate thing is that you should have courage in asking people to be involved as eventually some people will say less to being involved in the programme idea that you have. Finally it is vital that you know what you want from the person and don’t lie to them about what you want them to do and why you are asking them to be involved.

How to approach strangers for interviews

Ultimately it is vital that i conquer this lack of confidence to both be successful in the project and in the general environment of  where I want to work as i will be required to speak to people and ask questions alongside asking them if they would like to talk about themselves and if i can’t do this then i will be unlikely to break into my chosen career let alone keep a job.