Editing, leadership and team building

After two cycles of experience reading through and editing feature stories, I became much more perceptive about finding the right wording in stories. However, the challenge of articulating and communicating the problem effectively to the writers remained. In my first cycle as an editor, I often bounced between comments that were too vague and comments that were too wordy. As a result, I set a goal for myself last cycle to be more purposeful about my comments and to find the balance between being concise and detailed enough to help the writer improve and understand my thoughts. 

9/28

I strengthened my leadership skills by supporting Print and Multimedia Features in different but really intentional ways. In Print, I balanced stepping in with stepping back. I would guide new section editors when they were stuck, then redirect authority back to them to help build their own leadership skills. In Multimedia, I had to take a more active role when returning staff were disengaged doing other work on their computers during MOE. Rather than purely push them or ignore them, I tailored strategies to draw them into the MOEing process. By the end of the session, those same staffers were leading the discussion themselves, generating ideas with real excitement. Overall, I learned more about knowing when to lead, when to support, and how to bring out the best in different people.