Insight on Coaching
Coaching Leadership and Workforces During A Strike Transcript
Prepared for: Prepared by:
Insight Educational Consulting Ubiqus Reporting
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Time Speaker Transcript
0:00 Tom Floyd Hello everyone and welcome to Insight on Coaching.
Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors, and sides of the emerging
professional coaching field.
I’m Tom Floyd. I’m the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and your host for
today’s show.
Well, this week our topic is coaching, leadership, and workforces during a strike.
We’ll talk about the current Writers Guild strike that just ended from the perspective
of those who were closely involved in it. We’ll talk about the lessons learned from the
strike, and most importantly, in general, we’ll talk about the roles that coaches played
both during the previous strike and the role the coaches that can play in strikes in
general.
Well, just two weeks ago, the members of the Writers Guild of America West
(WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) put their final stamp of
approval on the deal that ended their 14-week strike, giving writers new rights and
protections for work distributed on and created for the Internet and other new media
platforms.
With me to talk more about the strike and some of coaching work that was done
around it in general, today, are four guests. Some of whom are very familiar with the
Writers Guild strike to say the least.
We’ll spend a good chunk of time discussing the strike itself, and, of course, some of
the work that coaches did in general.
That said, let me give you a quick overview of who we have with us today.
Our first guest, David Brownstein, is the founder of Hollywood Coaching, which
provides career coaching, leadership coaching, and executive coaching to
Hollywood’s top professionals. He has coached executives and creatives at all the
major TV and film studios, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers,
and MTV networks among others. An award-winning producer, director, and
screenwriter, David was recently named to a list of top 100 thought leaders by
Leadership Excellence magazine. He was featured in The New York Times articles
on life coaching in Hollywood, and has been interviewed and featured in Movie
Maker, Men’s Health, Fitness, Awareness, and Creative Screenwriting magazines.
He’s the author of “The Cosmic Mission of Hollywood: How to Stay Inspired and
Productive in the Industry that Rocks the World,” and is a popular presenter on such
topics as War and Peace in the Writer’s Room, The Essentials of Leadership, and A
Course in Hollywood Miracles.
Welcome to the show, David.
02:43 David Thanks, Tom. Good to be here.
Brownstein
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02:45 Tom Floyd Our second guest, Jonathan Handel, practices entertainment law at Troy Gould in
Los Angeles where he focuses on digital media and intellectual property. He was
previously Associate Counsel at the Writers Guild of America, and has appeared in
the media over 150 separate times regarding the writers negotiations and strike in
outlets, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles
Times, National Public Radio, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter.
Jonathan has presented seminars on entertainment technology to U.S. and foreign
filmmakers, CEOs, studio executives, and agents. He is a graduate of Harvard
College and Harvard Law School and blogs at www.jhandel.com, and on The
Huffington Post. Jonathan is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences, which is the professional association that awards the Primetime Emmys.
Welcome to the show, Jonathan.
03:37 Jonathan Thanks, very much. It’s a pleasure to be here, Tom.
Handel
03:39 Tom Floyd It’s a pleasure to have you. Our next guest, leader, turned Emmy award winning
writer and producer, Patric Verrone, has served as the President of the Writers Guild
of America West since September of 2005.
His writing career began in the late 1980s as a monologue writer for the “Tonight
Show” starring Johnny Carson. Patric’s credits as a television writer and producer
include “The Larry Sanders Show,” “The Critic,” “Pinky and the Brain,” “Rugrats,”
“Muppets Tonight,” “Futurama,” and “The Simpsons.”
Now that the strike is over, he has returned to writing and producing direct-to-DVD
Futurama features, including the recently released Bender’s Big Score.
Patric has won two Emmys and won the 2002 Writers Guild Animation Caucus
Lifetime Achievement Award. Patric is also a member of the California and Florida
bars, and has been an adjunct professor of entertainment law at Loyola Law School
and UCLA Extension, and has served as editor of the Annual Entertainment Law
Issue of Los Angeles Lawyer Magazine since 1996.
Welcome to the show, Patric.
04:40 Patric Verrone Thank you, Tom.
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04:42 Tom Floyd And our last guest, proclaimed by Elle magazine as having a shaman-like status to
her Hollywood clientele, Sherri Ziff Lester is a certified life coach of Rock Your Life
Coaching, well known for her work with actors and rock stars. She is equally
passionate about her clients in the entertainment industry who work behind the
scenes, and those calls visionaries, people who want to make an impact and are
committed to living vibrant lives.
Sherri’s newest passion is the NBA, and she’s recently expanded her coaching
business to include basketball players. More recently, she did on-the-spot coaching
at a celebrity-studded Golden Globes gift lounge.
Prior to coaching, Sherri was a successful television writer on several prime time
dramas, including “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Baywatch.” She has been profiled in
The New York Times and Elle magazine, and has been referenced in numerous
publications, including Self, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, the New York Post, and
others. Sherri has also appeared on “Access Hollywood” and “Fox News” on
coaching in the entertainment industry.
Welcome to the show, Sherri.
05:41 Sherri Ziff Thank you.
Lester
05:43 Tom Floyd Well as we do with each show, I’d like to share something that our research team
pulled together to set the stage.
Well according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Overall, in 2007 there were 21 lockouts and strikes involving 1,000 or
more workers in 2007.
In 2007, the largest major work stoppage in total days idle was between
the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers
Guild of America East and West, with 10,500 workers accounting for
409,500 lost workdays (which was measured by number of workers
involved, days of idleness, and length of stoppage.)
A December 2007 USA TODAY/Gallup Poll showed that, when just six
weeks into the strike, public sentiment rested firmly against the studios –
sixty percent of Americans say they favor the writers in the dispute. Just
14% favor the studios who employ them.
Well Patric, I’d like to start with you.
Given your level of involvement in the strike, especially—this was definitely one of
the most publicized strikes of the past decade—can you tell us a little bit more about
how it all began?
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07:03 Patric Verrone Well Tom, the strike itself was something that I don’t think anyone really wanted.
This was a negotiation that happens every three years between the Writers Guild and
the studios and networks.
We have a contract that deals with the minimums, pension contributions, health
insurance, and residuals for writers in television and film.
This time around, with the advent of new media, not only the downloading of existing
film and TV shows to the Internet and handheld devices, like iPods, but also the
advent of the creation of new media for new media.
In other words, webisodes of shows like “The Office” and mobisodes, mobile phone
episodes, of shows like “Lost,” the Writers Guild, and as well the actors represented
by the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA and directors represented by the Directors
Guild, were becoming more and more interested in how our material was going to be
both reused on the Internet, how we were going to be paid for that, and how new
material was going to be created, whether we would get certain protections that we’re
used to, including, as I said, minimum wages, and pension and health contributions.
So in this contract, it was very important for us to set a floor for all of that work
because, historically, whenever a new business model has come along, whether it
was television itself in the early 1960s for us, cable TV in the eighties, home video in
the mid-eighties, whatever patterns are set in those early negotiations, it tends to be
very hard for us to break those patterns.
So this time, the industry was saying to us something that they had been saying to us
in the last few negotiations, which was that this is a new technology, we don’t know
where the business model is, how we’re going to make money, whether we’re going
to make money, so give us a break, lower the barriers to entry. We said we would
love to do that, but for the fact that, as I said, we don’t want to set a bad precedent.
So we said anytime you make money, we make money. We had percentage of
revenue formulas in place. We just wanted to get the jurisdiction. We wanted to
make sure that we had the coverage.
As the negotiation, which began in July, continued to stagger on through October, it
was clear to us that we were not going to get anywhere unless we showed some real
resolve and determination.
We took a strike authorization vote of our membership, 10,000-plus members, and
we got over 90% positive response.
So at the end of October, we were in negotiations clearly prepared to go on strike,
and management refused to put any kind of offer on the table that we could take
seriously, so the strike began on November 5th.
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10:07 Tom Floyd Just to interrupt for a second, when you said that it became clear that you weren’t
getting anywhere, what were some of the behaviors or things that you saw there that
were really concerning?
Those things that made you realize that you needed to do something about this fast?
10:21 Patric Verrone Well, the proposal that we had on the table we considered very reasonable.
As I said, percentages of revenue for going forward for four new media. At the time,
we were also asking, actually, for an increase in DVD residuals, which hadn’t
changed since the mid-1980s.
The other side—management’s proposals to us—had included a complete change in
the way that residuals were calculate, a profit-based residual formula, which if you
know anything about Hollywood accounting, can make the Enron executives blush
with the ability to conceal profits and make that kind of profit participation specious.
I think by the time we struck, that was off the table, but they were still claiming that
they wanted to be able to use anything in new media, reuse any new or existing
library TV shows or films.
They wanted to be able show them on the Internet for free and call them a promotion.
They didn’t want to grant us the jurisdiction for the creation of new material on the
Internet.
They wanted to do a three-year study.
As I said, they didn’t believe that there was a business model in place yet. They
wanted to study it for three years and then come back, and of course, in the
meantime, either pay us nothing or pay us at the DVD rate.
So it was a case where they were acting the way they had been acting for a
generation now, which was simply to say no to all of the union proposals and the
union—in this case us—would typically respond and say okay, fine, we’ll go along
with it.
This time, we didn’t, and so we called the strike on November 5th.
12:18 David Can I interrupt a second, Patric?
Brownstein
12:19 Patric Verrone Sure. Go ahead.
12:20 David Patric, obviously, it was a successful strike and you got great things.
Brownstein
With what you learned by the end with what worked—if you could go back in time
now—what might have worked differently in July that you discovered in January?
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12:39 Patric Verrone Well, I think the key thing was the involvement of the CEOs.
When we were bargaining from July through October, we were bargaining with what
Tom referred to as the AMPTP (The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers).
This is an entity that’s set up by the studios, and networks, and other independent
production entities, of which there are very, very few now that matter. It’s set up so
that they can bargain together. It has an advantage from our perspective too, in that
you make one deal and it applies to everybody.
But the people who populate the actual negotiating committee for the side are labor
vice presidents. They’re executives within the companies, who are there, basically,
to say no.
The decision makers among the studios and networks—the CEOs—were not
integrally involved in the process. We had some, what we call, back-channel
conversations with a few of them during these weeks and months, but they were not
in the day-to-day process.
And it was very difficult to get, as I said, these labor executives, who had been doing
this in some cases for almost 30 years, to say anything other than no, ‘cause that’s
what they were empowered to say and do.
So had we gotten the CEOs involved earlier, I think we might have been able to
make the progress that we eventually did make, earlier.
14:03 David When you finally did get direct communication with them, what was their attitude?
Brownstein
14:09 Patric Verrone Well, it differed from executive to executive. But obviously, when we had the
conversations with them in January and early February—there had been, at that
point, a two-and-a-half-month strike—and a very powerful one that shut down
production.
And despite what they’re saying to their stockholders and their earnings goals right
now, it was a strike that affected them and this hurt their business. So their interest
at that time, specifically, the 2007-2008 television season was about to collapse.
Next year’s pilot season—the development of pilots for the 2008-2009 season—was
dead in the water, and was about to also collapse. And the Oscars was in serious
jeopardy. We had shut down the Golden Globes. That was turned from a high-
profile event into a news conference, and there was this great fear that the Oscars
was going to do the same.
So the CEOs were interested in ending the strike, in making a deal that would
prevent those three things from happening. So the particular personalities of these
gentlemen—who were all extraordinarily professional and hard bargainers, but good
bargainers—made the experience overall one of let’s see how we can make a deal.
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15.44 Tom Floyd Just to recap, it sounds like that, in general, when you saw some of the concerns
back in July, you were seeing some of the historical behaviors that you had seen in
the past.
That you really felt it was important to make sure that the model upfront was one that
was fair.
And that knowing it could be hard to make changes later that we absolutely had to
get the right things in place from the beginning.
And that getting the key executives and CEOs involved, and working with them
directly, really helped the process a lot.
16:19 Patric Verrone Absolutely.
16:20 Tom Floyd Got it. Jonathan, I’d like to turn to you next.
From your perspective, from a legal perspective, what made the past strike unique?
16:31 Jonathan Again, it’s a pleasure to be here and it’s a pleasure to share the virtual stage with
Handel Patric, as well. Hey, Patric.
16:37 Patric Verrone Hi, Jon.
16:40 Jonathan I guess the way I’d like to look at it is to use as a jumping off point a couple things
Handel that Patric said.
There is this organization, the AMPTP, that’s a joint bargaining organization.
There are a lot of multi-studio groups in this town. There’s the group that gives out
the Oscars. There’s the group that does ratings on movies, and that lobbies against
piracy and all those kinds of things.
So this particular group’s only purpose is to negotiate labor agreements. That’s what
it does. There are lots of unions in Hollywood and these contracts do come up every
three years in general, and that’s what this group does.
The head of the group is a lawyer, who’s been with the organization since its
founding in 1982, and his sole job is to negotiate agreements.
So it’s very troubling as an outsider to see exactly what Patric described, which is
that the function of this group, the AMPTP in this strike, really was to say no.
For once, I think Patric was a little soft on the group, which is that their July proposals
really seemed calculated to drive the writers out on strike, frankly. They would have
taken residuals, which are the payments that writers get when their material is
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reused.
For example, if a movie gets released on DVD, or on television, a television show
gets released on DVD, or now, with the new contract, when these things get released
on the Internet, the writers get payments. And those payments for writers and actors
in particular, and to a lesser extent for directors, are the way people live during their
lean years.
This is a very up and down business, as people probably know.
So to propose turning the system of residuals into something akin to net profits,
which again, as Patric said essentially means next to nothing in Hollywood, was more
than an invitation to strike. It was exactly what a union needs to rally its members
towards a strike.
Add to that a lot of other rollbacks and even a provision that would have taken away
writers’ credits in advertising.
So the studios could have had the right to advertise a movie and give the director’s
name in the print and leave the writer’s name out and that’s nothing but a slap in the
face with a wet fish.
So there is something very dysfunctional in the way the AMPTP has either been set
up or has been used. Because the head of that organization takes his marching
orders from the same executives, who ultimately, Patric found to be useful and
constructive bargaining partners.
So one of the questions is why weren’t they constructive from the beginning?
I do think the strike, at this point, having imposed the cost it did on writers, crew
members, actors, directors, and the LA economy as a whole, really raises the
question of how can this AMPTP group continue to be or come once again, perhaps,
to be a useful and functional group.
To put it in context, the actors’ negotiations are coming up. Now if you’re the head of
the Screen Actors Guild and you get a call, and they say we’re sending over Nick
Counter, the head of the AMPTP, versus you get a call, and they say, we’re sending
over Bob Iger, head of Disney. W
hich meeting would you rather have, given the fact that the meetings with Iger, and
Chernin, and others—the Hollywood executives—that made the writers deal and
before that the directors deal happen?
So there’s a structural question that this all raises.
20:23 Tom Floyd It sounds like, from everything that you’re saying, that the strike, A, absolutely was
necessary, and that, B, it was almost set up in such a way, whether it was intentional
or not, where the executives were realizing yeah, we’re pretty much taking away
people’s paychecks to a degree in some cases, especially when times are lean, so it
should not have been a huge surprise to them that the strike occurred.
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20:48 Patric Verrone Tom, this is Patric again.
I just want to interject, so that I don’t sound like I’m being too nice to the AMPTP, as
Jon just pointed out.
I want to go further and give them some real credit for 25 years of doing what they
did successfully.
What you had between, I would say, the early 1980s when both the Writers Guild and
the Screen Actors Guild struck successfully in 1980 and ’81.
And now, there really wasn’t a successful leadership-imposed strike amongst the
talent community in Hollywood that actually achieves anything remarkable.
We struck in 1985 and in 1988, and both times, I think, we lived to fight another day,
but we didn’t really make the kinds of advances that we would’ve liked to on the
issues of the day.
And it was because the AMPTP had been set up as an entity where seven—at the
time it was twenty—now it’s down to about seven, diversified, multinational
conglomerates can get together without violating the antitrust laws and bargain
against each of the unions, individually.
There’s a concept in labor law called pattern bargaining, which in other industries,
like the automotive industries, you get the craft unions together and they pick off one
company—Ford or General Motors—and bargain with them, make the deal, and then
apply it to the next company.
In this industry, in Hollywood, the opposite happens where the companies—these
fierce competitors,—get together, they bargain together, and they pick off one union
at a time.
So their behavior remained consistent, as it had been successful for a full generation
where they had not had either a strike or they hadn’t had to give up anything.
But the union’s attitude suddenly changed this time around.
22:52 Tom Floyd So it really was different in many ways from what it sounds like.
I hate to cut you off. I’m hearing the music, so we’re going to a break. Let’s go
ahead and go on pause.
Stay tuned everyone. More from Insight on Coaching when we return.
25:30 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching. I’m Tom Floyd.
Today the topic is coaching leadership and workforces during a strike.
With me are David Brownstein, the founder and coach of Hollywood Coaching.
Jonathan Handel, entertainment attorney, Troy Gould, Patric Verrone, President of
the Writers Guild of America West, and Sherri Ziff Lester, founder and coach of Rock
Your Life Coaching.
Well, in this segment of the show, I’d like to focus on the impact of the writers’ strike,
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as well as the aftermath now that it’s over.
Some more data to quickly set the stage.
According to the November 5th, 2007 issue of Forbes, the magazine
predicted that the: “A strike will have two major effects. The first will be an
almost immediate and potentially long-term economic hit to Los Angeles,
California in general and the industry as a whole. The second will be the
potential loss of a percentage of the viewing audience, for both the motion
picture and television industries.
The key factor in determining a strike's impact is how long it will last. In
1988, the last big writer's strike took 22 weeks. In 2001, with another
writer's strike looming, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan
commissioned a Milken Institute study that looked at potential job loss
under several different scenarios. In the worst case, a five-month strike
could have cost the city $6.9 billion in lost income and 54,600 lost jobs.
That strike was averted.
According to the January 11th, 2008 issue of Workforce Management:
“The shutdown left thousands of New York’s 78,000 production workers
unemployed and many of the 4,000 film-related businesses, like prop houses
and caterers, struggling to stay afloat amid their worst crisis in more than a
decade.
The city hasn’t released estimates on the losses resulting from this
strike. But when a similar strike loomed in 2001, the Mayor’s Office of
Film, Theatre & Broadcasting estimated that the city would lose a
minimum of $625 million every quarter in total direct expenditures for
productions requiring permits.
A study by the Boston Consulting Group provided a more extensive
estimate of more than $1.2 billion a quarter. That included studio
production, as well as pre- and postproduction work.
Finally, according to the February 29th, 2008 issue of Variety: The writers
strike may be over, but Hollywood is still in gridlock mode.
Patric, I’d like to start with you again, first, to address the predictions that Forbes
made, what, in your opinion, was the impact of the strike on the LA economy?
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28:07 Patric Verrone Well obviously, the way Hollywood operates, typically, when there is a strike looming
or a negotiation looming, is you ramp up production, so that you can stockpile
material.
Then when the strike takes place, obviously, production grinds to a halt or slows
down dramatically.
But then once it’s over, you begin to ramp up again, as quickly as possible.
So what we’re seeing right now is a lot of people going back to work.
It’s a flexible production schedule, where 300 films will end up being made in this
year, some of them will have been rushed into production.
The amount of TV that will have been produced will probably be lower than it
otherwise would, because there were two months of non-production.
But the reruns that you would have otherwise gotten in April, occurred in January,
and so the gas fills the amount of space that it’s given. W
hat’s operating here—and this is obviously an important part of this whole
discussion—is that the Screen Actors Guild negotiation is looming.
With their contract set to expire June 30th, if you want to green light a movie that has
a 90-to-100-day production schedule to it, you have to get that movie started now.
Otherwise, you have a chance that they’ll go on strike at the end of June, and you’ll
lose the actors at the end of the production of a movie.
And that becomes not only cost prohibitive, but you physically can’t do the movie, so
there’s a real concern now. That, I think, is the implication of the gridlock.
I think if that can be solved, if the companies can bargain reasonably with the Screen
Actors Guild and that problem goes away, I think this industry gets back on its feet in
a relatively healthy mode because the good news is that this is a globally growing
business.
The new media opportunities that are out there, the things that we were fighting for
that we’ve now achieved, for writers at least, will increase the amount of production
that’s going to be called for from TV shows, like Heros that are doing additional Web
content, from programming that’s going to go directly to the Internet that writers—I
think one of the legacies of this strike is going to be is that writers are going to find
their way into direct distribution of their own material the way we did during the strike
on You Tube, and Untied Hollywood, and other media.
30:48 Tom Floyd So in terms of the gridlock, it seems like when Variety references that, that the main
thing that’s contributing really are the looming negotiation—what needs to be done—
with actors as well.
31:00 Patric Verrone I call it pending rather than looming, even though I did say it was looming.
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31:04 Tom Floyd Yes, looming does sound a little bit more ominous.
Jon, anything that you would add?
31:11 Jonathan I’m sorry. Were you asking me?
Handel
31:12 Tom Floyd Yes, Jonathan.
31:12 Jonathan I’m sorry. Thanks. Yeah, one of the things about those negotiations that makes it
Handel difficult and reflects back ultimately to a question for Patric, as well, is SAG has said
that they’re not going to begin contract talks until April at the earliest. They’ve
reiterated that last week.
Another actors’ union called AFTRA, which bargains jointly with SAG is not happy
about that. They want to talk earlier.
And really there’s a divide between the SAG leadership in Hollywood versus SAG in
New York, SAG elsewhere, and AFTRA, and all of the later want earlier negotiations.
Whereas, the national leadership, based in Hollywood, feels that they get more
leverage by waiting ‘til the last minute or closer to the last minute, which creates
essentially what people call a de facto strike, which is that if you get that close to the
contract expiration and the potential for a strike, no one wants to green light a movie,
as Patric says, whose production dates might fall past the day that you would lose
your actors.
So even in the absence of an actual strike happening down the line, people end up
on this strike footing.
One of the questions that people raise for the writers as well, and this is the flip side
of what I said earlier, is didn’t you guys always intend to strike?
A more assertive—some people say aggressive, some people say militant—group of
leadership in both the writers’ and actors’ unions, Patric among them, were elected
around 2005.
And since then, it has been a different guild, for example, than the Writers Guild was
in the mid-nineties when I was there.
And you’ve got to fault the studios, in part, for not seeing this—you open the trades
everyday, and it says “here’s this new group that’s been elected, but we’re going to
make the same old tired proposals to them anyway and not expect them to go on
strike.”
But my question, Patric back at you is, from the day you were elected, or certainly
from sometimes in 2006, didn’t you have an increasing thought that you probably
were going to have to go on strike?
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33:33 Patric Verrone Well, up until the day that we took the strike authorization vote, we continued to be
preparing for it, up to and beyond it, because it was clear to us that the studios were
not opening the papers, as you say, and saw who was elected, myself and Alan
Rosenberg at the Screen Actors Guild.
They weren’t being responsive to what was an emboldened and a resolute group of
writers, and actors, and others who were willing and preparing to strike. It’s the old
adage of in order to maintain peace, you have to prepare for war.
Unfortunately, they opted to not have the peace. They let us go on strike.
I think there was, and I think there continues to be, with the Screen Actors Guild a
sense that they won’t do it. We’ll solve the problem. We’ll bargain. They won’t go
on strike.
And then with us, for example, when we did, it turned into, well, they won’t last or
we’ll be able to peel off the screenwriters from the TV writers, or in the case of the
actors, split off SAG and AFTRA.
34:43 Tom Floyd I hate to cut you off and interrupt again. I’m hearing the music for our next
commercial break.
I hate doing that, but stay tuned everyone. More from Insight on Coaching when we
return.
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37:12 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching. I’m Tom Floyd.
Today the topic is Coaching Leadership and Workforces During a Strike.
With me are David Brownstein, Jonathan Handel, Patric Verrone, and Sherri Ziff
Lester.
Well, in our last segment of today’s show, I’d like to focus on, one, the importance of
coaching in Hollywood, and then in terms of a lot of the great information that we just
shared about the Writers Guild strike, the importance of coaching during a strike,
particularly coaching both sides during a strike, in terms of leadership, in terms of the
individuals involved, all of that good stuff.
Some more data, just to quickly set the stage.
According on one of our guests, David Brownstein, when interviewed by
Fortune Small Business: “The strike has required businesses to come up
with new survival strategies and creative solutions to the cash crunch.”
With their production projects on hold, many clients took the time off to
brainstorm about new financing options and think about their career
trajectories.
Others were forced to look at where there may be new business
opportunities.
During the strike itself, David also was quoted in his blog as saying: “The
WGA's choice to strike, and the AMPTP's choice not to negotiate have
combined to create an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and stasis few of us
have experienced in our professional lives. And yet the uncertainty was here
all along. The shutdown of production, development and awards shows has
simply unmasked the great uncertainties that have always been upon us.
ON WHY HOLLYWOOD NEEDS COACHING AND NOT THERAPY: “The
role of therapy is decreasing depression, the role of coaching is increasing
well being.”
Well David, you certainly raised some outstanding perspective and points of view.
I definitely want to start with the big picture question that you posed in your blog, and
that is, from your perspective, in general, why does Hollywood need coaching?
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39:07 David Well, I’ve been listening to and watching the strike from a leadership perspective,
Brownstein both in how is the Guild handling development of its leaders and how are the studios
doing that?
I think in a way, Hollywood has a tendency to outsource conflict, and so, we have
agents, and managers, and business affairs people that do the difficult stuff. Its
interesting, as Patric was explaining, the months leading up to the strike, what I
heard and saw, also, was the writers were negotiating like adults and the studios
were negotiating like children.
So the studios seemed to be hiding behind a representative, basically, how would
basically say no, no, no.
So the leadership stuff that I saw that was great that worked is that the Guild stayed
together until the studios came to the table, so somehow that really worked.
It’s interesting that from what I saw, as Patric said earlier and what I experienced just
from reading the press, was that finally Iger and Chernin said okay, now we can talk
about this.
And then once the real people were at the table, something got resolved.
So I think Hollywood tends to be—writers are, maybe, often conflict adverse.
Hollywood’s dysfunctional in many ways and it has also incredible areas where
communication really works.
So what I do in my coaching practice these days is really focus on the leadership
areas.
Where can writers who may not be used to running a team, suddenly learn how to be
a better leader and a better manager running a writers’ room?
How can executives who have just learned from their dysfunctional boss, how can
they be better leaders?
How can even the studio heads be better leaders?
41:08 Tom Floyd So really there are multiple groups—it sounds like—that can benefit from coaching,
from your perspective, from the executives and studio heads that we mentioned
earlier in the show to writers themselves.
Sherri, the exact same question for you, in terms of the coaching work that you do,
from your perspective, why does Hollywood need coaching?
41:27 Sherri Ziff First, I want to acknowledge Patric. You handled this with such a fierce and classy
Lester by of being. And to say, this is such a firestorm, personally, I’m really proud of you,
and I want to thank you as a writer and on behalf of many, many writers in the Guild.
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41:42 Patric Verrone You’re welcome. Thank you.
41:43 Sherri Ziff What I think applies most here that could apply to people in all industries is the idea
Lester of not defining yourself by your job.
Most of my creative—the actors, the recording artists—these people are more used
to the ebb and flow of employment.
But what I saw was the people who define themselves by their job, who are used to
having consistent jobs that are not threatened by the ebb and flow—the executives,
the agents, the managers, the people who are running the studios, running the
networks, whether they’ve vice presidents, managers, and all those kinds of people.
I think what happens is that people start to define themselves by their job.
And this was an opportunity to stand back, and with a coach say who am I?
I’m not my job. And who am I?
And what I saw and the way I coached, was a lot about taking the time to explore
what’s important to me.
How do I want to move my life forward separate from employment, separate from my
job?
Staying out of the fear cycle. Fear breeds fear.
When people could step back and say there’s going to be end to this. I’m going to
get through this.
And what do I want my life to be about now?
How can I connect with my family, with my friends, with my creativity?
How can I create something new?
That’s where personal power showed up. That’s where people started to feel strong
and excited about their life during the time of the strike, even though, obviously, they
wished it hadn’t been going on.
43:12 Tom Floyd Would you say from your experience, if we talk about some of the Hollywood
executives, that they’re experiencing some of the same issues that if you’re John
Chambers at Cisco Systems or another executive in a high-tech company, in a
banking company, in a pharmaceutical company, what have you, is some of the
coaching that you’re doing really focusing on some of those same issues?
43:34 Sherri Ziff Definitely. Absolutely.
Lester
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43:34 Tom Floyd So its goal setting. Its self realization. Its how to be a good leader. Those same
types of areas?
43:40 Sherri Ziff During the strike—what I thought happened—it wasn’t so much about being a good
Lester leader, it was about whom do I want to be as a person?
Because now you take the job off the table for an indefinite period of time, you have
the opportunity to say who am I separate from my job?
And what I think is, when people take the time to do that—and we work that as life
coaches with our clients—that they come back to the job more solid, stronger, and
ready to bring their entire selves to their work.
44:13 Tom Floyd So in terms of separating themselves from that, are you saying that in the coaching
work during a strike—in this case—it’s really about knowing who you are and making
sure, as a leader, regardless of what side that you’re on, that you’re staying true to
who you are during it?
44:29 Sherri Ziff Absolutely, and growing who you are, bringing forth the different qualities that don’t
Lester always come out in the job and getting to know those parts of yourself, and then
being able to bring them to the job in the future.
44:41 Tom Floyd Got it. David, in some of the coaching work that you’ve done during strikes or that
may have been during this particular strike, what were some of your goals from a
coaching perspective that you would have for some of the clients that you’re working
with?
44:56 David Well, if I could just go back to your question about Cisco and other companies.
Brownstein
45:00 Tom Floyd Sure.
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45:00 David One of the things that distinguishes Hollywood from other industries is that Hollywood
Brownstein really hasn’t gotten hip to the idea of developing people in the long run.
I think that the larger companies—technology companies, manufacturing—they
realized that they’re going to need to develop their bench, so to speak, their
leadership bench. They’re going to have develop managers into vice presidents and
vice presidents into presidents.
Hollywood has not really done a lot of that.
Some of them give lip service to that, but I think because the industry has been a
world of freelancers, there tends to be this underlying fear.
I agree with Sherri, it is really important to develop who you’re going to be and who
you’re going to be outside of your job.
But when we’re getting in that cycle, the fear came to the surface, was what I
experienced with a lot of my clients and what I heard from a lot of my clients. Day
one of the strike, I was talking to a client of mine, who’s a producer at a studio. He
said they walked in and told us this morning that if the strike goes on ‘til February 1st,
we’re out of a job.
So right away, it created fear.
Other clients of mine said I don’t know. We better stop. Who knows how long the
strike will go? So many of them stepped into, oh my gosh, we got to stop.
But the people who survived the strike well really worked on other projects, started
taking trips up to Silicon Valley looking into venture capital money, started to expand
their horizons, and started to expedite the new media models, in a sense, or really
looking into opportunities.
So once they got out of paralysis, they started saying oh well, maybe TV is changing,
maybe - - are changing.
46:39 Tom Floyd As a coach, when you’re hearing some of that fear, because that was exactly one of
the questions that I had from a coaching perspective, how do you help keep a client
motivated to hold out during a strike when they might have a lot of fears, particularly
if their paychecks are impacted? That’s going to cause a lot.
So what are some of the things does coaching help remind them of or guide them
towards to make sure that they really are doing what they feel is best for them, and
best for what they believe in versus giving into that fear, and crossing the line and
taking work, and things like that?
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47:16 Sherri Ziff Well, for me, one thing that came a lot, is when you identify the places in your life
Lester where you feel powerful, it’s easier to put the fear on hold or to keep it at bay.
And when you make a decision every day to actively be involved in those creative
ventures, into things that make you feel really excited about life, you have a greater
perspective than staying in the place of fear, fear, fear.
But you’ve got to step out of it.
You’ve got to look to the place in your life where you feel excited, where you feel
solid, and build from that.
47:47 Tom Floyd So its focusing on those areas where you are strong, those areas that make you feel
good about yourself.
47:52 Sherri Ziff Yeah.
Lester
47:53 Tom Floyd And using those to counteract some of that fear that comes up.
47:55 Sherri Ziff Yes, and for me, what I saw a lot, it was really necessary to focus on those things
Lester that were not typically job related, the things that stay with you whether you’re
working or not.
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48:07 Tom Floyd David, your point around Hollywood’s, being behind, in terms of recognizing the
development needs of employees, and leaders, and things like that, I thought that
was really interesting.
One of the things that I’ve seen time and time again on this show is that there are
many inaccurate perceptions about coaching.
And also, one of the main reasons I’m doing this show and why I’m an advocate of
coaching, personally, is that a lot of people don’t necessarily “get it.”
They don’t get what it is. They don’t get how coaching can help.
In many cases, it’s a constant desire to correct the misperception that coaching is a
fix-it solution, meaning if you found a coach, there must be something wrong with
you, and they were having performance problems with you, you could managed out
the door, all of that.
And a lot of people in the field really work hard to overcome that, and say “no,
coaching is not a fix-it solution.”
Is that one of the reasons that you would theorize in Hollywood why there could be
this resistance or fear, like “oh, I don’t need a coach? That’s therapy. It’s fixing me.
I’m fine, I’m fine.”
Are those some of the things that are coming up?
49:09 David I think that the boomer generation, of which I am one of, has a legacy of therapy
Brownstein means you’ve got a problem.
So I’m finding the younger executives, the younger filmmakers, and creatives are
starting to say well, “maybe I could use some help, maybe there are some ways that I
could learn stuff. I didn’t get much mentoring, maybe coaching can be great.”
Its funny, I talk to a lot of executive coaches about my practice and they all say “well,
I’d never take jobs where I have to go in and someone’s got a problem.”
I say well, I do. I get called into a lot of great situations where there’s a big mess,
and I really get to help somebody out.
And it transforms the department. It transforms that person. I’ve worked with people
that were thrown off of their own show, and he went through a huge transformation.
He got his deal re-upped and he went from thinking, “I’ll never work again” to “oh,
gee, they re-upped my contract.”
50:02 Tom Floyd So it’s by really experiencing some success stories and making people more aware
of that, it seems like that could be some of the things that help overcome some of
those hurdles?
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50:10 David Yeah, I think so. Whatever it takes to get us in there, is totally fine by me.
Brownstein
And they say “gee, this really works, maybe we should try this coach for that and
maybe coaching would work.”
I think, also, in the studios, the HR people and the organizational development
people know about coaching know about coaching and believe in coaching.
They’re not getting the call from the upper ups in the studio saying we’ve got a
problem, let’s develop our leaders here.
One of the reasons I developed this program called War and Peace in the Writer’s
Room was because I kept hearing about studios having challenges with first-time
show runners.
Where someone wrote a great script, wrote a great pilot, suddenly they’re a show
runner. They have a co-share runner on their program and they’re not getting along
with him.
And they’re suddenly going from a one-on-one writer to running a team—to running a
huge organization.
I kept hearing over and over that there were first-time show runners that were
crumbling under these situations and I developed this with one of the studios I was
working with.
So the idea is to help people develop those leadership skills.
Not necessarily the technical things, certainly not the writing things, but really how to
be a better leader, how to run a team of writers, how to interface with producers, and
interface with the networks and the studio executives, of which there are so many
now.
51:23 Tom Floyd Got it. Fantastic. One last question, I’ve got about 30 seconds left, it’s a big picture
question I’d like to pose to you, Patric.
From your perspective—again, 30 seconds or less—will the studios still be around in
10 to 15 years?
Or do you see the entertainment world being ruled a little bit more by Silicon Valley?
51:45 Patric Verrone Oh, I think they will be.
These are entities that survived.
If we look back about 150 years ago, as to whom the big media entities were and it
was Western Union, actually.
So maybe 150 years is a long time in the life of media, but I think in ten years, their
ability to compete in new media will allow them to succeed.
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52:12 Tom Floyd Got it. Well, a huge thank you to the four of you for joining us today.
As always, a huge thank you for our listeners as well.
For more information about the show, of course, you can look us up on the Voice of
America business channel.
You can visit our website, www.ieconsulting.biz, and you can download the
podcast version of our show in Apple iTunes.
Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next week.
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