Sunshine and perfect temperatures a couple of weekends ago called me to the driving range to practice. The balls went sailing out over the green, some in perfect arcs, others a little off the mark, and a few well… let’s just say some of the shots weren’t as pretty as the weather… which got me thinking. We are taught that practice makes perfect, that we can’t do anything well immediately. And we know this to be true from experience. We practice piano. Practice our golf swing. Practice yoga. We practice to be better. But do we practice our job skills? We do our jobs. But that’s not the same as refining the skills with deliberate, behind the scenes work. For a long time, TV stations used to bring in talent coaches to work with their on-air teams at least twice a year. When I was a news director I had the talent coach in usually before every sweeps period. Lately, this sort of investment is becoming less and less of a thing. Perhaps it’s budget constraints, no money to spend on professional development. Maybe it’s because there are so many more shows to fill, so there’s no time to do […]