KATHRYN ABBAS Texas Student Media The Daily Texan
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Personal Philosophy
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It has been just over three years now since I, as an eager freshman, accepted a position at Texas Student Media (TSM), an opportunity I stumbled on. At the time I knew very little about college and even less about advertising sales. Nevertheless TSM took a chance on a freshman and I took the account executive position as my second job (I also waited tables). As it turned out, I had a knack for relationship sales, the basis for achievement here at TSM. Yet it wasn’t until I went into management that I found my true calling. I have always been one to thrive on responsibility. My position as Student Advertising Director gave me a chance to do this and excel. Now as I enter my last semester I realize this organization has helped me to grow into a mature adult ready to take on the world with confidence and ambition. I will always be indebted to TSM for the lessons it has taught me, I was able to give back to the organization in a big way before my inevitable exit. In my first term as Student Advertising Director, I developed four basic principles. Building relationships, fairness, transparency and flexibility. It was these four principles that guided me to taking my next big step in management of delegating task efficient and effectively. As any manager understands, delegation is not just passing off your task to subordinates, but something much more complicated. Delegation involves, mutual respect, trust and accountability. Building Relationships The first and most important relationship you must build are with those reporting to you, they are not your underlings but a part of a team that can only work successfully as a whole unit. If you are not humble as a leader and provide service to your team, you become completely ineffective in your role as a leader. I’ve learned building relationships go beyond only knowing facts about a person, but rather listening and being attentive to their needs. Through this philosophy in combination with fairness, transparency and flexibility, I have gained the trust and respect of my team. Thus allowing them to feel comfortable enough to honestly express to me their wants and needs. Yet what you do with this information is what that makes the difference between an mediocre manager and a superior manager. While it is most important to first build relationships with your team members, t is also important to develop those same relationships with those who effect your everyday operations. In our case this includes our professional staff, accounting department, and various leaders of our yearbook, newspaper, radio and television stations. By building up these mutual relationships, I have gained trust and respect that allows me the opportunity to get things done for the betterment of my team and TSM as a whole. New Challenges Over the spring semester I noticed many of our reps had become stressed out. This was a combination of economic downturn causing money constrains, leaving many to consider leaving TSM in search of a higher paying job. Aside form money issues, reps were facing the prospect of a social buying website to be sold, adding to their already overflowing plate of media sales. A media plate that included a daily paper, various supplements, radio, television, an iphone app and various websites. These stresses were added by clients expecting more results, which, for us meant increasing readership. While all of these things surmounted on the reps, I also knew that our department was under pressure to increase revenue due to potential budget shortfalls. Thus the result of the university reducing funding across the board. My motto has always been ACTIONS speak louder than words, and this was time for action. Summer served as the perfect time for important changes to be develop and enacted. Sacrificing for the greater good, I choose to retreat form my personal sales to solely focus on major projects. The team was lacking motivation and was in need of some dire help on the sales and marketing front. Motivating Solutions The first facet of my solution was to adjust the commission scale. We had been operating under the same complicated sliding scale for over ten years. Needless to say, the commission reps were receiving compared to the amount of work they put in was unfair. This need to be adjusted. After feedback from existing and exiting reps, I created three plausible scales for my superior to choose from. By the end of the summer, my team had a higher commissions to work towards. This switched their focus from needing a second job to making more sales for their ends to meet. Another form of motivation came from inspiration and insight by professionals out in the working world. Throughout the fall semester we had our first ever series of guest speakers. The list included professionals from Clear Channel Communications, career consulting, sales professor at the University of Texas and the Dallas Morning News.