This is an interview with Tim Mead. As VP of Communications with the Los Angeles baseball team, the Angels, Tim talks about the role of communication in sports. >> Tim Mead, Los Angeles Angels Baseball Club, Vice President of Communications. We are the communicator, the facilitator with the fans and the organization, the organization and the players, the players and the fans, the media and the organization. I like to say, and anybody who's ever heard me talk will have heard this. Our department is the jack of all trades and master of none. But we are the master of being a jack of all trades. I tell all the people that work with me, at least in this department, that we have to function almost like a press secretary for the president that just can't humanly possibly know all the facts. But you have to know enough about the different departments and what's current and what's going on so that if you're put on the spot to answer that question, you have some general knowledge. Social media, we were probably a little bit in the 11th hour of getting in into that and we've done a great job in probably the last two, three years, really, of catching up. We wrestle a little bit, quite honestly, whether it's more marketing whether it's more community relations, and baseball-related. Ultimately, the fans want to know about the players. They want to know about what's going on within the organization. So we really kind of do our best to try to find the right chemistry that works during certain periods of the year. Obviously from February when we start spring training through the end of the regular season, hopefully post season, we're going to be baseball-centric. But the rest of the time, we have a role within the community that crosses 12 months a year in the calendar year. So we need to keep people apprised of what we're doing that way as well. We also work closely with our players in their social media accounts. You try to keep up with what their thinking and their thought processes. Really don't integrate too many club messages. You'd like everybody to kind of keep their individuality. But they're really branding for the Angels simply when they're tweeting something out, for the most part. I think the kids coming out of school are smarter than ever before. They're more versed, they've grown up with the new technology, they have more information at their fingertips. But I'm a firm believer in all the things you can learn in the textbooks and all the things, the fancy dialogue. There is still no substitution for hard work. There is no substitution for interpersonal communication. The iPhone, the texting, the emails, the Instagram, all of that, we've created all these, and I had this conversation with someone in the office, all these great forms of communication. But the greatest form of communication that will help you resolve situations, talk to employers, talk to guests, talk to business partners, whatever, is interpersonal communication. And I think that is critically important. Writing a 140 character message is wonderful, but you're not conveying everything you need to convey when you're always looking for shortcuts. So don't lose your writing skills. Just don't lose them, because I don't believe it's an everyday skill set that's dominant anymore. And I think at the end of the day, sometimes you have to have that messaging, and even within those bullet points, you have to be a skilled writer. And get that point out succinctly and articulately. I make more decisions based on what my heart tells me and common sense than almost anything else I've ever done. I've dealt with, in my career and I don't say that with any kind of arrogance, but a bus crash, we've had a player killed in an automobile accident. We've had different tough situations. There's not a textbook that I've ever had to reference on what do I say? How do I do this? And so many of those situations are real time. So I think you have to trust yourself. If you're comfortable in what you're doing, do it. And make yourself your harshest critic. [LAUGH] >> And I mean this as truthful as I can be. I've had days where you've had compliments about something you may have done over the course of an event or whatever. But when I've gotten home at the end of that day, I still look in that mirror and say, you could have done this better, okay? Was that a shortcut? Did you think this out? Everybody may have been accepting but you got to continue to challenge yourself. Do not rest on your laurels. Final thing I would say to you is whatever you're not good at needs to be your focus. Because we all love to continue to focus on doing what we either enjoy or know what we're good at. But the challenge professionally and really the challenge personally is to spend time developing or getting better on our weaknesses.
