Developing a Thick Skin

The media world can be an incredibly rough and unfriendly business. The competition is fierce and hire and fire mentality is extremely common. For people coming new into this world, it can be quite brutal and particularly when you are young and inexperienced (and unfortunately still true: female) you may often be target for rather abusive behavior.

This unfortunately is not only the case for composers but rather for every department. And while a lot of people in the industry are very decent and respectful, everybody who works for a while in this business can tell a story or two about people or projects that were psychological nightmares.

While the #metoo debate of recent years has brought some of abusive behavior to the light of day, there still is no shortage of people in power who use it to their own maximum advantage.

And while this is easier said than done, it is essential to avoid letting these things get to you. The longer you work in this business, the more you understand that the roughness is part of it, even if it is a rather ugly one.

However, it is also essential to differentiate between professional critizism and rejection and actual toxic behavior. None of that feels particularly good of course but being critizised and sometimes rejected for one's work comes with the collaboration and is part of the job. While good critizism should never be personal but constructive, some clients aren't too great at formulating that with a proper tone. In such cases, avoid reacting offended and further escalate the verbal dispute but try to filter the essence of what has been said and try to translate that into constructive development of the artistic vision.

With behavior that is obivously abusive and clear bullying, there's no real advice I can give here as the personal tolerance for such a thing as well as the dependance on the abusive working relationship is a very individual situation.

One thing I have learned however over the years is that I experienced most of such negative behavior with people who seem to have come to a certain degree of power just recently and defend it viciously. All people that I've worked with so far who are really high up in the game and who have been for a while are incredibly kind and respectful people who don't feel the urge to prove anything to anybody. So the higher you go the friendlier the work environment becomes. This is of course not 100% true as there are obviously also some very toxic people really high up but their numbers are fewer than in the professional range a few hierarchical steps lower where it seems like everybody has to fight for and defend their position.

In any case, being subject to harsh critizism or simply unfair behavior can hurt alot and in the long run really wear you down. It is essential to develop self confidence to be able to tolerate a certain amount of such behaviour. Trusting in one's abilities and remembering successful past projects can help to not let these things get to you. The more routine and experience you gather in the field, the easier it will become to brush off harsh words and also only take the essential bits out of them. Of course, it is very common for artists to be extremely self critical and in constant doubt which doesn't get easier if someone critizises or rejects your work. Unfortunately however, this is part of the job and the business and one of the ugly sides of it.

Interestingly though, from talks with colleagues I know that the amount of such problematic work environments can differ quite tremendously. While some seem to jump from one choleric client to the next, others seem to never experience such situations. It probably has also to do with your own personal behaviour and how much you allow to become a target but some people are simply unfortunate with the jobs they get.

It might help in such moments to remember that literally every of your colleagues has been in a similar situation before, and you can be assured that even seasoned professionals can get dragged down quite a bit by this. Of course, this will not change anything when you are in such a situation but it might make things a bit more bearable.

I've said it above already but can not stress enough that escalating the situation will in 99% of the cases make things worse. Even though you might feel like you need to vent due to unfair or toxic behavior, letting your guard down and replying with similar behavior while not being in the same position of power will make you more vulnerable in the future as they will remember how they got under our skin.

This touches very heavily on nonverbal communication strategies and psychology where I'm definitely no expert in and it requires a lot of self reflection to determine whether a point is reached where you need to walk out of a situation but fortunately, such extreme situations are relatively rare and the prospect of every horrible project having a deadline eventually will help to struggle through.

In any case, be prepared that such situations might arise and when you find yourself in one, try to take it as professionally as possible.