The Good Docent – Reflections on A Year of Touring

I am a proud docent at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.  Mainly, I lead hour-long architectural and garden tours of the acclaimed J. Paul Getty Museum and its famous hilltop campus  in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA.   Other formal docent duties of mine include assisting in the Family Room, an interactive experience geared to young children, and the Sketching Gallery, where visitors can try their hands at sketching (and, if brave enough, displaying their depictions of ) selected works from the Getty collection, using free art materials which the Getty supplies.  Between scheduled events, we docents serve as roving ambassadors, helping visitors find their way around the 110-acre grounds and answering questions of all sorts.

Like the rest of my incoming “class” of about twenty people, I  had to earn the right to be a Getty docent.  The Getty put us through an intensive application and training regimen during the summer and fall of my initial year to earn membership in the all volunteer docent corps. The training included classroom sessions, development of individual tour outlines, and shadowing of existing docents as they led their own tours.  After leading many tours, I paused recently to reflect on what makes a good docent.  It occurred to me that the behaviors and skills necessary to being one translates well to many other communication endeavors.  The good docent is a master of sharing meaning in a complex world.

Visitors to the Getty are truly international and amazingly diverse.  They come in every age and nationality.  Some are disabled or have other special needs.  My tour groups range from a handful to over fifty people at a time.  Like Forrest Gump contemplating his box of chocolates, you never know what you will get next.  That’s part of the challenge…and the fun.

In my view, the “good docent” can be summed up as having three attributes: enthusiasm, preparedness, flexibility.

ENTHUSIASM

Self improvement guru Dale Carnegie wrote the number one attribute businesses look for in new hires is enthusiasm.  Not surprising really.  The enthusiastic person is more committed, more productive, more creative in any assignment.  The same statement applies to docents.  To be enthusiastic, the docent must fully embrace the institution he or she represents.  As a visitor for years myself, I always admired the Getty for its spectacular setting, elegant landscape, timeless architecture, and eclectic art.  So it was easy to embrace its mission.  Whatever the setting – museum, zoo, garden, historic area, etc. – you must be passionate about the experience you are revealing to your guests, and sustain that passion time after time.  A successful docent, in the end, is a very, very good guide, presenting unique sensual and intellectual opportunities to visitors.  If you like the experience, it is so much easier to help others like it too.

So first, you have to want to be a docent.  I mean you must really want to be one.  It’s hard work.  Considerable walking is required.  Docents typically tour outside regardless of the weather.   In the heat of August or the cold and wet of January, we must be there.  And we have to be on our game mentally too.  We work from a approved script that each of us develops for our own, exclusive use.  We each have considerable latitude to amend it; but there is always the obligation to present the basic story of the Getty, to be factually correct and reasonably comprehensive.

Most importantly, this is a service avocation.  At the core, it requires intense interaction with all kinds of people.  As any server or sales person can attest, people are notoriously fickle, even when supposedly they are relaxing. Not every visitor enjoys the journey with us; like any human being, sometimes a visitor is tired or bored, cranky or confused, in any number of physical and emotional states that inhibit his or her enjoyment.  They can misbehave, ask odd questions, interrupt a docent’s flow of thought with noisy electronics, and so on.   You have to be dedicated.  In return for this dedication, docents don’t get paid of course.  Yet there are compensations, from the comradery of talented colleagues to appreciative visitors who praise you.    After a recent tour, one visitor said to me  “Thank you for your tour.  You put into words what I am feeling about this place!”

PREPAREDNESS

Preparedness is next.  Visitors follow docents, instead of touring by themselves, for one primary reason.  They want a narrative from an expert to accompany their own perceptions of a special place.  To supply this narrative, the good docent must become that expert, well prepared with a combination of enlightening facts and entertaining stories.  As I have discussed many times before, the good communicator appeals to others through both their heads and their hearts.  Thus the docent talks about the basic metrics of the place – its size, cost, timeline, and so forth, on into the details.  Usually, the emphasis is on startling amounts.  (“There are 290,000 pieces of travertine stone installed at the Getty, over 16,000 tons that were transported halfway around the world from the quarry in Italy to this mountain top site.  The stone is from 8,000 to 80,000 years old.”)   The docent couples this quantitative information with emotional stories that enliven the history of the place.  I have found the best stories focus on unusual people, not things.  In the case of the Getty this aspect is easy.  We have the fascinating life of J.Paul Getty, a true polymath, as well as the talents of world renown architect Richard Meier, artist Robert Irvine, and others to describe. (“J. Paul Getty made a million dollars at age 24 in his first year of business. Then he promptly retired to be a jazz age playboy in Los Angeles….at least for a while!”)

To tell the facts and narratives effectively, first the docent has to do his or her homework.  A docent must be well read in the subject.  He should tap veteran docents for insights and techniques, both informally and by shadowing them on their tours.  He must synthesize in his own mind how many disparate pieces of data fit together.  A huge amount of information results.

The next step, therefore, is to prioritize and simplify these pieces.   Aim to present things visitors want to know instead of uninteresting minutia.  Carefully edit the contents of the tour down to a reasonable amount of information which fits the tour time frame and the geography to be covered.  Create a written tour outline that organizes this content into a coherent show.

Remember, your show must occur within a physical journey, a trip that logically progresses from physical stop to stop as well as from mental thought to thought.  Due to this kinesthetic element, this incorporation of long distance dynamic movement, an outdoor tour across a campus is radically different, and I think harder to pull off,  than a static lecture inside a room.

The prototypical Getty tour of 45 to 60 minutes or more uses an eight part structure.  It consists of introduction (general welcome and preview of the show, initial story to engage visitor attention), transition 1 (walking to another spot), stop 1 (stopping at the new spot and talking), transition 2, stop 2, transition 3, stop 3, and conclusion.  The three-stop concept, bookended by opening and closing statements (summary insights, thanks and preview of other things to do on site), has worked at the Getty for many years.  Other tours at different locations could be more or less complicated.  Needless to say, the good docent practices extensively to perfect her show (at least three times before the first one with actual visitors) and renews it from time to time to keep it fresh.

To make the show memorable, the Getty way is to engage visitors in a dialogue.  A docent can do this by asking provocative questions at stops  (“Can anyone tell me what the one million dollars that young J.Paul Getty made in 1916 would be worth today?”) , and by giving his guests something to think about, especially during transitions between talking stops.  (“As we walk north, keep an eye out for something unusual in the distance across the freeway.”)  For example, ask visitors to describe what they noticed during the latest transitional walk or how they react to the environment around them.  (Why does Richard Meier use the exterior building colors that you see here?”)

FLEXIBILITY

Finally, the good docent, above all else, embodies flexibility.  He reacts skillfully to the ever changing composition of his visitors and the conditions, physical and psychological, governing his tour of the moment.

The good docent tailors her script to the crowd that shows up.  Knowing how to do that starts with “warming up the audience” before the real show.  There are many effective ways to accomplish it.  Here’s what I do.

I like to show up about fifteen minutes in advance at the designated meeting spot.   As I arrive ( with a purposeful stride), I begin in a loud, confident voice with, “Hi folks.  Who is here for the (architectural or garden) tour? I’m Joseph Madda and I’ll be your tour guide today!” As individuals show up, I introduce myself further, shifting to a one-on-one approach, with a softer voice.  I make small talk about the day, and eventually ask each person (or couple of people if they seem to be together) where they are from.  I insert humor as the situation permits. (“San Francisco?  So you are from a foreign place too!”)  When I think the crowd is ready, I ask the whole group for a show of hands about who is visiting for the first time. Usually most are new to the Getty.  That tells me to provide more background about the place and how it came to be.    On the other hand, if the crowd is mostly repeat visitors, I emphasize what’s new at the Getty.

As the tour progresses, I continue to adjust my efforts based on visitor reactions.  I closely observe visitor body language. Are my guests listening closely for example, making frequent eye contact, nodding and laughing at the jokes?  Or do they seem listless, disinterested?  If I think I am losing my audience, I might change my route, my remarks, or my delivery style to reengage them.

An engaged crowd asks questions and has numerous comments.  The type of inquiries can be revealing.  Do their queries indicate they want more facts?  That tendency signals a more intellectual crowd, one interested, for instance,  in technical matters of art, design, or horticulture.  They want insight, enlightenment.  So I convey more facts and introduce more complicated concepts.  That invites a more serious and extended dialogue on a particular point,  such as 20th century modernist design.  (“As Chicago architect Louis Sullivan wrote in 1896, ‘Form (ever) follows function.’  What did he mean by that?”)  Or do they crave colorful quotes and behind-the-scenes anecdotes about key people?  That signals a more casual crowd, people who clearly want to be entertained.  (“As Mr. Getty ruefully admitted after five marriages and five divorces, ‘I am better at business than matrimony!’ “)  I never use all of the content I have planned, so I can pick and choose what to say or show next.  It does not matter to me which approach I favor.  It all depends on the mood of the group.  As famous retailer Marshall Field once admonished a clerk, who was arguing with a female customer, “Give the lady what she wants!”

The good docent always remembers that the show’s the thing.  He wants his performance to rise to the level of art, and his audience to remember him.  Or to use another metaphor, her tour should be like a great meal, with sumptuous dishes she has carefully created, artfully plated, and dramatically presented.

If you are enthusiastic, prepared and flexible you can be the good docent.  No, I take it back.  You can be the great docent!

You too can produce moveable feasts of fact and fable, melding tasty morsels of wisdom with a sensual experience for charmed participants.  If only for an hour, you will know you have made a difference in other people’s lives.  That’s a good epitaph for anyone!