Leveling Up as a Leader
July 30,2013, Independent Game Developers Association Summit, San Francisco, CA-Jennifer MacLean provided some insights into the nature of leadership in the game development industry. The basic concepts for good leadership are common across industries, but the terminology differs, and the workload continues to increase.
Leaders need to understand the happiness of the team, the whole team needs to have happy lives. Leaders transfer energy and attitude to their teams, so the leader has to understand what needs to be done and provide buffs for the team. In addition, the leader has to drive the energy of the team through positive attitudes and enthusiasm, even through the bad days.
The leader also has to assemble that great team, which requires recognition, understanding of goals, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the team members, and the ability to match those characteristics to the project needs. If a person is good at a set of tasks, but not so good at others, then don’t put her into a position to fail. On the other hand, if she wants to try to move into other functions, then help set up conditions for success like extra meetings for in-line corrections and advice or a limited scope for the first project.
The leader is a buff distributor. Comments like “best way to succeed” are perception potions, “you can do it” is a courage boost, “great job” is a recognition reward, and “you aren’t getting it done” is a reality check. More than anything else, people want to get psychic rewards for their efforts. Leadership is a lot of work because of the other basic functions such as interfacing with other managers, reports and other meetings, keeping up with technology, and the need to keep the team on track.
In addition, at times the leader has to have the hard conversations. When failures happen, you have to learn from the failure while deciding if someone on the team needs a personal response and possibly removal from the team. The key attributes for a leader in gaming are intuition and perspective.
