GDC 2019 - Art Leadership Roundtable Notes: Early Career Day 3

This set of notes come courtesy of Jessica da Silva.  Special thanks to Jess for taking these notes and also allowing me to share them with all of you!

Managing skill growth in the team

• Heartbeats instead of sprints which are 6 weeks long but with a last 7th week dedicated to training and leadership lunches
• Work outside of work to skill up (extracurricular) and give the opportunity for people to prove themselves in a new role.  But they have to prove themselves first as it can be too dangerous to train them in the production pipeline
• Classes between projects instead of sprints
• 1st Wednesday of each month as a training day where people can work on an area unrelated to their job and projects if they like.  If unavailable in a certain month, days in lieu but the expectation and time block is set.

Managing Passion and Emotions

• If working remotely, talk face-to-face or in a call if things start to get heated
• Keep the team grounded in the project’s needs, goals, and scope; “That’s great, but…”
• Start with and agree on (come back to) facts, “what’s the goal here?”

Managing Toxicity or things becoming personal

• Soft skills
• Sit aside and talk together about how talking like that is not productive
• If it continues - HR
• Letting go of toxic or un-self-aware or hero people can be a net gain for the team
• Give everyone a chance to voice their opinions, quiet people can be accidentally pushed out of the conversation
• “Why are you frustrated?” “Why do you think the other person is frustrated?” Reframe perspective
• “Are you serving yourself or the project?
• Catch ups once every 2 weeks 1-on-1
• Let people have their emotions away from the team and then when they give feedback, reframe it always to the pillars/goals

Managing Introverts

• Take the introverts aside and hear their views first to warm team up and then in the meeting “I was talking to X about this and they have a really good idea about this” - put them on the spot a little, but give them a chance to warm up 
• Remind people they can come to you after the meeting and it’ll be taken into account, leave that door open
• Try to uncover why they’re shy.  Are they uncomfortable around someone or just socially anxious
• Company team building / getting coffee
• It takes time, proper culture, they need to see it’s safe to come out of their shell

Managing mixed directions from management

• Broadcast to people (about the thrash) who can affect change
• It takes time to change
• CEOs are kept in the ivory tower for a reason
• Try to communicate upwards that this confuses, causes anxiety and thrash and that it can throw spanners in the works (make things worse, reduce productivity)
• Don’t waste teams production time in unnecessary meetings (clear agendas and broadcast “Who do I need to tell?”)

Managing Leads

• Once a week leads discuss problems / research ideas / team management to be a team and help each other develop their management skills
• Shadow another lead to grow organically
• 1-on-1 to discuss strengths and weaknesses early and to discuss direction
• Iterate that failure at the role is okay and that we’ll find something that works for them together
• Specialist vs. Leadership track to help eliminate want to be leads and still have a path for growth without having to become a lead (if unsuitable for it)
• Provide job description (expectations developed with HR) to provide clear expectations of what being a lead is

 Managing Retention

• Do they want advancement or more money?  Decouple advancement from compensation because titles come with new expectations and tasks.

 Hiring Diversity

• Diverse interviewers
• Wording the ad to encourage other people to apply 

Managing Meetings

• Blocking in time blocks for meetings to take place in; Tuesday/Thursday afternoons
• One dedicated meeting free day per week (Wednesday)
• Block out areas on your own calendar for producers to respect and schedule around
• “What kind of meeting is it?  Who are the key stakeholders? Agenda?  Desired outcomes?”
• Shared with producers and directors, clear meeting plans will aid “who do I need to tell” and having the right attendees and goals
• Block off time for leads and directors where the teams know they won’t be in meetings and can be around to help the team.
• Book - Death by Meeting
• Color coding meetings
• Green - In depth, detailed
• Yellow - More high level, etc.
• Using DiSC and having team post up type of communication on desk so people know how to best talk to them
• What kind of decisions does the director have to be in on?  Which can be trusted to the artist / people in the field?
• More on personality color coding using lego bricks on desk in order of communication method
• MBTI personality test
• Basecamp - Art management tool
• Delegating, having shadows and leads to stop spreading too thin “Who is the best person to be solving this problem” and build that relationship with them
• Frequently asked or sought advice to question if you need a cheat sheet or your style guide is missing something.  Is this a reaction or something I can do to support my team’s independence - tutorial videos + wiki
• Losing credibility as an artist?  Swap one project as a lead and the next as a senior/principal

 

Managing time investment in the work

• A scale of quality.  A brick wall: “We need this to be a 3” (out of 10)
• Not every asset has to be awesome and giving a metric can help know how much detail needs to go into each asset
• Not everything needs to be a hero piece, and in fact needs to be generic

Managing critique

• Positive reinforcement, no shame, no blame
• Team effort to work through productivity and goal behind critiquing work

Managing toxicity

• Official warning
• Toxicity is very quick and easy to spread, but positivity is hard to cultivate
• Re enforce and solidify company values and ideal culture
• Emphasize and spend a lot of time in hiring to find fits who aren’t just hard-skilled
• Quantify it money-wise, a toxic person affecting 10 people’s productivity will cost more money
• Two types of toxic people
• Openly toxic and Charismatic toxic
• Charismatic toxic is bad for the company, but bring people into the team
• More actively separate yourself, refuse to work with them and cut them out of your team
• “You can want to manage and put up with them, but I do not.”
• When firing charismatic toxic people and to not look like you’re firing them for speaking their mind:  “I can’t go into why we’re firing them, because we have to respect their privacy, but here are our company values and so long as you are in line with these, you are welcome and safe to keep working here.”
• Do reviews with your team about new members during probation