Concrete Practices to Be a Better Leader: Framing & Intention

In this 2012 GDC session, Bungie's Brian Sharp presents a talk about leading well by doing two things: communicating effectively and maintaining perspective, to help new leaders and old alike.
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[@IDontDoDrumCovers]

talks like this are good because they arent about video game making, but will help you in video game making and also poersonal life

[@lindersi]

Holy Shit. Is my draft response after consuming this piece of art.

[@i.r.weasel7042]

gonna have to watch this again, very good.

[@zettovyker]

"It takes craft to make art. It takes skill with any medium in any tool set to make something beautiful, and communication is a craft like any other in any way - except for one. In craft and in art, we are accustomed to being crafts people and the artist, but in the human relationship we are also the medium." Excuse me: I need to email this person because I want to meet them at GDC.

[@IsaacJoshi]

If you are lucky enough to find this gem, make sure you absorb every word.

[@almaskussembayev8972]

This is a revelation!

[@omegablast2002]

excellent talk

[@larto42]

wow! that's soooo good!

[@homeworkace2370]

If I could gild this I would already!

[@kyecaven]

The Asian Disease Problem sure aged poorly huh?

[@helloofthebeach]

First of all, this is a really good talk on leadership and, more to the point, communication. Even if you have no interest in leadership roles and will never see one, _everyone_ benefits from better communication skills, including people you're talking to who may not have them and including people you will never agree with on anything. That said, I have a couple of major criticisms. The first is that the game industry, as a whole, does not put these concepts into practice above the middle management level. Working conditions are notoriously awful in the AAA industry due to terrible leadership from the top by people who have no interest in the long term success of the company. (If the company collapses, the CEO has his money and will quickly find a perch in some other industry. Meanwhile, everyone below the C-level will be out of a job.) The typical game dev working in the AAA space lasts about six years before they can't take it anymore and leave for another industry. And frankly this talk, being from 2012, is very outdated. The recent layoffs at Activision are solid proof that many large game companies _do not_ care about their employees, not only as individuals but as _people who produce things for the company._ Telltale went out of business only three months ago and screwed over 90% of their workforce for no reason. The managers who stand most to gain from this talk are just as vulnerable to this as the people who work for them. If you look high enough above you on the org chart, someone up there does not respect you and there's nothing you can do about it. The second is that while the methods he describes for changing an irrational manager's perceptions of you are basically on point, they also assume that said manager can be persuaded. This is not always possible. If you're a woman or a person who isn't white (or occasionally East Asian, but good luck), that person may be actually impossible to persuade. Women who take this advice and write the exact same emails as their male counterparts always risk being read in a purely negative way because this manager will see them not only as their junior but as a woman. Changing that manager's mind under those circumstances is often, at best, a lost cause and, at worst, an active risk to one's whole career. (Dear Peterson fanboys: _You are the irrational manager._ If the irrational manager realized he was irrational, he would knock it off, and so it is with you. Dunning-Kruger ahoy.) Again, this was a very, very good talk and I'm absolutely going to come back to it for another watch in the future. Everything he said is entirely correct. This is a jam packed 48 minutes and I'm sure there's a lot of other things he would have liked to address if he'd had more time, but these caveats are huge and it's a disservice to not know they're there.

[@SidKid-lt2ek]

So ummmmmm...... THIS didn't age well 3:30

[@nintendude794]

Correction: it aged PERFECTLY :D

[@vagizz]

But ultimately good manners and common sense should sufice :D

[@NicolasLeclerc]

This guy trying very hard to explain why treating people like tools is a good thing... 🤦

[@analytixna6610]

It's more about understanding what your actions do and how you frame things can affect a relationship's dynamics.

[@fyrefly6631]

Fact is that people are doing this stuff all the time around you, except mostly sub-consciously - they've learned that certain strategies work naturally over time and use it to manipulate people. We would view that is coming naturally or being genuine, but its really no different, the tactics are the same and the results are the same. But if someone steps back, figured it out, and applies it intellectually we seem to have a real problem with it. Why is that?

[@nintendude794]

Either you didn’t finish the talk or you missed the point.

[@i-heart-google7132]

This was like listening to a San Francisco college professor reading poetry in a night club...in other words: BORING.