How to effectively lead leaders in game development
Criterion's Charity Joy shares her experience and provides strategies in effectively overseeing managers
At Develop Brighton last month, Criterion general manager Charity Joy gave a talk on the art of leading people who are themselves managing other leaders, sharing the tools she's picked up along the way in her career in game development.
Joy emphasised the importance of curiosity, trust, and clear communication when it comes to supporting managers, and provided strategies for delivering effective feedback and aligning people across an organisation – especially when guiding people in areas of expertise you may not otherwise have.
Curiosity
Having a curious nature and the ability to be open and ask questions is important when you're leading leaders. But Joy noted that a "sense of knowing" can get in the way of this curiosity.
"We bring expertise and experience to our roles, so there's a lot of things we know," she explained. "The problem with 'knowing' is that it's closed off from learning. And when you 'know', it's dangerous when it comes to leading people who have different expertise than yourself, and it closes you off to opportunities to understand."
Joy encouraged finding peace with not knowing, and feeling comfortable with not being the expert in the room.
"It's okay that you don't know – in fact, it can be really fun not to know because then you actually get to be curious," she highlighted. "There is a joy in finding out, and the main tool of curiosity is the tool of asking."
"There is a joy in finding out, and the main tool of curiosity is the tool of asking"
The ability to ask questions as leaders is crucial, specifically being able to ask things in certain ways to get the best out of your team.
"[In asking a question], you should find out what is below the surface and be open to what you might find," Joy said. "If you're truly curious when asking a question, you might be surprised, and surprise is good. You might also not like the answer, and that's okay too. If you don't, you can ask more questions.
"Getting curious about the people around you is getting curious about ourselves," she added. "This is an integral skill when you're leading leaders."
And when you're asked questions as a leader, give yourself a moment to pause and reflect before providing an answer.
"Even if you think you know the answer, go a little deeper, see if there's a nuance there so that the answer you're giving is thoughtful, helpful, appropriate, and not a monologue."
Communication
Joy emphasised the need for vision alignment and clear communication when leading leaders, and that there is an innate power in clear and simple messaging to maintain consistency across a team.
"The reality, especially in leadership, is that when we are confused at the top, that confusion is magnified down," she noted. "If there is no clarity at the leadership level, there is no clarity at the team level."
"If there is no clarity at the leadership level, there is no clarity at the team level"
Joy highlighted a trap that managers may often fall into – believing that the people they're overseeing are experts in their particular field who know what they're talking about and shouldn't need guidance.
The other side of this coin, she said, is to avoid sharing bad news with your team because you think they can't handle it.
"We might think that is empathy, but we're actually making a judgement call on the maturity of our team and their ability to manage their own emotions," Joy explained.
"Thinking that you know what people should know, or that you know how people are going to react, puts yourself in an elevated position in not knowing where you belong. It also robs you of the ability to understand what your team will do, how they will react, what they will say."
It all comes back to having the ability to step back and put trust in your team, to pause and reflect.
Coaching
Coaching is an important aspect of leading people for Joy, especially in the ability to provide impartial support.
"Your role as a coach is to ask questions, to provide frameworks, to guide them on a journey of discovering what those answers might be and what might work best for them," she explained.
According to Joy, it's much simpler to coach someone outside of your area of expertise. She took Criterion's head of technology as an example.
"I can't give them advice on anything technological, but I can coach, I can ask questions," she said. "If it's something I do know, it's more dangerous because I'll start to get into [this headspace of], 'Well, this is what I would have done'."
Joy emphasised that coaching is all about facilitating and providing support, and fostering the "belief that the person in front of you actually has the right answers."
Facilitation
As a manager, you should aim to be a good facilitator, Joy said, and a major aspect of this is knowing when to lead and when to follow.
"There will be times when you want to intentionally step back and follow," Joy noted. "Sometimes the best way to allow [your team] to shine is to get out of their way."
"Give [your team] the space to be heard, and give yourself the space to be surprised"
As a facilitator, Joy suggested that managers should speak last but should also "elicit ideas" from the rest of the group, not dominate the conversation, and, "not give their own opinion, but get the rest of the team to give theirs."
"There will be times when you want to intentionally step back and follow, and we talk a lot about what it means to be a good leader when we're in leadership positions."
Joy added: "At the end of the day, you're probably going to be the one making the decision, so don't rush the inevitable. If it's harebrained and you hate it, you can change it. But give them the space to be heard, and give yourself the space to be surprised."
Trust
Trust is key in any workplace, but discerning why you may not trust an individual can be difficult. As a result, Joy built a framework that she uses while leading her leadership team to make it easier to fix an underlying issue.
This framework revolves around three pillars: capability, reliability, and motive.
"I encourage my teams to use this if they have an issue with a stakeholder or a team member and ask, 'What is it about this person that you're struggling with? Is it something in their capability, reliability, or motive?' When we break it down like that, it makes it easier to have a conversation and go in and fix the issue," she explained.
Joy also encourages her team to use this framework in the feedback they receive, and to consider how they are being perceived as an avenue of self-reflection.
Trust can also be utilised to speed processes up within an organisation. Joy noted how there are often "big laws and little laws" within companies, with big laws being overarching principles such as being on time and staying on budget.
But when a big law is broken, little laws are added in an attempt to avoid the issue from happening again, which can slow everything down.
For example, if a team is off budget, smaller checkpoints may be put in place such as more forecast reviews and meetings.
"It seems like the solution to so many things in our organisations and teams is to add another meeting or process," Joy said. "But is that really what's going to solve the issue, to increase the speed and trust?"
Instead, she suggested that subtracting these little laws instead of adding processes will increase the efficiency and trust within an organisation.
Consistency
Joy emphasised that consistency and authenticity is key in guiding managers, as it builds trust and reliability.
"We can choose who we want to be and how we want to show up," Joy said. "As you are leading leaders, you should be intentional about what that is."
She added that those directing leaders can "often get caught up in the doing" rather than thinking about how they are presenting themselves, such as being clear, trustworthy, reliable, and consistent. For Joy, it's all about reminding yourself of who you are being so that it can lead into action.
"Through every change, promotion, pivot in your team, and every phase of your project, it might require that you as a leader show up differently"
Joy recommended asking yourself who you should be and who your team needs you to be in a given moment.
"Through every change, promotion, pivot in your team, and every phase of your project, it might require that you as a leader show up differently, and that's okay. As long as you are cognisant and intentional about how you are showing up."
As is the case with any craft, the key to maintaining consistency is practice.
"We have to practice so that we are showing up in the way that we want to show up, that we are setting the tone and the way we want to set the tone, that we are uplifting and supporting our leaders in the way that we want to do that," Joy said.
Joy suggested two ways of doing this – by utilising mantras and "I am" statements. For example, one of her mantras is "my mood is not my master."
"When I walk into a meeting room, I reset," she explained. "I plant myself cues to get out of my head, get into my body and be in this room."
As for "I am" statements, they can be as simple as: "I am a coach, I am a facilitator, I am a great supporter of my team."
"It's through this taking on of the being that my doing can come, and it's such a good reminder for me," Joy concluded. "Is it perfect? No, it's a practice, it's a continuous evolution."