A few weeks ago was the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. GDC is where a bajillion (I think that’s the official figure) people talk about games for a week, and we get full of knowledge, tons of new contacts, inspired and tired. I was fortunate enough to give a talk at this conference called “Tough Questions To Improve Your Leadership”, which is available on the GDC Vault here, but unfortunately it’s not made available to people who didn’t get a GDC pass.

I wanted to write about this talk because not everyone was able to attend the talk, or went to GDC, or has access to the Vault. I gave out a handout during the talk to follow along with, and it listed the questions I brought up in my talk. Here they are, and you can download the sheet here if you wanted to actually fill it out yourself or with your team.

Along with these questions are some of the sources I used, or keywords to search that are related to the questions and could help you learn more.

—

Are you your own worst boss? How could you improve your own leadership by improving how you take care of yourself?
Seth Godin blog post – “Are You Your Own Worst Boss”

How do you make your employees or colleagues feel like they’re appreciated, heard and empowered?
For this question, I asked the audience to break up into groups and discuss this with the people around them, then write down those answers.

How much cognitive diversity does your team have? How can you promote that?Cognitive Diversity Harvard Business Review
Cognitive Diversity Forbes Article
Six Thinking Hats Exercise

How much psychological safety does your team have? How can you promote that?Psychological Safety Harvard Business Review
Psychological Safety Google Study
Cognitive Diversity and Psychological Safety HBR

Are you the rock? Are you the static, immovable force that doesn’t sway in the face of opposition? Do you show vulnerability? Can you be both? How do you see yourself on this topic?
The Power of Vulnerability – TED Talk by Brené Brown

Do you fall prey to the Sunk Cost Fallacy?
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast & Slow (book)
“How We Think About How We Think” – about Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky
Sunk Cost Fallacy, Loss Aversion, Prospect Theory

Do you ever do things because of your role and not because of your knowledge or expertise?

Do you ignore statistics because you think you’re “different”?
Justin Kruger and David Dunning – “Unskilled and Unaware of it”
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Daniel Kahneman – Superiority Bias & Planning Fallacy

Do you reward extroversion over introversion?
TED Talk by Susan Cain – The Power of Introverts

What project management tips could you learn from other studios?
For this question, I asked the audience to trade papers with the person next to them and write an idea on the other person’s sheet.

Do you fill the space in meetings? Try not doing it, see what happens.

Does your team know where do you want to be as an individual in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? Do you know where they want to be?

How adaptable is your organization? Have you ever answered “that’s just how we do it here” or worse, “that’s how we’ve always done it” when asked about something you do in your company?
Adaptability

How effectively is “work time” used at your studio? When are people at their most productive? How do you help or hinder this?

Do you know the quality of the tasks you’re doing, assigning, or being assigned? Do you know which tasks are “chores”?

Do you communicate your vision or your feelings properly to your team?

Have you considered the unknown unknowns? How do you plan for those?
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast & Slow (book)

Do you give advice that you shouldn’t give?
Source: literally everywhere, myself included.

—

The talk went really well, and I was really happy to see a full room. In fact, I was expecting it to be a smaller room and not full, and it was way bigger than expected! I’m not sure if people came because it was part of the Producer Bootcamp sessions or because of the content of the talk, but I’ll take it, whatever it was. It was also the first time I was speaking alone on such a big stage in the games industry. Last year I did a talk with the lovely Tanya Short, which you can see on the GDC Vault if you have access.

I’m just realizing now that every video ever posted or to be posted of me giving talks will show me in a t-shirt with an animal on it from our game, Ultimate Chicken Horse. I guess I should just make sure to rotate through them often enough…

I’m looking forward to more talks in the future, and I hope that the talk and/or this article was able to help people on their journey, be it in game development or any other industry.

—

Bonus! Some other stuff I drew inspiration from but didn’t use directly:
Seth Godin on the Tim Ferriss podcast
Alex Dorans – 5 Signs That You’re Compromising Your Approach to Quality
Brené Brown on the Chase Jarvis podcast

A good friend of mine asked me this question today, on my 30th birthday. Still weird to write that I’m 30, especially when I often feel 12. But this question was an interesting one, and while I can’t know exactly what I was thinking, I have some idea of what I expected and didn’t expect. It’s a nice thought to ponder, and I encourage you to ponder it.

I didn’t expect to be working in the games industry, co-founding a company, or doing any work related to running a business at all. At 20, I would have been in cégep (the school we have here in Quebec between high school and university) and just switching out of music and into sciences. My goal at that point was to become an architect, to design work and living spaces that affected people on a daily basis, without their knowledge of it. The dream of creating a universe in which a person can explore and go about their daily life, the idea that each person who connects with this world I’ve created will have a different reaction to it… this was what I really liked about architecture. After that description, it shouldn’t surprise anyone (myself included) that I ended up in video games.

At 20, I thought that meditation and mindfulness and subjectivity of experience was too spiritual and hippie-dippie for me. I’m certainly not what you’d call a “spiritual” person now, and science is still the absolute only thing that I try to use to describe our experience in this world, but I think that I’m connected with myself in a way that I never could have been ten years ago. In fact, I think all of that has happened in the last year or so, thanks to some great people around me.

I would have thought that by now I would be married, and maybe thinking about children. I didn’t imagine some perfect suburban house somewhere with a backyard and a white picket fence—I always assumed I’d be living in a smaller space, closer to downtown. But I did picture myself married like my brother was a few years back. While we’re on the topic of homes and families, I didn’t picture myself owning a condo, but hey here we are. Here I am, I guess. Hopefully you’re not here in my condo right now.

Overall, I didn’t think that I would be in the spot that I’m in, and I’m extremely grateful for it. I also know now that if I were still my 20 year old self, I wouldn’t have the capacity to be grateful for it, because I didn’t unlock that part of life (that part of the brain?) yet. Besides being happy that I’ve made it 30 years on this earth without any major diseases, without any traumatic injuries, and without, well, dying (knock on wood), I’m also happy with how I’ve changed over the last ten years. I think if you asked my friends, I wouldn’t be noticeably different from how I was ten years ago, and that’s fine. Under the hood there’s more going on, and I’m glad for it.

How about you? What did ten-years-ago you think that you’d be like ten years in the future?