Tag: gamedev

Leadership Styles and How to Put Them into Practice [Roundtable Notes]

Hi friends!

I organized another series of leadership roundtables through Game Dev MTL this past summer, and wanted to share the notes here. This is article 1/3, others will be posted soon! I learned a lot from the session, hopefully these notes will help you learn too!

Leadership vs Management?

Pretty quickly after the round-table started, it was brought to my attention that what I wrote as “leadership styles” might actually be management styles, according to two folks who studied management who were in the roundtable. We discussed the differences:

  • Leadership: how you influence people, how you inspire people to do the things you / the company needs
  • Management: the logistical aspects of running a team, how things get done

Of course there’s a lot of overlap, and a lot of folks who run (especially small) studios are leaders and managers. But the best leaders are not always managers, and the best managers are not always leaders.

The most common leadership styles were talked about through a variety of personality tests and leadership tests which are discussed in the sections below and the resources sections.


Leadership Styles

To read about all of the leadership styles discussed and their descriptions, see the appendix section below. Note that none of these leadership styles are “good” or “bad”, and we dismissed any styles which were outright negative. For example, “autocratic” is usually seen as dictatorial and therefore negative, but calling this style “commanding” (and with the definition given on the Miro board) this has a different connotation. As mentioned, these might be more management styles than leadership styles, a distinction I didn’t make before the session.

Some notes on adapting your leadership style:


Setting Expectations about your Leadership/Management Style

We talked about how you communicate your leadership/management style to your team, and when this takes place.


Personality Tests

We talked about personality tests when discussing the different leadership styles, see the resources section for links.


Other Important Notes

We discussed leadership in general and some of our struggles and successes. Some common themes came up, especially around setting boundaries for what a leader or manager should be responsible for—it’s important to be empathetic, respect your employees and give them every chance to succeed while accommodating them as much as possible. But at the same time they need to be doing their work and you’re not responsible for being their therapist or their friend.

Hope this was helpful! Give me a follow on BlueSky or LinkedIn to see more posts like this and other game dev leadership stuff!

Resources & Further Reading

Appendix — Leadership Styles Discussed

Here are the leadership styles shared before the talk:

👑 Commanding / Autocratic

  • Description:
    • The leader makes sets clear goals and objectives that they expect others to follow.
  • Application:
    • Useful in crisis situations where quick decisions are needed.
    • May be effective with small teams or during critical phases of development
    • Risk of stifling creativity and reducing team morale if overused.

🙋‍♀️ Democratic / Participative

  • Description:
    • Decisions are made based on team input and consensus.
  • Application:
    • Encourages team involvement and fosters creativity, essential for game design and development.
    • Effective for medium to large teams where diverse ideas can enhance the project.
    • Can be time-consuming, potentially slowing down decision-making.

🧛‍♀️ Delegative / Laissez-Faire

  • Description:
    • Leaders provide minimal supervision and allow team members to make decisions.
  • Application:
    • Works well with highly skilled and experienced teams who require little oversight.
    • Encourages innovation and personal responsibility, often leading to creative game development.
    • Risks include lack of direction and potential for underperformance if team members are not self-motivated.

💁‍♂️ Servant

  • Description:
    • Leaders prioritize the needs of the team and focus on their development and well-being.
  • Application:
    • Fosters a supportive and collaborative environment, essential for team cohesion.
    • Promotes trust and respect, leading to high team morale and loyalty.
    • Can be challenging to balance with the need for decisive leadership in fast-paced game development environments.

🤝 Transactional

  • Description:
    • Focuses on the role of supervision, organization, and group performance; rewards and punishments are used to motivate.
  • Application:
    • Suitable for meeting deadlines and achieving specific project goals.
    • Can be effective in large teams where structure and clear objectives are necessary.
    • May limit creativity if not balanced with opportunities for innovation.

🏗 Transformational (Similar to Coaching)

  • Description:
    • Leaders inspire and motivate team members to exceed their own self-interests for the good of the team and project.
  • Application:
    • Ideal for inspiring creativity and innovation, crucial in the gaming industry.
    • Can help build a strong company culture and high levels of team engagement.
    • Requires leaders to be charismatic and supportive, which might be challenging for some.

🤼 Affiliative (Relational)

  • Description:
    • Relationship-focused style with an aim of creating harmony on the team.
  • Application:
    • Creating new teams.
    • Working in situations that require a lot of trust.
    • Can create emotional dependence on the leader.
    • Can bring about unclear goals or roles, leading to less efficiency.

👩‍🎤 Visionary (Similar to Pace-Setting)

  • Description:
    • Leaders articulate a clear vision and direction, inspiring and guiding the team towards long-term goals.
  • Application:
    • Essential for setting a compelling direction for game development projects.
    • Motivates teams by providing a sense of purpose and alignment with company goals.
    • Needs strong communication skills to ensure the vision is effectively conveyed and embraced.

How to Interact With Us: Onboarding Tool to Facilitate Communication

Team communication issues often come from differences in how people communicate and how people want to be communicated with. This can be cultural, personal preference, or forged by previous work experience. Either way, every team member has specific ways that they like to interact, receive feedback, and collaborate on tasks.

When discussing our approach to communication at Clever Endeavour Games, other leaders often ask for details, so I thought I’d share that here.

What we do at Clever Endeavor is that we have a form called How to Interact With Us that all employees fill in at the beginning of their employment. When a new employee joins, everybody on the team updates their own How to Interact With Us page and also reads everyone else’s page. This is not only for managers! It’s important that anyone who will be working together understands the quirks of their colleagues, and it helps to accelerate this process to avoid miscommunication and frustrations.

Even when we don’t have new employees, we do this once a year anyway, because things change from year to year in terms of how people want to be interacted with. The form includes these questions:

  • Conditions I like to work In
  • The times / hours I like to work
  • The best ways to communicate with me
  • The ways I like to receive feedback
  • Things I need
  • Things I struggle with
  • Things I love
  • Other things to know about me

I’ll give a couple of examples of my own answers:

Best ways to communicate with me: “Ping me on Discord. Ideally, ping me in an open channel so that people see the conversations we’re having so that it promotes more of a culture of constant communication.”

Things I struggle with: “The balance between micro-managing and not giving enough direction. I don’t want to have my hands in everyone’s work but also want to make sure everyone’s working toward the same goal and has motivation in their work.”

From one of my employees—The hours I like to work: “It depends on the day. Lately I’ve been working late mornings – late evening, but I am sometimes up early mornings to afternoon.”

Some of these are somewhat “easy”—enjoying working early in the morning, preferring focused time in the afternoon, whether they like to get feedback in open channels or direct messages, etc. But I’ve also had examples in the past where someone has said that they can sometimes get distracted on video calls because of their ADHD and therefore I shouldn’t feel bad to call their attention to the discussion if I see them drifting. Had I not known that, I might have assumed that their wandering attention was because they were bored, not checked in, or not motivated.

In general, it’s important to communicate differently with each person on the team whether you’re a manager any other team member, and tools like this can help you encourage effective communication. Highly recommend!

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❤
Rich