Tough Questions to Improve Your Leadership

A few weeks ago, at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to give a talk called “Tough Questions To Improve Your Leadership”, which is available on the GDC Vault here. 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. The original post appears on my website.

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.

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.

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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.

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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. Feel free to comment or reach out to me if you have questions! :)

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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