How to Make Games and Influence People: Leading Your Team Effectively and Healthily

[Music] my name is dr. Jennifer hazel I've been a medical doctor for about eight years I studied and practiced in the UK and I moved to Australia to practice emergency medicine and now I live in New Zealand I co-founded checkpoint to provide mental health resources for the gaming community and we exist to raise awareness to reduce stigma and to create and distribute important mental health services to those in need within the gaming community itself and you can find out more at chip point or calm as a Kiwi organization I do want to take just a very quick moment to extend my soror and regret for what has happened in Christchurch over the last few days thank you for also doing so so we're going to talk about models of team effectiveness and the title of this talk

is how to make games and influence people leading your team effectively and healthily which is a mouthful and in on reflection could have just been said by saying how to be an indie leader but I decided I wanted to be clever and for some reason in this summit let me run with that saying thank you so much for allowing my my my neurotic personality independent game development it's an odd beast it's different to not only the rest of game development as an industry but other industries in the world the different models and psychological profiles that we kind of fit ourselves into in other industries are kind of gone and replaced by something a bit more ad-hoc a bit more on-the-go hierarchies are a bit flatter and everyone is in more intimate intense contact with one another so the

traditional models if you were just to decide to go and Google some of them you would get about five gazillion of these models of team effectiveness and most of them become completely redundant to you as Indies because I mean and as you can see triangles are definitely a core thing but they all involve different concepts and they're worded in different ways so here we have and I'm just going to pop over here to actually read the names got the Reuben Club Nick and fries GRP I modeled team effectiveness the chasms bark and Smith model the t7 model the LA Fastow and Larsen model Hackman model of team effectiveness that had the word modeling twice I just want to point out they really wanted to go for that and then the lens hyoni model so I thought screw that I went through every single one and I note it down in a spreadsheet what things concepts important take-home messages each of these psychological

models were giving and I sallied them up and put them in a handy nifty graph for you so there are a few things that were consistent amongst every single model there is a very clear theme of interpersonal relationships being exceptionally important in leadership and work dynamics and what I thought would be the most helpful to you instead of me standing up here and kind of preaching wax poetic about the psychological concepts was to make it real to give you examples that you can actually identify with from people that you respect and who are seen as leaders of of the indie community talk to them find out what they say about leadership and leading a team effectively and then relate that back to the real data so that's what I did and we'll start with our good friend Ryan Clark who introduced you to this

talk Ryan was really kind to talk to me about what he felt were the top three ethical leadership tips and there I summarized the first paragraph in just this very short sentence but design a company that plays to the strengths of the team what Ryan actually said was the game design and team leadership a lot in common with one another when you design and test a game you need to be simulating thousands or millions of people in your mind and trying to anticipate what they would be experiencing if they were playing your game you can't just play it as yourself because you would only optimize it for your own enjoyment and as a team leader you can't just pay attention to what you want the things that make you happy you have to design your team as though it was like a game project and I thought it

was really interesting though Ryan said that he was designing a company that plays to the strengths of the team instead of the other way around designing the studio based on the individuals strengths and weaknesses within that studio there was an aspect of fairness equity and reward Ryan said that at byg we share profits and have fair wages because we think that's the right thing to do and there was also this really awesome sentence that I will be using again and again in the future I think there are two sides to every statement what the speaker intended and what the hearer understood ideally the two are not I didn't bet sorry ideally the two are identical but usually they're not and really that is feeding back into that interpersonal communication and the interpersonal relationships part of these models is being able to understand how

communication effects each individual in the team on a day to day basis and of course when your co-workers feel like your teammates rather than your underlings the results are better for everybody involved so if we go back to that graph what Ryan has hit on is interpersonal relationships organizational factors accountability roles and reward and what I'm going to do now is actually reframe those tips which were practical on the floor examples into psychological concepts and explain why that's happening why it's important to know whenever we're managing interaction between two or more individuals whether it be a colleague a loved one or a stranger in the street the person doing your checkout at the grocery store no matter who it is every engagement and every interaction between two people is

a negotiation each person coming into that interaction has a need they would like that need to be met sometimes those two needs don't necessarily fit together and it's important when you're in that interaction to be mindful what is the other person's need what need are they bringing to this interaction what is my need and how can I best satisfy both of those things even if that might conflict with one another there's ways that we can start to think about how to do that one of them is a concept that we use in psychoanalysis which is called transactional analysis and that is the concept that in a two-person interaction both people are taking one of three stances they're either the adult the parent or the child now that doesn't

mean literally obviously it doesn't mean that you have to be a parent to understand or you have to have a child you don't you're not regressing in that interaction but what this represents is our frame of mind because during this interaction we're unlocking a part of us usually subconsciously that is reliving or replaying a past experience two adults talking to one another are both in the here and now they are both having an interaction based on objective fact without a significant amount of emotional weight and it's something that is relevant to their present situation they understand each other's needs and are negotiating away forward a parent is the authoritarian stance where someone so you will do this and if you do it good you get rewards if you do it badly you get punishment and

the child can either go into a rebellious or submissive phase and so the child responds well I don't want to do that or okay so I'll do whatever you want we may start an interaction adult adult one person may have a vulnerability due to a variety of factors that often we're not aware of to go into a child state and in response the other person then has to make a decision well am I going to stay as an adult and try to elevate that person back to adult or am i going to go into the parent stage where we're not actually going to achieve anything because we're not having a grown-up communication anymore we're having a maladaptive interaction when we become aware of these things we can design a model our interpersonal interactions to fit what we want out of the situation in a way that gets everybody's needs met another model of doing that is called information manipulation theory which essentially is

the concept of only disclosing what is relevant and within the person's capacity to understand so when you're in a position of leadership transparency becomes a bit blurry you're sharing information that is relevant and your hold withholding information that could be harmful so these two models together you can use in order to design your interpersonal relationships as a leader not only with members of your team but with people who are on the same level as you you can also model those interactions to people that are within the team when they're talking to each other these are two acronyms that have come from dialectical behavioral therapy and if you take a picture of a slide take a picture at this one because there's a lot of information on it there are two models that teach us remind us in the moment how to communicate effectively in a way that meets the

needs of both parties involved especially when the subject matter is different a difficult so the dear man acronym reminds us to describe our current situation objectively to express our feelings or opinions about that situation and assert what we are wanting what our needs are that might mean saying no I need might be no I cannot achieve this thing that you're asking me to achieve we then reward the person for cooperating or I guess cooperating was not the best word but for interacting in a way that's mutually beneficial by letting them know what they're going to get out of that negotiation and be mindful of your object objectives without being distracted and distracted or things like broken record techniques when someone isn't absorbing the information and so they're saying the same thing over and over again hoping to get a different response bringing it back to the present appearing effective and competent even when you don't feel effective and competent and so that's why I was in a

hotel for five hours yesterday practicing this talk so even if I don't feel like I know what I'm talking about if enough I don't feel ready there's a muscle memory there that's just doing it regardless practice talk to the mirror talk to your partner role play it's really really good really effective and negotiate alternate solutions the build model is specifically was designed to deal with conflict in the workplace particularly allegations of bullying and harassment so this is really really good model to use if you're in a leadership position you're having to deal with a team complaint or conflict between two members of your crew so be is labeling their behavior not the person so it's not the person that is bad the behavior was the thing that was undesirable show that you understand why they did it in the context of the situation and explain to them the impact that that behavior had listen to their point of

view and offer a different solution what could they do differently next time I spoke to Emmerich and Annie's current CEO of made a previously founder and CEO of opaque space he told me that leadership is a form of service that the leaders role is to remove any barriers that exist to the employee achieving their full potential that hit a number of these concepts again this graph will be coming up a lot that's relevant to goals to organizational factors to leadership as an important concept to accountability and procedures and I also spoke to an incredible incredible woman from New Zealand called Zoe Hobson who's the managing director of Rana a play Zoe actually got the prime minister of New Zealand to come to their studio to talk about video games and she was able to

convince the prime minister of New Zealand that video games are an awesome and valid medium worth investing in so basically my hero she said that you should surround yourself with great people whose skills complement yours and trust them she got a tip from the previous director of run away called Tim she says it's South simple but care about your people believe and treat people like you are lucky to have them not that they are lucky to have a job at your company and that also ties in was something that Ryan said about not saying that people are his team it's not my programmer it's not my artist they're all part of the same team and no one belongs to somebody else transparency be honest and open with the people you lead and they will be honest and open in return Zoe hit on again interpersonal

relationships this is something that every single person consistently brought up trust skills and commitment and what both Zoe and Emory were describing was an ethical leadership model within this model you have the light blue in the middle at the bottom there is the team and the goal is that they feel safe supported competent and motivated they want to be able to come to work to know that they're doing job to be rewarded and fulfilled by that job and to know that there's a future in it and there's a way of helping them to achieve that which of course increases productivity this means surrounding them in containment surrounding them in things that keep them safe that keep them motivated and making sure that that's pervasive throughout the culture of the studio so accountability and trust being that big overarching theme you have to

be being made accountable for not only what you're doing but what the team is doing as well if there is a problem happening that's your responsibility as the leader the performance of the team is a product of their environment and you shape the environment that might require a bit of rejigging of your perspective about what makes a team functional if there's one problem person why is that is that they don't have the resources to do what they need to do is it that they were a bad cultural fit for the team and could your hiring processes be amended to actually account for that in the future it all comes back to a singular person or group of people taking whole accountability for everything that goes on in the team never shirking responsibility behavioral modeling is an enormous ly important concept that we do and are influenced by

constantly all day every day we have you ever had a friend and you spend so much time together that you start saying their little catchphrases you start like picking up words and things that they do and using it that's behavioral modeling you have taken what you liked about that person and integrated it into your own personality and character and we do that fluidly constantly all the time when you're in a leadership position everyone is looking to you to set the example you have to be the team you want to see that was a rhyme that I've made up on the fly and I'm quite proud of it be the team you want to see it's it's that thing about never punishing the behavior you want so the the example being the teenager who's moody and won't come to have dinner with the family boy staying in their bedroom the one day they come down to the dinner table and the mom or dad says well thanks for

joining us that's what the sarcasm and criticism of their good deed is not going to encourage them to do that again what this person has learned is well if I behave in this way I get punished but if I behave in this other way I also get punished so how do I win here be patient and tolerant be able to reward good behavior and instead of punishing behavior that you don't want to see reframe it remodel it and show the people in your team how to be that positive influence if you've got someone that's always complaining and whinging and bringing negativity to the team meetings or stand up every day take what they say invalidate say that's thank you for bringing that incredible insight I wonder if we could think about it in this way instead or I wonder could I provide you with this resource that might make it better and show that you're not engaging and you're not indulging in the complaining that you're

being productive and you're assisting you're giving them what you can other people will copy that they will they will take it they will copy it with each other and that's how you shape company culture it comes top-down and it has to because everybody looks up to ultimately one or small group of people at the end of the day and you are going to be what the team needs to become created transparency was a really interesting concept that Emory specifically said but it's going back to this concept from the interpersonal relationship of the information manipulation theory of only letting people know what they need to know but having a transparent process so if they come and ask you tell them or if it's appropriate in your company protocols and policies you tell them but you're withholding things that are going to cause them undue stress they don't need to know the nitty-gritty details of the publishing deal that's

not something that's going to help them by increasing their motivation that's just going to cause them stress and anxiety and what this is going back to is herzberg's motivation hygiene theory and I don't really like the word hygiene but apparently hygiene is job satisfaction and motivation is satisfaction and you would think that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are just opposites at the same but they're not so you can have a very satisfying job but still not like it because there are dissatisfying factors or you can have a job that is very dissatisfying but you still enjoy it because it has satisfaction they're the same thing but these two things are different so minimizing dissatisfaction is what Emory was saying about minimizing barriers that people have to be in their best self minimizing and removing any obstacles that someone has to being productive to being motivated and to doing what they need to do in the studio

and that's things like protecting them against discrimination and tackling the disadvantage that they might be seeing it's accommodating for the variety of things that happen in people's life that they just cannot control for and importantly having a mental health protocol now I just did a talk about mental illness representation the figure is between 25 and 50% of people have a mental health issue at some point in their life that's huge that's half your workforce have a mental health protocol if you don't know how to make one talk to us at checkpoint checkpoint or calm or at checkpoint org on Twitter or just email me I'll have a gazillion business cards we've got triple a model manuals which is our mental health protocol for studios and it's a self-care guide for developers just have it just think about it start thinking about it start that dialogue because if you're supporting people's mental health at work they're gonna feel safe they're gonna feel competent they're gonna feel like you care like give a basically what one

of my bosses when I was working the emergency department he was like like if I can't teach you anything else just give a that's all I want you to do just just give a maximizing satisfaction much easier maintaining goals and directions ensuring resources are available to the best of your ability giving responsibility and rewarding achievement now reward doesn't have to be financial it can't just be verbal validation just you did a good job can go so far with so many people you don't know whether they've never heard that before just tell people how good they're doing and they feel like they're doing good and then surprise surprise they want to do even better they want to keep going they want to continue getting that validation it's a simple thing but so easy to forget when you're stressed out finally I was thrilled to talk to Blake from league of geeks he was very kind to be able to give me some of his wisdom and knowledge Blake said have a set of principles that you and your studio

stand for and importantly understand why those your principles and why you stand by them always act speak right like you're being watched recorded or any other party can hear you there's only one path to the top of the mountain and it's not taking the low road always take the high road surround yourself with intelligent moral and caring people you are the some of the people you surround yourself with and you do have control over who you spend your time with so choose carefully Blake also gave me a list of bonus advice set healthy boundaries consider risk plan well government responsibility and never take advantage of anyone so again we're hitting things like organizational factors goals trust and importantly procedures and what Blake has touched on is a really awesome unified theory of leadership and the psychological

approach to leadership called transformational leadership theory now this is part of an overarching concept which is called full range leadership model and that includes two other models of leadership one is called that and excuse my French pronunciation the laissez-faire leadership and also transactional leadership now laissez-faire means do what you want literally that's what it means in French it's a model of leadership where the person who is in the leadership position instead of being in a democracy instead of saying well here are the options you choose there are no options everyone can just do whatever they want all the time so that's the very loose way of doing it transactional leadership is reward and Punishment so transactional being that parent-child model that we were talking about earlier and transformational

leadership is kind of renowned as being the most unified and important the most beneficial leadership model it enhances team motivation morale and job performance because essentially what you're doing is you're not creating a company you're not creating a team you're creating a collective of people that have a unified identity you're doing that as the leader you're helping people to find their individual place in a collective and your modeling to them what you feel that that collective should be essentially creating like you would design a game the studio that you want to work in you have the power to do that and to me that is really really cool I would really really really like

to thank League of geeks studio made a runaway play embrace yourself games for contributing to this talk as I say we have our self care guide for game developers here which is called the triple-a model you can find out more and find more mental health resources at checkpoint allcom this has been a whirlwind tour of leadership I hope it was helpful by applying some practical examples of studios that I personally respect from people that I think are the and bringing them to you and giving you the reasons why in Psychological models their advice works you have the power to do this you are gonna do great you are going to mold a model the teams around you and make awesome things with awesome people thank you for coming I very much appreciate your time

Thank You Jennifer we have a few minutes for questions if you'd like to ask you for a question please come to the mic in the aisle there and if no one else has one I will start things off no we do go ahead Hey hi how are you very well thank you great talk so with the models that you're talking about it feels very classical hierarchical type of model I guess with a lot of Indies and stuff like that I guess it's very much like either a band mentality or like you know a small group of people is there I guess models as well that kind of do this kind of pass a baton type of leadership or you know kind of like this small collective leadership yeah absolutely I mean there's there's models for everything that you want it to be a model for I'm sure someone somewhere has thought about it the concepts to me are the same the take-home messages are the same is that

regardless of whether you're in a clear hierarchy and you're at the top of it or if you're mid tier or low to you or you're in a completely flat hierarchy and everybody's equal you're still modeling through your actions and behavior what you want to be seen on what you want to be the product of the people around you so that's something that you can learn not just in a workplace but in relationship to in a family model if you treat people the way that you want to be treated if you treat and behave in the way that you would like to see people are going to see the benefits of that and they're going to take as much as they can pieces of that and then reflect it back to you cool thank you so much you're welcome hello Doctor I I had a wait it's been nearly 10 years all right my question about um how you create that sense of safety and Trust in your team and if you have any recommendations on exercises or certain things you can do

with your team to build that like trust building and yeah like that well look I mean I don't know if you have anything to contribute there Ryan being the in real leader I I always really really enjoyed mindfulness based exercises mindfulness has like a real strong basis in in not only mental health but just in everyday life we can reduce stress reduce anxiety and make people feel more productive and competent in terms of trust-building this is just an example from my other life when being a doctor we had a team-building day where we all just sat around and we had an agenda and we literally just were able to talk out everything that was bothering us about the current setup and then problem solved together and because we had people who are in very strong they were very confident in being that kind of in a position of everything will be okay

I'm happy to take all of this anxiety contain it and then deliver it back to you and always it is digestible we were able to work through so much of that and it does take you know someone or multiple someone's taking that role of well I'm going to be the one that absorbs everything and I'm gonna be the person that molds what's happening around me but I mean I said very vague example but Ryan yeah we try to do do things together as much as possible we go on trips and things like that and go to conventions and demo and whatnot together some of them are like in exotic places we've gone to recently to type a game show in to Shanghai and things like that and it's partly to demo our games and whatnot but it's also like so that we get to do something together and afterwards like we really nailed that and it feels good to know that you can rely on the other people on a team stuff like that so you know just doing stuff together like that and being proud of what you did I think builds a lot of trust thank you time for one more hi so um one question I have is related to the interpersonal

relationship part especially working across distributed teams so we've got we're expanding we're adding teams across multiple company you know several continents and I'm wondering if you have any tips or suggestions in terms of how do you do that because it's different when you're in the office obviously or in the same geographic area you can get together you go over drinking it's much easier to organize those sort of things but I'm curious to hear your insights if you had any recommendations on how to maintain those interpersonal relationships more effectively across different geographies in terms of you've got digital relationship so checkpoint exists digitally our team has spread out I live in Wellington New Zealand my incredible incredible colleague pretty ker lives in Melbourne she's just there and I love her and she's amazing but you can't have her she's mine sorry and we have a variety of other members that some live in rural Victoria and variety of places in Australia and the US and we have what we used to just get

on with stuff and it just wasn't working as well as now we have online stand-ups twice a week where we all make the effort despite what timezone we're in to be there and talk to each other and having that consistency for us was really helpful if just like we are going to do this right now and then it becomes I mean we see each other at cons and stuff but those interpersonal relationships still get played out it just gets played out in a slightly different way and it's finding how you can apply these same things but in the digital interactions and they still it still happens exactly the same yeah it's it's hard it's not easy I acknowledge that for sure again have you got any response to that no worries thank you all right thanks everyone make sure that you fill out your email surveys to let Jennifer know what you thought thanks so much Jennifer