General advice for a new Lead Character Artist
Hey,
So I wanted some advice from any Lead Character Artists in the games industry. I’ve just heard that I’m to be promoted to Lead from Senior, which is cool as who wouldn’t want a promotion and more responsibility and money haha. To be fair, I see myself as a Lead and supporting the team as the natural progression to my career and I'm more than happy for the younger kids to do the work and have fun doing it while I do the managing side of things. However I want advice from more experienced forum members if its ok to ask.
Knowing what you know now as an experienced Lead, what advice would you give to a newly promoted Lead? What situations should I look out for and how should a Lead react. Stuff like morale of the team and how to deal with it (how do you deal with it?), how does one deal with difficult team members, is learning to say yes and no to production demands so you don't overwhelm the team cool to do? Should a Lead be looking at the short and medium term plan and leave the long term plan to Producers?
What other things did you come across when you became a lead that you weren’t prepared for and had to adjust into… was it the management side of things, learning to take a more back seat in the making side of things, jira, spreadsheets? Did you work a lot of hours when you first started being a Lead to understand everything or did you just take it as it came and would advise anyone to do the same?
You sort of get thrown into being a Lead and theres no real Lead’s training from what I’ve seen and heard… but if there was Lead's training, was what type of stuff covered would be helpful?
Any advice would be super great :)
Replies
i've never worked in a corporate setting but I think you are asking mostly for general leadership advice.
there's much written on the subject and probably at some point maybe you had some leaders you thought well of. there is no perfect answer for every situation, but in general if you actually care about the people you are in charge of, things work out.
Dont be afraid to take responsibility for others and get into their business. push some buttons and you'll learn what people respond positively to, negatively, etc. you just have to learn your people. don't try to make people happy, try to incentivize and reward them for being helpful. nobody wants to be treated like a baby, they want to be helpful and respected.
you can be an actual asshole and fake it all, check the right boxes, and be fine too i suppose. nobody really pays attention to anything. you know those types, they ask how you are doing but dont listen to your response. They are doing the 'good leader' things to do you can read in a book. It fools most people so i guess it doesn't matter. I find it much easier to just be honest and actually care. Dont have to remember to do shit that way, it just happens naturally.
if you are better than people at something, make sure you demonstrate it from time to time. If you aren't, just avoid doing it.
If you dont have anything to do, jump in and help the troops. If you dont have time, delegate.
Mostly you only need to provide inspiration and focus. The people can do everything necessary, just have to focus them on the right things at right time. Being in charge does not mean you are above the others in the team, it's just a different position. Somebody has to be free from low level details so that they can see how the team is moving towards the bigger picture goals.
wow this is incredibly good advice! I really appreciate it. I think my fear is keeping the team motivated if the task isn't very engaging. At the same time someone said to me that an artist's personal happiness towards a job is something a lead can't control as they'll always been good and bad aspects to the job. From my perspective I guess you'd want to offset bad jobs with as many good jobs to keep people engaged etc. All interesting and food for thought.
amazing advice
I like to oversimplify so I have a short list of core principles in terms of team management - They've either served me well for many years or I'm really good at bluffing.
1 : If your team doesn't trust you, someone else should be doing the job
2 : Shit travels upwards. The lead protects their team, fights to get them the things they need and takes responsibility if one of them fucks up.
3 : The fastest way to lose someone's trust is to subvert their expectations. Be explicit with everyone about what is expected from them - particularly the new kids.
I've fucked up plenty of times - almost all of them boil down to failing at number 3
And cos it just popped into my head...
One of the hardest things to reconcile is what I suppose you could describe as subconscious nepotism
eg.
you might be inclined to delegate responsibility to someone you trust on a personal level over someone who may be better at the job but that you don't have the same relationship with. I can't honestly say whether that's a good or bad thing
On one hand - reliability is arguably more valuable than ability (within reason). On the other - someone good could be missing out on an opportunity just because you don't know them as well as the other.
I'll be puzzling over that one after I retire I reckon (assuming i make it that far :D )