80% of managers in games receive no training before they begin leading others.

When you're a lead, very little is prescriptive. Meaning, there are rarely solutions that involve simply following a recipe. "Do these three things and fix a problem involving infinitely complex humans."

I mean, anyone who says that...have they ever met a human? Does that sound realistic?

I'd rather see you legitimately equipped to solve people problems. That means all of this material should be viewed through the lens of adding tools to your toolbox rather than teaching you a series of steps. In these videos I'll share examples from my time as a lead, as well as real world scenarios from consulting clients, and show you how you might recognize situations where you can use the right tool in the right way.

I think our industry needs to get better in a lot of ways, and I think leading people better is most of what we need. You're obviously a big part of that. I'm glad you're here.

About me:

I'm a programmer by education. Started at a tiny game company in Madison, Wisconsin, then worked in AAA as an Activision employee for 11 years. During my time at Raven Software I became a manager of level designers and eventually a producer. The last game I helped ship before leaving the company was Call of Duty: Black Ops. After the layoffs in 2010 I started doing consulting with video game companies in leadership development and cultural improvement. I've spoken at conferences and helped game teams on four continents, wrote a book on leadership development, and I've had $2 trillion worth of clients. Which sounds ridiculously big until you realize Google is, like, $1.8 of that. I know what it's like to suffer burnout and I don't want that to happen to anyone. Having involved, equipped leaders is a huge part of burnout prevention, so here we are.