Tap 2 : Managerial Duties

Having worked in the industry for a long time, I have seen both great and terrible audio leads, supervisors, and directors. People who will either encourage, destroy or do something in-between with those they profess to care for. Sadly, I was part of the column that said, "terrible."

When I started at a game company some years ago, they decided to ask me if I could be their audio director. They presented the money I would make, which was half the reason I accepted it, and they spoke using 5-dollar words about my importance in that position. That was the other half of why I accepted it.

Those two things became so ingrained into my daily routine that when sound designers presented me with WIP, I did not apply the suitable "game" to the process and instead went hunting for what was wrong.

I heard rumors of private channels being made on Slack to vent about me, but I thought little of it. I mean, I made more money than them, and someone had described to me before I accepted this task how important my position was. Therefore, the power I was now clothed in should be without question. I simply rounded the backtalk as nothing more than jealousy, unprofessionalism, and envy. I was wrong.

They had squirreled away because mentally, they dealt with the caustic destruction of their work; I had become an antipode of their creative freedom. I hunted down the most minor problems, causing overtime and feature creep in the process. I had reamed them of their creative spirit, and they needed to vent to get through the day.

Why did I do this? Because I did not have the proper training or experience to understand what I should be doing. I went with my gut, not my head. My decisions were borderline machiavellian because I believed I had to justify those 0's on that white payslip to avoid a pink one. 

When a senior pulled me aside and told me he was leaving, I asked him why. He then proceeded to tell me how I had failed him. While I initially brushed it off as someone unable to take criticism, it didn't take long before I searched my memory of what he might have been affected by. I was unhappy with what I found because it was not a simple one-time error.

In a desperate attempt to better myself after having reflected for an entire weekend, I decided to take a notebook and write down what I'd heard at other studios. Golden maxims and words from people with greater life experiences and tree rings in their professions. People who had inspired me to continue the audio enterprise I had discouraged others from.

• Encourage.
• Learn from failure.
• Being okay with failure.
• Do not push for the awards.
• Defend the ideas of your sound designers to other directors.
• Don't nitpick the little things.
• Let things not be frequency perfect, for there's more work to be done.
• Do not assume. Accept you know nothing, so you ask to know.
• Ask what the sound team wants to polish rather than you telling them.
• Review for thematic problems. Nothing else. Volume and mastering are the sound mixer's job during the final stage of the project.
• Do not lie to yourself or others that you know how the game will sound like at the end, you will be just as surprised as the consumer, but hopefully, you'll know why.
• If you cannot formulate it in simplistic words, it is only a subjective problem that you don't entirely understand.
• Talk 15 minutes every week with your sound designers alone about non-work stuff.
• Be okay with people being people; they have bad days like you but process them differently.
• Be honest.
• Speak of your failures.
• Let go of ideas nobody else wants to do.
• If people want to leave, listen to them about why they do.
• Take leadership seminars.
• Actively ensure people do not work overtime unless they request to do so, and even then, check in on them. This also means communicating to other departments why ideas such as adding a multiplayer feature at the end of development is a disastrous idea.
• Equalize yourself; your job is not more important than the juniors. You serve different purposes, that's it.
• Before an employee review, ask yourself if anything you are about to bring up would help you, and don't answer falsely.
• During that review, ask them for feedback about you. 
• Make time for others; you do not need to be in every meeting that actively prevents that. You have a lead under you, or a producer. Let them help.
• If you have problems controlling your anger, seek help or leave the position. 
• Do not accept this position if you desperately want it. You are a danger to the mental health of others if you do.

These, and more notes, I applied to myself afterward. I cannot say if I did better, that is up to the people I managed to confirm or deny, but to my happiness, the senior did not leave.

Please, do not do what I did at the start. Instead, don't seek the position without proper training or understanding of what it is you're about to be doing. Do not let the newfound pecuniary gain and self-convinced importance remove your humanity and empathy. You are responsible for a group of people, their mental health, and their creative spirit. Be to them as you want them to be to you. 

These were my thoughts.