1. Team Management Skills
WOLFGANG HAMANN
Radical Entertainment

2. What We Will Learn Finding your own personal management style
Hire “Character” not just “Skills”
Developing Core Values for your company and your team
Retaining your best employees
You can never have enough “Soft Skills”
The importance of team and company building skills

3. Two Short Movies Movie #1: Movie #2:
Team management in the video game industry is like managing a football team!
Movie #2:
How NOT to manage a team!

4. 1. Determining Your Own Personal Management Style
Self Analysis
Determine
Your Personal Goals – are they in line with your company’s goals? Your team’s goals?
Does your company & team see you they way you see yourself?
Your strengths
Your challenges
Improve your strengths/shore up your weaknesses

5. Management Style Matrix

6. Management Style Matrix (cont’d)
Commander: “Captain Kirk of the Enterprise”
Decisive, controlling, competitive, highly demanding,
perfectionist, confrontational, results oriented, power conscious, dominating.
Combine the directive interpersonal style with a strong relationships orientation. Commanders like being in control and thrive on using legitimate power to achieve excellent results.

7. Management Style Matrix (cont’d)
Facilitator:
Characterized by people-pleasing, spontaneous, informal, sharing and participative, sensitive, accommodating,
non emotional, conflict-avoiding.
Are relational like commanders, but they prefer
to facilitate (guide, encourage, equip) team members
rather than to overtly direct them.

8. Management Style Matrix (cont’d)
Bureaucrats:
Like to be: organized, efficient, politically
sensitive, closure-oriented, concern for routine, planner, formal, detached, information-focused, detail oriented.
Like to use formal, official policies and
procedures to efficiently direct ministry activities in a way that permits independent action and decision-making,
minimizing the need for group deliberation and group management. Bureaucrats favour orderly, routine
operations run "by the book."

9. Management Style Matrix (cont’d)
Entrepreneurs:
Characterized as: change-oriented, innovative,
persuasive, visionary, non traditional,
questioning, long term focus, experimental,
activist, controversial.
Prefer to operate independently of
organizational bureaucracy with an eye toward
facilitating change and innovation. They yearn to start projects with visions of making great games that no one has made before!

10. Management Style Matrix (cont’d)
Which one are you?
The best managers adapt to the situation and use the right technique at the right
time or a combination of techniques
You will not always succeed
Takes time and a great deal of practise
and patience!

11. Situational Management
Effective managers manage the situation
“Reading” the situation quickly is important
Flexibility is important
Listening is important
Communicating effectively is important

12. Situational Management Examples
Simpsons:
Communication problems
Team motivation problems
Conflict management problems
The Hulk:
Team casting problems

13. Situational Management Examples (cont’d)
CSA – Critical Stage Analysis
This process
Discovered these problems and others early
before they became major issues
b. Facilitated team input to solve these
problems
c. Acted as a “feed back loop” and team
building mechanism
d. Does away with Postmortems

14. 2. Hire the Right Team Members
Important to have team members who are “self actualized”
Even when the going gets tough, team members with character will do whatever it takes to make the team successful
Important to have an extensive interviewing process
Both you and the prospective team member must have a clear and thorough understanding of each other before an offer is made

15. Hiring (cont’d)
If you can’t wait to hire the right team member, hire the best talent on contract to get the job done
And keep on looking until you find the right fit
It may cost a bit more in the short term but save you plenty in the long run

16. 3. Developing Core Values
Important to have a company and team mission statement
Make sure these are “marketed” internally on a regular basis
Everyone must understand these
Everyone must support these
Those that don’t should be encouraged to “leave the ship”

17. Mission Statement Examples
Company:
Work hard
Have fun
Balance personal life with work
Respect each other
Share your knowledge
Team
Help your team mates become better artists, programmers, designers…people!
Make the best RPG game ever
Important to have participation in developing these from all relevant parties

18. 4. Soft Skills Such as Conflict Management, Time Management, etc..
These are not just for “managers”
Internal and external courses to raise the level of learning

19. 5. Employee Retention Is not about paying the most $$$$$
It is about constantly getting feedback about what your employees deem the most important
It is about making these changes in a positive way
You will not be able to make everyone happy all of the time
But it is important to show that you are trying

20. 6. Company and Team Building
For your team and company to grow, they must grow together as a team and as a company
This means the company/team must grow as a “learning unit”
Important to set a unified direction
Important to have “buy in” from all
Individuals learning on their own is not sufficient

21. Be A Team Player! Game teams today are developed by
“teams” NOT “individuals”
In order to have success your team
must have success!
It is not a question of having
disagreements (disagreements are healthy!)
But a question of how you resolve
those disagreements.

22. Team Player (cont’d) A team member must effectively manage:
Themselves
Their team mates
Their boss!
A good technique is to treat everyone
…………….like your “boss”
Even if you are “The Boss”!

23. Team Player (cont’d) Communication style is important
Effective communication is made up of:
Listening
Understanding and
Speaking effectively
Feelings ARE important and should
always be dealt with first

24. Team Player (cont’d) Techniques for better communication include:
a. Blending - any behaviour by which you reduce
the differences between yourselves to find
common ground ie. “I understand you are also a
football fan!”
b. Backtrack – repeat what the other person said ie.
“in other words….”
c. Redirecting - any behaviour to change the direction of
the interaction to something positive
ie. From conflict to cooperation

25. Blend before you redirect
Team Player (cont’d)
Very Important!
Blend before you redirect

26. Team Player (cont’d) Five step action plan for better communication:
Blend verbally and non verbally
Backtrack some of the other person’s words
Clarify their meaning and intent
Summarize what you have heard
Confirm how the other person felt

27. Team Player (cont’d) Artists Programmers who Designers who
Think differently than
Programmers who
Designers who
Sound artists
All have their own language and ways of communicating verbally and non verbally

28. Team Player (cont’d) To work better together, each should try
to learn each other’s language, style and
way of doing things

29. Famous Quote
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them
become what they are capable of
becoming.”
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

30. Team Management Summary
In creating great games it is our job to
help everyone we work with become the
great person we know they can become
If we can do this successfully there is no
telling what kind of great games we can
develop

31. Finally
Great game concepts developed by great people in great teams make even better games!

32. Team Management Skills
Thank You!
Team Management Skills
WOLFGANG HAMANN
Project Manager/Manager Sound Depart