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Summary of leadership advice

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• In my debate against the Yale students, I don't think I was familiar-enough with the rules to know that their choice of subject-matter arguably violated the rule against overly-complicated topics.  So I didn't instruct my debate partner to go for that angle, and didn't go for it myself.
• The great directors (e.g. Tarantino) seem to often have encyclopedic knowledge of film.  They know all of the different camera angles they can use, etc.
• When commanding in Combat Mission, you need to understand all of the possible orders you can give, and what the likely effect of each order is going to be based on the environment, the unit you're giving the order to, etc.

Get good subordinates

• a lot of being a good leader is being able to get good people under you; it's like you're all one big brain; the people under you are just an extension of you.

Help your subordinates improve themselves

• a corollary of this is that a big part of being a good leader is being able to bring out the best in the people working for you. Sam Walton said he spent a significant amount of time focusing on taking care of his associates and managers. I've noticed the same thing when playing basketball/soccer: i used to shout a lot when both good and bad things happened, but then i had an epiphany one day while playing basketball when i realized that my teammates really didn't like it when i shouted at the top of my lungs in anger about mistakes. so I switched to just being very excited about the successes, and since then I've noticed that people really seem to perform much better that way. it's gotten to the point where I've seen teams of individually-worse players beat teams of individually-better players, at least partially because of this factor.
• In my experience rotating between the leader and follower position has given me a better idea of how to serve in each role (e.g. what kind of information to pass to the other person, and when to do it).

Delegate

• one of the biggest challenges for a leader that I've experienced is managing how decisions are made; as the guy at the top you can get flooded with information and not have time to give every decision the thought it should get, so your biggest decisions can end up being the delegation of decisions to other people based on their skills.
• you need to remind the people under you exactly what authority you're delegating to them or they may sit around waiting for you to give them instructions for something you were expecting them to take the initiative on.

Solicit ideas from everyone

• You need to remind the people under you to challenge anything you say/order that has a flaw in it that you're not aware of; when you're pressed for time you can overlook things that the people under you may spot.
• The Making of MGS2: Sons of Liberty
  • Like I said, Mr. Kojima didn't just want to use his own ideas, he wanted everybody to contribute. He insisted on encouraging team participation. Hence our "idea notebooks". Team members were given a notebook and were supposed to write down at least one idea a day. So we got them brainstorming. Every evening, Mr. Kojima and I read these notebooks to look at what the team produced. If Mr. Kojima thought it was a good idea, we took it and we ran a programming test. If it worked from a technical standpoint and added to the pleasure of the gameplay, then we kept it.
• 2013.07.22 - Bloomberg - Charles Manson's Turning Point: Dale Carnegie Classes

  • Manson became especially obsessed with Chapter Seven [of "How to Win Friends and Influence People"], on how to get cooperation, and often practiced key lines in his cell, a former prison mate told Guinn. Carnegie’s advice—”Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his”—became vital in helping him recruit and control a band composed mostly of young women. Former “Family” members Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten (who was denied her 20th bid for parole last month) both say Manson mastered the technique: Not only did he often solicit and praise his followers’ advice, he was careful to frame every killing as a Family decision.

    Jackie Kellso, who runs Dale Carnegie courses in New York, says, “it’s a very hard concept to understand.” The notion of letting others take credit for your ideas goes against what most people are taught, she explains, yet “it’s fundamental to being a good leader.”

• 2017.08.04 - YouTube - Bryan Cranston Made Jerry Seinfeld Laugh Once
  • In the episode where Bryan Cranston (as a dentist) takes a hit of the nitrous oxide before giving it to Jerry, the idea to do that came from a guy who was working the lights on the set.
  • "...So, we rehearse this scene and they all go to another scene. I stayed on that set to get used to the stool and the instruments and where things were, and I hear a voice saying, 'Hey, you know it would be funny?', and I look out and on a ladder adjusting a light is a guy. I go, 'You're talking to me?'  'Yeah.'  I went, 'What?'  He goes, 'It'd be funny if you first took a hit of the laughing gas before you gave it to him'.  'And I thought, 'Oh my god, that is funny...'"

Assign one or more subordinates to help you verify that your other subordinates are doing what they should be doing

• Cibit talking about leading players in an OFP mission: "the hardest part about leading is getting the players-being-led to do what you need, when you need it. Some of my most successful missions, where I have taken lead, I have appointed a sergeant major type, generally the Baron, to make sure orders are understood and carried out."

Verify that your subordinates are doing what they should be doing

• Cibit talking about leading players in an OFP mission: "the hardest part about leading is getting the players-being-led to do what you need, when you need it. Some of my most successful missions, where I have taken lead, I have appointed a sergeant major type, generally the Baron, to make sure orders are understood and carried out." Image Modified
• The Making of MGS2: Sons of Liberty
  • Like I said, Mr. Kojima didn't just want to use his own ideas, he wanted everybody to contribute. He insisted on encouraging team participation. Hence our "idea notebooks". Team members were given a notebook and were supposed to write down at least one idea a day. So we got them brainstorming. Every evening, Mr. Kojima and I read these notebooks to look at what the team produced.
  • The interesting thing about this example was that he didn't just send an email saying, "Hey everyone, feel free to email me with any ideas you have".  Instead he instituted a process by which he could ensure everyone was following his directive.  So the lesson here might be: Whenever you decide you want your employees to do something, you need to also come up with a process by which you can verify that they're doing it, and have that verification occur as quickly and as frequently as possible.
• One thing Edwina did that that I found seemed to be extremely effective for her (and exhausting for me) was to sit there right across a desk from me and work with me in a very piecemeal fashion, delegating very small tasks and having me do them right in front of her while she waited.  I think the equivalent in software development would be pair programming, where you have the subordinate doing the programming, thinking out loud, and the manager as the assistant.  It would be interesting to see an experiment where you tried to have a single manager pair-programming with several subordinates (say, 4?), and see if the manager could keep up with four different trains of thought at the same time.

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Playing basketball / indoor soccer

• I should figure out exactly what I was doing when I encourage people in soccer and make them perform better. For example, I seem to be very vigorously encouraging effort / process rather than results. And I tell people very vigorously to not worry when they make mistakes. I should come up with a list of these things so I can apply them to business.
• Don't get angry when things go poorly. It doesn't help. People just resent you for being angry and yelling. I learned this first at 6 school in Cliffside Park, probably around 5th / 6th / 7th grade. And then in college I had the lesson drilled into my head again when playing indoor soccer and being amazed at how it seemed to get people to play better. If someone took a good shot and it missed, I would yell "Good shot" or "Great shot" (depending on how good it was). If someone scored I would yell "Yes!" or clap, depending on my energy level.
• When I was playing soccer that one time at Infer, I yelled "Shot!" at Craig when he was in a position to take a shot, and he did, and he missed, and I not only yelled, "Good shot!", but I added, "That is how we're going to win.  If we just keep doing that, we're going to win."  And then the same situation repeated itself later, and he made the shot.  And we won!

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• There are two HUGE factors in how good your play is: 1) the script, and 2) your actors. As a director in this particular competition you don't have control over either! They're both assigned to you. And since the scripts are written by students, #1 and #2 are really the same thing (if you assume that good script-writers will consistently produce better scripts than bad script-writers; although I guess that's the same as assuming that good actors will consistently produce better performances than less-good actors)
  • This is extremely analogous to starting a company. The script is the "idea", the "plan", the "product-market fit". The actors are the people you get to work with you, the founders, the people who get hired.
• As an actor, you'll frequently look at the director and think, "Oh, why isn't he/she doing [idea]! It's obvious that's the best thing to do!" Or you'll think, "Why isn't he/she giving me feedback about my performance! I need ideas for what I should do!" But when I finally got to be a director, I was astounded at how overloaded I felt. I got the feeling that actors were expecting me to take care of the blocking and give them feedback, but I just didn't have enough time. I really needed the actors to take the initiative to handle their own blocking and come up with ideas for things to do.
• After I did the competition I recommended to the organizers that they put together a list of advice to give to future participants, because a lot of the plays would make the same mistakes over and over again. Something like this would be very useful for entrepreneurs to have. I remember thinking that all you would need to do is ask each of the directors to come up with some things they wish they had done differently, or advice they'd give to future participants.
• Immediately delegate all of your responsibilities to subordinates! You need to have time to think, to "move around" and see where you can have the maximum impact, like when you're just a subordinate. That was the problem I ran into when I was directing for the "Wired" competition and directing the films for the directing class I took: I felt overwhelmed with things I needed to think about, so I wasn't able to look for areas where I could have the maximum impact.

Others' examples of teamwork and leadership

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