Leading a Team

The tradition: The Greeks did not build their theaters and temples through pure teamwork; someone was in charge. The Sistine Chapel, the Pyramids, every great architectural endeavor was built by workers who followed a visionary, a manager, one who kept his eye on the entire enterprise and (either directly or indirectly) managed the details. Centuries later this model has not appreciably changed. It remains the job description for the architect, the theater and film director, the orchestra conductor, the animation director, the executive producer in television, the record producer, the Webmaster, the headmaster of an innovative educational institution.

Tim Burton commented: “To be a director, you can’t have any fear. At best, you probably have to have a very healthy balance of not being an egomaniac, but with enough security in yourself to just go for it.”

What makes a creative leader?
1. A thorough understanding of the market, the project, the production process, the available resources, and the capabilities of the available people.
2. A relatively clear vision of the end product.
3. Some reasonable means for planning the steps between concept and completion, and for the required actions.
4. Some degree of either attention to detail or a strong talent for delegation.
5. A quick mind that can size up current progress, and make in-course changes.
6. Good relationships, all around.

Dag Hammarskjold, one of the United Nations’s more creative, inspiring leaders, said of a colleague “He broke fresh ground—because and only because, he had the courage to go ahead without asking whether others were following or even understood. He had no need for the divided responsibility in which others seek to be safe from ridicule, because he had been granted a faith which required no confirmation—a contact with reality, light and intense like the touch of a loved hand: a union in self-surrender without self-destruction where his heart was lucid and his mind was loving.”

The really good parts about leading a team:
1. Leading a successful creative enterprise is an incredible high. It just feels great.
2. In many parts of the creative world, you’ll get paid well for doing the leadership job effectively—and you’ll be asked to do it again and again.
3. Your stature within the business will grow, so your project range will become more varied, more interesting, and ultimately, you will have more control over your career.
4. Other cool people will want to work with you.

The good parts about leading a team:
1. You get to train the next generation of talented people, to have some positive impact on other people’s lives.
2. You get to do the right projects in the right way, which makes everyone on the team feel wonderful.
3. You can handpick the people with whom you work closely.
4. You make most of the big decisions.
5. You gain enormous self-confidence.

The bad parts about leading a team:
1. Everything becomes your problem.
2. If you make a bad choice, you can cause an avalanche.
3. It’s lonely; there aren’t many people (in or out of the business) who understand what you do.
4. If you mess up more than once, it’s tough to find work further down the ladder.
5. You can do everything right, and the audience could still hate the end product.

The really bad parts about leading a team:
1. You have the power to screw up people’s minds and careers, sometimes without realizing that you said or did anything at all.
2. You can become a target for crazy people.
3. You can become a target for lawsuits or other nasty stuff.
4. You might not be anywhere as good as you believe yourself to be. That’s a devastating lesson to learn.
5. You might lose your friends, your family, or your self-respect while on the way to the top, or while trying to remain there. You might find success, but lose your way.