E20 How to Get People on Board with Your Ideas: with Jeff Hackert

Building Better Games

Knowing how to communicate and listen effectively is right up there with knowing how to write code, design characters, or compose a musical score. Taking what you have constructed in your mind and being able to materialize it, in whatever form, is like a muscle that can become strengthened over time with enough practice.

Today, we're going to show you how to level up your day-to-day communication skills with your peers and your seniors. We illustrate how to better understand the thinking and motivations of others, and how to avoid some of the more common foot-in-mouth communication traps that we've all fallen into at one point or another!

With us is master communicator, seasoned coach, and former Riot Games engineering manager, Jeff Hackert. Jeff helps teams align on organizational goals, build shared values and work habits, and improve both their communication and software delivery process.

Together, we give you the tools you need to avoid ‘fishbowl communication’, become a conversational superhero, and ultimately ship better games.

You won’t want to miss this thought-provoking conversation!

Topics discussed in this episode:

- Where Jeff’s passion for human dynamics comes from

- The drive to be “right” in high-stakes environments

- Using the Ladder of Inference to explain awareness bubbles

- How agency can be perceived as power

- Why Jeff recommends taking a personality test

- Understanding selection bias

- A look at Structural Dynamics and the different communication styles

- The role of the interventionist in bridging communication divides

- Why you need to be willing to adopt a different communication style

- Changing the circumstances versus expecting others to change

- Some of the perils of democratic decision making

- How you can benefit from engaging with uncertainty

- The problem with closed communication styles

- Tips for building a shared vision of the desired outcome

- Why empathy and humanity are important for effective communication

- Advice for game development leaders to fix communication, not people

- The value of becoming a better listener

If you’d like to work with Jeff, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at [e-mail].

Resources Mentioned:

The Ladder of Inference

Big Five Personality Test

Structural Dynamics

For tips on how to staff your dev team, email us at [e-mail] to set up a free 90-minute call!

For more episodes head to the Building Better Games Podlink.

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