Episode 11

Trailer

Growth often comes from our most challenging moments. Risk. Failure. Consequences. Humility. What then? What does a leader do next?

In this episode, we journey through the peaks and valleys of Colum Slevin’s career, from the animation studios of Dublin to the cutting edge of player safety at Electronic Arts.

Colum's story is one of curiosity-driven evolution, peppered with moments of triumph and humbling failures. He shares with raw honesty his hubris and the weight of decisions that shaped not just his own path, but the lives and careers of those he led.

We explore the transition from being the 'utility player' - always ready to be useful - to becoming a leader who understands the delicate balance between taking risks and protecting his team. Colum's journey teaches us that true leadership isn't about having all the answers, but about the courage to be transparent when you don't.

Join us as we unpack the lessons learned by skinning knees and dislocating shoulders in the world of creative management. This is a story of how failure can be the crucible for authentic, empathetic leadership - a reminder that our greatest growth often comes from our most challenging moments.

About Colum

Colum Slevin has over thirty years of experience in leadership roles at the intersection of technology and creativity. He began his career in animated TV and features, eventually serving as Director of Computer Graphics at Industrial Light & Magic and later as Vice President of Studio Operations at Lucasfilm. At Lucasfilm, he oversaw animation and game development teams in California and Singapore, including the award-winning _Clone Wars_ animated TV show.

In 2013, Colum became Studio General Manager at Telltale Games before joining Meta in 2015. At Meta, he led media and narrative VR content development, overseeing products like Oculus TV, Media Studio, and Oculus Venues. Under his leadership, the team produced award-winning VR experiences, including Vader Immortal, The Wolves In The Walls, and The People's House, earning 15 Emmy nominations and 7 wins.

More recently, Colum led the Positive Play experiences team at Electronic Arts, developing products that promote safe and inclusive gaming experiences. He resides in San Rafael, California, with his wife Marie and remains obsessed with technology in the service of creativity and storytelling.

INTRO

Colum: Credit I've established for people I work with as a caring, empathetic, sober, thoughtful leader. And in one instance I sort of like squandered that but ...

Belinda: This is The Manager's Moment and I am your host, Belinda Brummer. Growth often comes through our most challenging moments. Risk, failure, consequences, humility. What then? What does a leader do next? My guest is Colum Slevin.

Colum: I'm based in San Rafael, California, which is just north of San Francisco in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm the senior Director of player safety and inclusion for Electronic Arts and what that means is that my team and I are responsible for helping studios within EA because EA has a large portfolio of game developers in different studios design experiences for players that are maximally inclusive and accessible and also safe. It's a variety of different approaches, but that's the main purpose of our work, is to help the studios deliver safe, fair, inclusive and accessible experiences to players. So my first job was straight out of secondary school in Dublin. Uh, it was at an animation studio called Sullivan Bluth Studios in Cunning Road in Phoenix park. When I was studying for the leading cert, I was working a part time job. Saturday job as a uh, cell painter. Uh, at this studio was painting mice and effects and little creatures for a film called An American Tale. We met in, as I recall, the year 2000 when I had actually very briefly moved back from California to Ireland. Wasnt intended to be brief, but I moved back from the Bay Area to Dublin in 2000 with my family and I was hired by a company, an, uh, e Learning company called Electric Paper and uh, you and I met there when I was in the midst of trying to figure out how to help that team organise their work.

Belinda: Colum's career is a journey through the realms of digital entertainment and innovation. From his early days in animation, Colum has left his mark on some of the most influential companies in the industry. He's held leadership roles at Lucasfilm, where he oversaw animation and game development across continents. At Meta, he pioneered award winning VR experiences, earning his team multiple Emmy nominations and wins. Colum continues to shape the future of interactive entertainment, focusing on creating positive experiences for players worldwide. When Colum and I got on a call to have this conversation, I asked him, as I do all my guests, for a whistle stop tour of his career. I'm eager to share his full response to that question, and so do look out for a bonus episode to be released soon.

Colum: When I think back on the things I've been able to do and the opportunities I've had, my experiences ended up being really eclectic. There's been a through line of working with and supporting the creative process, and there's been a through line of technology, but every role and every experience was something new and different. And uh, that wasn't by accident. I mean, it felt slightly random at the time, but it was very intentional. I was usually driven by curiosity. The basically, the through line has been a series of episodes of where I go, all right, I've learned quite a bit about this thing I'm doing, and now I'm curious about this other thing. I'll chase that other thing. My wife describes me sometimes as a professional magpie where I'll see something shiny and go, ooh, that looks hard and interesting. I think I'll fly over there and do that. And uh, that's kind of what I've done. I moved from analogue animation into computer graphics because I was curious about it. I moved from computer graphics into game development because I was curious about it. I moved from that into VR because I was curious about it. There's a through line which has always been about helping creative people make art, which is partially because I'm uh, partially because I'm good at helping them do that, and partially because I'm a very mediocre artist and I like to be around extraordinary artists and help them do.

Belinda: What they do in all of that. How the heck did you get into management?

Colum: Um, I got into management for the same reason, I think now that I look back on it. It was in 1994. I had been working in various individual contributor roles in animation production. And when we moved to Arizona, I knew we were setting up the new team. I knew I would be working in this specific team. And I asked the head of the studio if he would consider me as the department lead for this function. And he said okay. And, um, I think mainly he said okay because no one else had volunteered and there was no other obvious choice. And, you know, we had experience working together, so we did. So what motivated me initially was a combination of curiosity and survival instinct, right. I was curious about, like, I wonder what would be different about doing this? And part of me was like, there is a Darwinian urge I have where I'm always looking at, well, how is this going to fail? I think its important to look at any kind of project through that lens and go, whats going? Its a critical part of project management, which I learned formally many, many years later. But what are the critical assumptions here? What are the things that if they dont happen or do happen, are going to make us succeed or fail? And from my own career, I would often look at it and go, I have no control as an individual contributor. I would say, I love what Im doing. Im really enjoying it. When I, from when I show up in the morning to when I go home at night, I'm fulfilled and I enjoy it. I don't know if this movie's ever going to see the light of day. I don't know if people in leadership roles are making good decisions or bad decisions. I just don't know. And I say that now. In hindsight, I don't think I thought that rationally, but that's what my god was telling me was, if you are going to have some mastery over your old destiny, you're going to have to understand how the machinery works and you're going to have to understand, uh, how the process works and ideally be making some of those decisions if you're qualified to do it. It was about having more purview over the process of making a film. At the time, I wanted to understand it more. And number two, I wanted to have a modicum of control or visibility in how things would actually play out. Now, I said, that's pretty nutty because nobody has total control. Everyone answers to somebody and nobody has total control over anything. But that was my instinct and that's what led me into drawing my hat in the ring to lead that small team, and I had no clue what I was doing. Um, so all of the Learning I did about management and leadership over time was mainly through catastrophic failure. Like, no, that's not true. That's a bit flippant but mainly through, like, you know, skinning my knees and falling down and Learning, oh, yeah, that's, that's not how you do that. And let's not do that again. Um, let's try to do that better next time. But just iterating on, on what I learned. Bad actions and consequences ultimately, because for a long time, you go, you know, this is fun. We're all having fun. Everyone has good intentions and no one's going to get hurt. Like, obviously that's how people think. This is, this is a workplace. It's not life or death. And then the first time you make a mistake that has consequences beyond what you expected is very jarring and can be very shocking. But ultimately, those big lessons are the things that actually help you really learn or really level up.

Belinda: And it's interesting that a guy like you who says, you know, I work from survival instinct, and that is, I think about, how is this going to fail? That even then, even for somebody who lives their life through that lens, you can come across unintended consequences that you didn't see and you can learn from them.

Colum: Yeah, uh, the survival instinct piece is, is one element, right. I think that anyone who like, as I was saying, I was young, I was about to be a dad for the first time. I defy anyone who becomes a parent in their twenties or at any time in their life, not to be motivated by fear and by the fear of responsibility and screwing that up. That's one element of it is I love what I'm doing, it fulfils me. I hope I get uh, to do it forever. How do I protect against the downside of that? How do I not end up doing a soul destroying job that I dont want to do? Um, so thats the survival instinct part. So survival instinct, curiosity and then joy. The third piece is working in this field that ive gotten to work in for so long. On the one hand is, you know, it's hard work and it's complicated and it's tough to stay on top of your game and it's tough to stay ahead of things like AI blah blah blah. But at the end of the day you do it because it brings you joy and you love it and you don't want to do something else. So that combination of being curious, being motivated to survive and being addicted to the dopamine of working alongside creative people and the contact high end halo effect you get from that is a pretty potent mix.

Belinda: And what a privilege to be fascinated by what you do. Not everybody can say that, but to be fascinated by what you do, which then is the ground for curiosity and growth and all of that.

Colum: Yeah, one of the things early in my career that I found to be an unlocker, uh, when I talk about finding opportunities to be slightly out of your depth, I was relentless and dogged about volunteering for stuff nobody else wanted to do. Right, whatever that would be. I remember early in my career being willing to, oh, we need someone to stay late and then fly to LA with the tapes of these shots so that we can take them to the facility in LA that's going to make the trailer for the movie and we're going to have to do that for weeks on end and long hours and nobody else wants to do, and it's not really anybody else's job. And I would volunteer for stuff like that. And to the extent that, uh, for two reasons, one, because I wanted to learn and I wanted to understand how things fit together, how they were done. And I also wanted to solve problems for the team. I wanted to be Mr- on- the- spot. So double edged sword. What I learned about that was its very potent. Its very potent to develop a reputation as what in the US they would call a utility player, someone whos willing to fling themselves on whatever grenade is tossed or to be willing to go. Thats not my job, but ill help. Its almost all upside. It really cements a reputation as someone whos willing to do whatever it takes, which is great. The downside is ultimately if thats your brand, you run the risk of that becoming all you are and you run the risk of going as the management consultants would say an inch deep and a mile wide. Youre willing to do and available and able to do almost anything. But then when an opportunity arises to do something maybe deeper or dedicated people go, we have a dent. Whos going to throw themselves on the grenades if, if we have belinda do that thing? So that's the risk of being a utility player is it's really powerful to be willing and able and on the spot all the time. M but also downside is you have to recognise when that's becoming your brand and whether you need to raise your hand and say hey, I'm always willing to do what it takes, but I want to be available or considered for other opportunities as well.

Belinda: And was there a Moment that you found yourself raising your hand or coming to that reckoning and saying this has become my brand?

Colum: It was a gradual process. I think, you know I realised that, for instance I would realise like, oh, if I'm going to get the opportunity to, you know, take a large, a larger leadership role or whatever it might be, then I can't be hopping on a plane every other night to do this stuff or I can't be at the beck and call of this executive or this leader who's come to rely on me for random things to do because as much as that has cemented my reputation as a reliable person, it will ultimately pigeonhole me into that category of utility player and your name won't even come up in other conversations. So I remember having moments where I was like I need to dial this back a little bit and think about what I want to do long term. And if what I want to do long term is random, interesting last minute tasks, then thats great. But that wasnt what I wanted to do long term. So I sort of just gradually over time redressed the balance of that stuff very thoughtfully.

Belinda: How did you do that? And it comes from a place of it resonates so loudly with me. And I'm curious how you did that. How did you rebalance or strike a balance and get it to swing in the way that you wanted it to?

Colum: It's a good question. It's difficult to answer. It's difficult to find a single instance. I think what I did, as I recall, a long time ago, was I leveraged relationships I had that were very trusting, right. And I would say to someone like, yes, I would love the opportunity to be a production manager for this department or to do this broader thing. So, you know, I might need your help. I might need air cover from you. Explain to this other individual why I will be available to do random task XYZ anymore. But everyone needs supporters and allies and advocates and mentors, and usually I would rely on those people, um, because the latter behaviour I mentioned opens doors, I think, with people because they realise, oh, this person can be trusted and they're not precious and they're humble and they're willing to do different things. And one thing I've found is that excellence or commitment to one thing, even if it's a small thing, opens doors to other things. And what I mean by that is if I could flip this around and talk about it in the opposite way or from a negative perspective, I've sometimes had people come to me over the years saying, hey, I'm doing job x. I don't love it, I'm not succeeding at it. And I want an opportunity to do job y because job wide is something I'm very passionate about, I'm very interested in. And here's a list of 20 things I do in my private life that are in my, uh, hobbies I do on the side that will tell you I'd be great at job wide. Please give me an opportunity to do job wide. And I've always regretted acquiescing to that. What I mean is that when someone is not committed or not succeeding in one area, in my experience, they have a pretty low hit rate on the next area too. So I have a much higher success rate when someone's illing it in a certain area and doing really, really well and, uh, sort of maxed out their capacity in that area. That's almost always a hallmark, that they will do well in another area or moving up.

Belinda: What do you think is at play, though? Why do you think that is?

Colum: I think it's a combination of, uh, work ethic and capacity and work ethic. Again, I'm speaking in a generalisation, like, I'm not saying that there's never been a person who hated what they were doing and would do better at something else. Obviously that happens, but I found in my own experience that, uh, first of all, it's much more likely that someone is going to look at you with consideration and with an open mind. If you are checking all the boxes of the thing you currently do. I would always try to show up for the new opportunity. Having sort of done my utmost at the current thing, that's what sort of gets you into the conversation for the next thing. If someone is crushing it in a certain area, even if it's very junior or mundane or whatever they're doing, I very rarely regretted giving them, uh, a bigger opportunity or another opportunity. And that was my own experience, too, was success breeds success.

Belinda: Yeah. And I just want to go back to what you're saying, because what you had said earlier about the role and the importance of mentors and allies, when you find yourself being that person who is reliable, because she'll jump into anything and take up anything, because either that's who you are or because that's just your interest or whatever that happened exactly as you described it, that happened to me, and I can take absolutely zero credit for getting myself out of there was all because of somebody more senior to me who I landed up reporting to, who kind of said, somebody who is doing what you're doing as a job title. I would be expecting more from them to do more of those things and not the stuff that you are being dragged into or that you're getting yourself involved in. And it took that person and that person's expectation of what I could and should be doing to bring me in on track. But for that, I think I would probably still be that person who is reliable and jump in on anything, but isn't necessarily having a greater impact or a different career. Sometimes you need allies and mentors and actually not. Sometimes you always need allies and mentors. In those situations that it was happening, I put down to many other things, including my own, you know, my own tendencies. It's, uh, really interesting to hear that you had that similar experience.

Colum: I'm certain I had the same experience. I can think of several instances where someone took me aside or said to me, you know, here's like when someone. When someone takes you aside and says, let me illustrate for you how you're perceived, you know, however they do that is. That's gold dust, right? That's really valuable. And because what tends to happen in the situation you're describing, and I've been there, too, uh, as I've said you often can create a narrative for yourself where you're like, well now I'm trapped in this. This is what I do. And this cohort of people who've come to rely on me for these random things, well, they'll fall apart if I don't keep doing it or they are.

Belinda: The reason I'm still stuck in that.

Colum: Right. And in fact I uh, don't know your situation so I won't comment. But in my own situation, that's almost entirely untrue. Right. There's always a way to find a utility player that can fill a gap, right? Always. And I think it's a risky role to paint yourself into because what you're doing is you're using your energy and your talent for like all these little micro random things that are very hard to consolidate into. If someone was to say, well, what's Belinda's job? Well, Belinda is these 20 random things that for this person, this person, this person, these other five people. But that does that cohere into something? Not really. So, so that's, and then if someone was to individually talk to each of those 20 people, hey, could you do without Colum doing that random thing? Yeah, of course. Yeah, we'll, we'll figure out another way to do that. So you've created your value from this, like this wham of stuff that can very easily just um, go away.

Belinda: And the most important thing there is what you said about that then can limit the opportunities that uh, come your way because people don't think of you in the context of those opportunities.

Colum: Ultimately you have to be aware, you have to have a decent sense of clarity about what, what your value is and what your baggage is. And if you have a decent sense of clarity about those two things, I think you can't go wrong. I think most people have a hard time understanding what percentage of their experience is value and what percentage of their experience is baggage. And if you're able to identify the baggage and go, I'm just going to put this down over here and focus on stuff that's actually valuable and I think that can unlock things.

Belinda: What does management as a term mean to you or as a thing mean to you?

Colum: So management, it's, it's a really good question. Over the length of my career, my experience managing teams or leading teams, I went through a journey and I probably landed on a really simple definition or really simple sort of encapsulation of what it means to me. But I did that by starting out, going through lots of cycles of getting it wrong or not understanding what it meant. Uh, what I learned over time is what management doesnt mean is getting the credit, making all the decisions. It doesnt mean status or power. Ultimately, the satisfaction or the impact you derive from being a successful manager is removing obstacles for people. One of the things I've found over the years is, to my surprise, very often I would work with people, and I've been really fortunate over the years to work with a disproportionate number of people who are like really at the top of their game. Really talented, capable artists, engineers, technicians, designers. I often went into those relationships thinking, well, here are people who know everything about what they do and everything about what they need to do, and learning over time that actually, no, very often people who are extraordinarily gifted or very deeply gifted in a craft, or who are practitioners or artists, or as I said, developers or engineers, are lacking some of the key ingredients they need to either navigate a, uh, corporate environment, or navigate just straightforward relationships with colleagues, or understand how to prioritise their work. And I realised that sometimes people who are in every other respect, very capable of what they do need support and they need assistance in understanding how to unblock themselves or unblock challenges or untangle conflicts. And I've always thought of it as both reactively removing obstacles for people when they run into a tangle, um, but also proactively thinking about what's going to set this team up for success, like what is going to set this team or this individual or this group up for success and how to set things up for them so that not so much that the way is smooth, but that uh, when friction does arise or challenges arise or complexity arises or plans change, that you can help them through that. So that's really what it means for me is I remember I worked with a colleague in one of my jobs. We had a large studio in Singapore and it was a very diverse and multicultural crew. And one of my colleagues one day she had a small statue of, uh, the god Ganesh the elephant gone on her desk. And she explained the sort of role, im not versed in this ill mangle it, but basically she explained Ganeshs role as the remover of obstacles. And I loved that idea. I, uh, loved that idea that m like, oh, so I cant do what you do, but I can help you do some of the things you dont do, and I can clear the path for you. And ultimately, to me, doing that creates a situation sometimes, if you're lucky, where the whole of the team is greater than the sum of its parts, because the team is able to function in a way that the individuals couldn't function or perform on their own. And if you can succeed in doing that by, as I said, removing obstacles from the path, clearing, uh, the brush for them, and making sure they have the tools and the resources and motivation and the clarity they need, then that feels great. It's not magic, but it feels like magic.

Belinda: What resonates with me a lot about what you've said is that their talent is not enough. There are other things that they need help with to maximise that talent. And in some people, they receive training to be that leader, to be that impactful influencer or whatever it is. But in other cases, that might not be the answer. The answer is a really great leader or manager who makes up, um, for those gaps and helps their talent shine.

Colum: Yeah, I think that's right. I think there certainly are people who are individual contributors, who are extraordinarily gifted, and, um, they're very much solo contributors. And a lot of those people forge a path as, as contractors or project oriented people who jump from one thing to the next because their independence is really important to them and they're sufficiently deeply talented and gifted at what they do, is that they're in demand and they're able to move around. But for the most part, most people function as an imperfect part of the whole. Most people function as a part of a team. And I don't use sport metaphors because I'm, I'm ignorant of sport and I'm terrible at sport. But there are so, there are so many team metaphors kicked around. Well, there's one, um, in describing management that it's ridiculous. But the one that I do come back to is, this is very american, but there's a tv show I love called Friday Night Lights from years ago. And in that, uh, coach Taylor, who coaches a high school football team in Texas, says to his team one day, success is not a goal, it's a byproduct. I always liked that because very often when I was talking about the simplistic definition of management or leadership, whatever you want to call it, very often you start out thinking, what am I going for? I'm going for success, I'm going for credit, I'm going for impact, whatever. But actually, you learn over time that actually, no, your job is to make the team function, as I was saying, to remove obstacles from their path, make sure they have the resources, clarity and motivation, uh, they need. And then success occurs almost as an afterthought that your job is to make sure the machine or the team is tuned and set up to operate.

Belinda Brummer (host): The hybrid, global, social, multigenerational, inclusive workplace of today can be a thrilling place to be if people are thriving, if managers are competent and confident, if cultures enable learning and growth, and if workplaces promote the human experience. Boost Learning has created an ecosystem of solutions and services that help organisations support their managers and their leaders. Follow your curiosity about what's on offer by going to www . boostlearning . online.

Belinda: So you spoke about skinning your knees as a way of learning to be a manager. I'm really curious about that. Tell me more. How did you skin your knees? What did you skin your knees on? What came from that? Anything in particular?

Colum: Yeah, I mean I think in micro and macro ways I think that's, that's how people develop. Right. It's um, um, it's about either Learning, I don't know if it's exactly about Learning through failure. I mean it is ultimately, but I think it's more about learning through a willingness to fail. I think nobody grows or develops unless they're willing to be just a little bit out of their depth in the next thing they do. It's a little bit like, again, I said I don't do sports metaphors, but then that's all that keeps occurring to me. But when I hear people describe how muscles develop when people are exercising, it's really about when muscles are continually challenged to deal with higher levels of resistance or weight. They're damaged in a microscopic way and then they repair and they grow back stronger and they build. And I think it's the same with Learning. Any skill or any talent is that you try something and uh, you don't know what you're doing. Like when I raised my hand to be a manager for the first time, I had no idea what that meant. I just thought this feels like a logical next step and this will challenge me. When I was first a manager, I was a manager among a team where I had been a peer and I'd been just basically among a group of friends that worked together. And I think one classic mistake managers also make is thinking like Michael Scott or um, David Brent, that everyone's, I'm your manager, so now I'm your super friend. I'm um, everybody's friend. That's a classic error. But then also just little small amounts of hubris where you think like yeah, we can totally do this or I can totally do this or I can handle this difficult situation and then finding out either finding it one way or the other, finding out like, oh yeah, this is a natural ability I have to have a difficult conversation with someone in an empathetic way that diffuses a situation. It turns out I found out that Im actually pretty good at that. On the fly or more often you find out, wow, I should have saw it professionally, but before I did that, because that was really bad and I really bungled that conversation. Or I went in thinking I could have a challenging conversation with somebody in a way that didnt go well, or because I and our team could handle 110% of what we did last time, then we could also do 150%. And I guess the way to think about it is this is a very sweeping generalisation, but I think there is a male quality where men sometimes look at ten expectations or ten qualifications, and if they have two of them, theyre like, ive uh, got two of these qualifications, I can totally figure out the other eight. And thats almost always incorrect. I think it does feed this stereotype of the alpha leader, which Im very much not. Thats not my style at all, but that people, people think, I know 20% of this, I can figure out the other 80%. And so long as the percentage of stuff you're winging it on is sufficiently small and the risk of failure is sufficiently small, then I think those are great opportunities to learn. Like, oof. Like I think going into something and being really transparent with people and saying, you know, I appreciate the fake it till you make it approach that people often have, but I also think you have to be authentic and transparent with people and say, look, I, I don't know if this is going to work. I haven't done this before, but here's what we're going to do. And I think those learnings are great opportunities. I think where you go from skinning your knees to breaking your leg or dislocating your shoulder is when there's a little bit more hubris. I've certainly had experiences over time where I'm like, you have a series of successes or you stick the landing on things enough times, then you go, I can, I've got this figured out. I can take a bigger swing or a bigger risk if that goes poorly, and if it, uh, if something going poorly when you thought it wouldn't blows back on people other than yourself, blows back on your team in some way, I think that's the risk. I think containing and being sober and wise about the types of risks you're taking so that it's fine to put your own, uh, fatigue or mental health at risk for something. But it's always important to think about who else you're exposing to that kind of thing when you go. But I guess I'd say it goes from the micro to the macro. Right. I think it's important to get out of your depth a little bit because that's the only way you learn how to swim in deep water. But it's important to think about what's the worst outcome here.

Belinda: If I fit a. Yeah, ah, a willingness to fail and a willingness to be just a little bit out of your depth. And then what you were talking about showed me that actually there needs to be an appetite for risk when it's not just you that's taking the risk, that needs to be a little bit more considered. Breaking your leg, dislocating your shoulder. Have there been any moments like that that have changed you as a manager?

Colum: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh, yeah, yeah. So I'd been working film for quite a while, and I was working at, um, a, ah, visual effects company called industrial like magic in san rafael. Uh, and we worked on a project for a client where we converted a movie they had into three 3d stereo, so people could watch it with 3d glasses. And it was technically complicated and it was a risk. We bid on the project and thought, this will probably work. We think we know how to do this, but we've never done it before, so we're not 100% sure. And it was a wild success. Like, it went really, really well, and we made great margin on the project and we crushed it. It was great. And I came out of that project thinking, but yeah, I can look at me walking on water. There's nothing I can't do here. Um, I don't think I actually thought that, but I felt great. It was a risky project and it paid off. And then almost immediately after, the same client offered us a second project, more complicated, more technically challenging by an order of magnitude. And I said, yeah, we're definitely going to do this, and here's how we're going to do it. And we broke it down and it went horribly. Um, the, um, project went off budget significantly. It went over schedule significantly. I underestimated the complexity of the technical challenges and was incredibly stressful and challenging. Got the project finished and the client was happy. But we took a bath on the budget. And more importantly, the team was absolutely ground down by the project because it dragged on for a long time, a lot of overtime, a lot of stress. So anyway, what that taught me was, pride comes before a fall. Be careful about what you're signing up for. And it's okay to take a risk but have a modicum of uh, a better understanding of the downside of the risk is and who that risk is going to affect. So what I realised one of the most, the only thing you can, the only thing you can manage or uh, the only thing you own control over is your own time. And the only ultimate downside risk to squandering that time or using it poorly is your credibility or your reputation, especially when youre a leader. And I was very, very lucky that ultimately people I had enough sort of credit in the emotional bank account with people I worked with, that uh, that I got other chances. But for a Moment there I thought, wow, I've just loaned all of this very thoughtful and gradual credit I've established for people I work with as a caring, empathetic, sober, thoughtful leader. And in one instance I sort of squandered that and I didn't. Ultimately it came back. But at the time they taught me like I ate a big slice of humble pie and took it on the chin and said to people like, look, here's what happened. We went from this to this and I made some incorrect assumptions about how one would translate to the other and here's what happened. But at the time it felt like the end of the world to me. It felt terrible. And I thought, you know, we're were, uh, uh, like I think, I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but I think one thing that successful people who I've worked with have in common that I realised I have an ingredient of as well, is that I don't think anyone, anyone who's truly good at what they do and advances and grows has some degree of an inferiority complex or imposter syndrome. And they're always thinking, I'm not, I'm nothing ready for this or I'm not cut out for it, but I'm going to try because I want it or whatever it might be. And um, I used to joke to people that, like, I can't believe my luck, that this is what I get to do for a living. And waiting for a guide clipboard to show up in the door and say there's been a clerical error and you have to go back down the coal miner or wherever you were supposed to be. And so when this project occurred and sort of crashed and burned on the project, slightly melon dramatic, but like when things went sideways on the project, I thought, oh, this is it. Uh, you know, this is it. This is this is the worst case scenario of the imposter syndrome Moment.

Belinda: That wasn't a done and dusted, very quick turnaround project. I'm sure that the projects, you know, it would have been months.

Colum: You're right. It was months. It was very difficult.

Belinda: Now, how did you, because you must have seen that starting to unfold. You must have seen all of this start to go wrong as budgets were, were overshot and time and deadlines. How did you manage yourself? How did you keep your own head above water? Because that is, you know, that's a heavy burden to carry.

Colum: Oh. The answer to how I managed myself was really, um, it was very stressful. Right. I spent, you know, the, I spent most of the project in a state of mild panic and, um, anxiety about how to bring it in and how to land a plane. Um, the answer to your question, though, is, aside from my state of mind, the way I managed it was with transparency. I was really clear. All right, heres whats happening, and heres how we think were going to handle it and were just prolifically and extensively communicated with the team. Heres, here's, uh, here's where we're at, and here's the revised roadmap to have when we'll finish this thing. And, uh, but, yeah. Uh, so it was sufficiently impactful to me that you talked about learning skinny, your knees versus, you know, versus something more dramatic than that of it sort of completely changed the approach I took. Prior to that. I believed my own hype quite a bit. And I was like, you guys know me, you guys trust me. Here's what we're. And I would take a lot of that as red. And what that taught me going forward was you can't take anything as red and take anything as, uh, for granted. And you have to earn and recurrent your ability to take a leadership stance. You have to re earn your credibility. And so, uh, as a leader, constantly, by demonstrating how they're gonna, how you're not going to do that again.

Belinda: Yeah. Um, and how did you, so you had a little bit of emotional credit in the bank that saw you through that gate. People gave you chances afterwards. How did you regain your own confidence in that? And how did you build where you went next?

Colum: Gradually is the main answer. You know, one of the things that it taught me was when I think about how I used to do, our teams were relatively large, so I was often in a position where I had to address, I'd have to address or communicate to a large team. Ah. And often sort of a geographic redistributed. And I realised that my communication style prior to this, to that project would have been laden with like, trust me, I'm going to tell you what you need to know and you guys know, I've got this. So here's what I'm going to share. And then what changed pretty much overnight was more of the tendency to use disclosure and transparency, ah, as a way of demonstrating, look, um, I'm going to be authentic with you about what the risks are and what the risks and the rewards and the downsides are, and just communicate with more humility and more intentional about what I know and what I don't know. Like, I used to think of sharing that I didn't know something was a mistake. I thought like, well, if people think you don't know how this is going to unfold or how you're going to solve this, then they're not going to trust you. Whereas in fact, when you can be honest and authentic about the things you know and things you don't know, then people tend to trust you more like, like, uh, so long as you know something, so long as you can say, you know, look, here's what we do know and here's, here's why I'm confident that we can navigate the things we don't know. But it taught me to be much more transparent and humble about the pieces that I didn't know. I also, you know, the other thing I realised was it related to this? But I always thought, look, most people on my team understand their value and they don't need to be told all the time. And they know I trust them and value them and appreciate them. So that's all good. When you put a team under extreme stress, unintentionally, one of the things you learn is that, oh, very often, as I sort of alluded to earlier, even people with extraordinary levels of talent, in fact, often people with extraordinary levels out, don't understand their own volume sufficiently and they need to be reminded and they need to be told, look, uh, here's what it's my job to do on your behalf, but here's what you're great at and here's why I appreciate what you did. Being much more almost systematic and thoughtful about calling people out who need to be called out with credit and with appreciation is so important, uh, and can't be taken for granted.

Belinda: Even those really gifted, talented individuals who are doing incredibly well, they may be as insecure and, or may need more validation of the value that they're adding than others do for lots of different reasons.

Colum: I think that's right. Yeah. I think that it's not. I don't think it's as simple as they need more validation. But I don't disagree with your point at all. But it's also that just the main insight I had was I always thought that people who were disproportionately are extremely gifted at what they did. Writing software code or doing concept art or building, you know, doing, uh, visual effects work. Very like. I've never met. I've never met a phenomenally gifted person. I don't think I have. Um. Um. This might be a hyperbolic statement. I've never met a phenomenally gifted person who wasn't profoundly insecure about their gift and who wasn't, who didn't tend to constantly, like, most people who learn and grow and develop to be phenomenally talented do so because they're constantly questioning themselves and they're constantly insecure about, oh, that last thing I did, people liked it, but it wasn't, it wasn't. It wasn't as good as I could have done. I'm going harder. Um, but conversely, I've met lots of people who think that they walk on water, who don't. Um, so most people who are supremely confident, um, and there's exceptions, obviously, for people who feel they need to project confidence, but most people who are legitimately, supremely confident often, um, don't have cause to be. But anyway, yeah, I've often found really gifted people to be supremely, um, insecure.

Belinda: So, final question for you, then, as you reflect on this conversation, as you reflect on your journey as a professional, a manager, throughout your career, and you're not done yet, so, you know, you've got 2030 years ahead of you at the end of all of that, at the end of your professional career, looking back, what do you think you want to be known for?

Colum: Well, um, what do I think I want to be known for? Um. Honestly, I think that the highest compliment I could be paid is that I. I helped creative people make great things, or good things, even. That's, uh. I like, honestly, that has been. If the career occurred and the work I currently do sort of evaporated tomorrow and I had to do something that wasn't something I was passionate about, I would still feel incredibly privileged to have gotten to do what I've done. So, yeah, I love the feeling of helping people unlock their talent or their creativity. And the biggest, as I say, the biggest compliment I feel like to get is to feel like I have disparate groups of people, unlock their creativity and make things that were above and beyond what they thought they could do. And I think, uh, that's what I love to do, and that's what I like people to think. Um, and to think I do. Part of it is just a byproduct of having been around talented people for this long and developing and ear and a nose for, oh, you know, if I put that person with this person and ask them to solve this problem, I think that will, you know, based on all the stupid mistakes I've made over the years, I know that this might work differently.

Belinda: We've come to the end of another episode of The Manager's Moment. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed it, there are three things you could do. Let your friends and colleagues know about it. Follow the show and be a part of the conversation and make connections by joining the Managers Moment club on LinkedIn. The Manager's Moment. Seeing the person in this and every Moment. Oh, uh, and a shout out to Boost Learning where management development is done differently. To find out more, go to www.boostlearning. online.

End.