TheRyanFord

As the leader of a team, I often read books and articles about subjects related to my role: leadership, management, in-house design, etc. I feel it is my responsibility to improve upon my abilities as a leader—to understand how to do my job better, to avoid and/or remedy problems, to be a source of inspiration, and of course to keep my team happy and motivated. While I don't consider myself the best leader ever, I hope I'm doing a good job, and I certainly do make a concerted effort rather than lackadaisically resting on my laurels.

The topic of motivation in the workplace is hot right now. The world at large is trying to reform how it does business in the interest of efficiency and better productivity. In my view, proper motivation is not about more frequent output, but about more effective output. I think this is where a lot of the authors and thinkers and bloggers and drinkers are off course, actually—they think a motivated workforce will produce more, whereas I believe a motivated workforce will produce better, and it's not only about keeping people happy. It's actually just good business.

There are some elements that I believe go into a good leader which I strive to achieve, and I think the best leaders I've had the pleasure of working with or knowing have also exhibited many of these traits. In typical internet fashion, the following serves as your easily-digested list, ripe for retweeting:

1. A Good Leader is Understanding
Understanding, empathy, sympathy, easy-going—these are some words that all basically mean the same thing: you trust your team. One of the worst things a leader can do is distrust his team. When a leader hires somebody, he has decided that this person will be a good fit, and in that way they deserve immediate trust. They have earned it by getting the job. Yes, they can destroy the trust through their actions as sometimes happens, but I don't believe that trust should take a particular period of time to acquire.

Trust in the workplace should be automatic.

That means that when one of my team members is running late, I trust they're actually running late and will be to work as soon as they can. When a team member isn't feeling well, I trust that they're actually not feeling well. When a team member is assigned a project, I trust they will do their best on that project. Team members do not require hand-holding and do not require somebody looking over their shoulders. They are adults, and they are here because they want to do great work.

It also means I trust in their skillsets. More on that next.

2. A Good Leader Hires People Better Than Him
Everybody on my team is better than me in some way. It sounds foolish that a person would want to hire lesser-skilled employees than him, doesn't it? Yet, this happens all the time. I want my team and I to do great work, and they can't do that if they're not great at what they do. On that note, trusting that they are great at what they do, and that they know what they are doing, is also important.

3. A Good Leader is Experienced and Educated in What They Lead
In other words, as a leader one should be well-versed in that which they lead. It is difficult for a team to trust and respect its leader if that leader doesn't understand what they do on a deep level.

4. A Good Leader Plays to Strengths, yet Diversifies
Like I've stated, every person on my team is well-versed in some area. I think a good leader understands those strengths and assigns work and projects which suit those strengths. I also think a good leader understands each member's weaknesses and looks for opportunities to turn those weaknesses into strengths. It is certainly true that we can't always do exactly what we want to do all the time, but it's worth trying.

5. A Good Leader is Emotionally Stable
Yelling, losing one's temper, demeaning others, crying over small matters, calling names, walking out in anger and slamming doors—these are some actions that I and many others have experienced or heard about. It's difficult to respect a leader that isn't cool-headed. It's also difficult to know where you stand with a leader who rides an emotional roller coaster day in and day out.

How will he come to work today? Will he be angry or will he be happy? Is it okay if I talk to him today or should I wait? Maybe I should wait. Oh what's that? He's happy? Oh, so I can talk to him?
This type of behavior is nothing short of damaging to a team. It damages morale, it damages productivity, and it damages trust.

I've actually worked for somebody who was emotionally unstable. It was years and years ago, but his actions stuck with me. I remember him calling over a co-worker and literally yelling in her face. He told her how dumb she was, he told her what a horrible job she was doing, he told her a child could do better work. That was the second I knew I didn't want to work there anymore. I lost all interest in the work, and it showed.

A leader might be stressed out, under enormous pressure, with too many things to do, but he shouldn't take it out on his employees.

6. A Good Leader Fights for His Team
I don't believe a good leader necessarily agrees with everything his team does or says, nor do I believe a good leader aquiesces to the whims of others outside of his team. Certainly there is a balance one must strike, but as often as possible a good leader should back up his team and support them—in their opinions, in their personal endeavors, in their struggles, in their dreams.

7. A Good Leader is Not Above His Team
I've written about this topic before and I think it still rings true. While a leader may be the leader, it does not mean he is above doing grunt work. A good leader does both the glamorous and the unglamorous work. Equality is important. If you're the leader of a team of telemarketers, you should also be making calls like the rest of them. If you are the principal of a school, you should scrub the toilets with the janitors. If you manage a design team, you should do the small and boring projects too.

8. A Good Leader Knows that Interesting Work Equals Better Work
If one cannot make a project interesting, one should find ways of changing or improving the project to make it interesting. If a designer is interested in the project, if he has enthusiasm and big ideas for the project, then he will do better work and be proud of what he has done. Focusing on frequent output over quality output has proven to be the wrong way of doing things.

9. A Good Leader Gives Credit Where it's Due
I have worked with people who take all the credit for themselves when I was the one who did the work. Do you know how that made me feel? It made me feel like somebody had stolen something from me. I don't know if they stole my glory, necessarily, but they certainly killed my spirit. For this reason I try to properly bestow credit whenever I can and I think others should do the same.

10. A Good Leader is a Human Being
Putting leaders on a pedestal is dangerous because leaders are only human. Leaders make mistakes just like everybody else. Most people understand this, of course. Yet, when a leader acts like he is infallible, when he pretends that his mistakes were intentional or that his actions should not be questioned, he is damaging his team's respect and morale.

In my view, a leader should not pretend he is deserving of leadership, but rather that his position as leader has to be earned from his employees.

11. A Good Leader Trumpets the Positive, Privately Handles the Negative
When an employee does great work, a good leader lets that person know. But it doesn't stop there. A good leader also tells others how great the work was. When an employee messes up, a good leader handles it privately and does not share the failure with others.

Where is This Going? Seriously.
The aspects of leadership which I have described above are, as mentioned, something I strive to achieve. A good leader builds good teams—teams that are happy, healthy, and enthused. Happy teams produce better work, and happy employees have far less desire to leave. When work is great and employee turnover is drastically low, businesses thrive. After all, it is not only our duty as fellow human beings to make one another happy, it saves money when employees remain on board because finding and training new employees costs a lot—in time, in money, and in lost productivity.

In my view, it's just good business to lead well.

One of the biggest issues facing creative minds in the age of the internet is that of theft—of art, of ideas, of design work, even of code.

When we creative types come upon an instance where our work or the work of friends has been repurposed/stolen/ripped, we naturally are upset. We rally our fellow artists to build an army of good against those who would steal that which we painstakingly created from scratch. We send emails, tweets, facebook posts, blog posts, journal posts, and even send snail mail in an attempt to discourage the thieves. We will insult them, threaten them with lawsuits, and make their lives so difficult that they will naturally have no choice but to take down the stolen work.

I have also had my work stolen in many ways. Logos I have created have appeared on websites where the thieves are attempting to actually re-sell the work, artwork I've made has appeared on other websites as both decoration and downloadable/purchasable products, and in one instance some of my work was included as a wallpaper option on cell phones sold in Israel (true story). In my work for deviantART, I have also witnessed my team's work stolen and repurposed in many unauthorized ways: official logos have been placed on inexplicable things, Fella has been repurposed in inexplicable ways (I once saw him on a truck advertisement), and even promotional designs/articles we've built have been repurposed on other websites. In short, I am no stranger to theft.

That said, the creative community at large makes assumptions when it encounters theft. It assumes that the thieves are stealing the work knowingly, and that the thieves are making loads of cash as a result. In my experience, these assumptions are rarely true.

Allow me to elaborate.

Many so-called thieves who take our work and put it on their websites are often under the assumption that they are doing us a favor. They believe they are sharing our work and showing it off to the world. Who wouldn't want to see their work displayed by countless others? These individuals typically have no understanding of copyright or fair use, and when they are accused of theft they are typically surprised and insulted. Again, they thought they were doing something nice! In the modern age of social sharing, one can understand how relocating artwork might be viewed as acceptable.

There are also the so-called thieves who incorporate other people's work into their own. Much like the individuals who thought they were helping us out by sharing our work, these people have no grasp on copyright, and in fact they assume that pictures on the internet are free to use. They are not knowingly stealing the work, but rather they thought the work was so wonderful that they wanted to incorporate it into something they were making. When I was a teacher, I would catch some of my students digging through Google Images, looking for pictures to use in their designs. Naturally I put a stop to this and educated them on the err of their ways, but I've only personally affected a handful of people. On the whole, many students and adults have the assumption that internet = free and nobody is really teaching them how wrong they are.

Lastly, there are those folks who knowingly steal our work and try to re-sell it. Logos, artwork, etc. When we see this work up for sale, we assume they are raking in boatloads of mullah. In actuality, this is almost never the case. Granted, they are positioning the stolen work so that it could generate revenue, but typically the thieves are not very good at promotion, distribution, or business. So, the work almost never sells.

This is not to say we should forgive those who knowingly or unknowingly steal our work. Not at all. But I do think we should be more aware of the reality surrounding perceived theft so that we are not so quick to jump to conclusions about our would-be thieves. When you encounter something you perceive as theft, take a moment and think through the possibilities. Did they knowingly steal it, or did they just make a mistake of ignorance?

Hey guys!
I'm hiring a new team member to join my design team (aka the Creative Team). If you're a person and you know how to build incredible things with code and design, check it out and apply! Or, at the very least, share it!

Front-End Developer & Designer Job Opening

Social networks, of which I count deviantART to be one for the sake of this journal, basically operate on personal opinion.

In the case of deviantART, opinion is most easily conveyed by the use of clicking on the giant, green +Favourites button on any given page of content. Recently we expanded +Favourites out to affect things like Journals, and this has been a sensible and positive change, although it met with a bit of criticism from some at first. In the case of Twitter, opinion is shared at its simplest level through Retweeting something, thereby letting all of your Followers know about what somebody said (somebody you likely agree with in a particular instance). In the case of Facebook, opinion is quickly shared by the famous Like button.

In all of these cases, users are presented the ability to quickly let their opinions be known, in some manner, without having to actually say anything in particular. The function says for itself "I approve of this," and while generally we might like to pretend we don't care what the world thinks, deep down most of us get a little smirk from the positive feedback, however minor it may be.

Social networks, it turns out, thrive on this currency. It keeps things functioning. It keeps the wheels turning. It keeps people coming back to express their opinions even more. Without these core, albeit simple, functions, social networks that thrive would, in fact, not thrive.

It's funny to think about the +Favourite-style buttons that exist across many different social networks and how we feel about them. For example, on Twitter I love being Retweeted. On Facebook I mildly appreciate a "like," and on deviantART I love a +Favourite. I also love the "like" function on Dribbble a lot, too. But then on LinkedIn I don't really care if somebody "likes" something I put on there (hey I updated my resume...awesome...I guess). And then on Google+, if somebody +1's something I've written, I couldn't care less. It's practically meaningless to me.

So, interestingly, in my case the value of a social opinion function is directly dependent on the value I assign to the social network itself. I love dA and Twitter and Dribbble, mildly care about Facebook, and don't really care much about LinkedIn and Google+. I suspect people are similar in how they assign value to the opinions shared on their social networks as well.

In the case of deviantART, +Favourites have seen constantly-growing use. To date we have 1,751,058,461 Favourites. That's a lot. Obviously it will continue to go up as people become more familiar with the concept of the quick sharing of opinion on dA and beyond, but I think for it to have even stronger impact we might need to broaden its function.

I'm wondering how we would all feel, collectively, if we were informed of one another's +Favourite activities. Right now +Favourites are somewhat private; if I +Favourite a deviation, only the artist is informed. What if all of you Watchers of mine got a notification when I +Favourited something? Would you like that or hate it? I'd honestly like to know.

When the New Year festivities died down and all of the Creative Team was back in town, we had a small outing to discuss our goals for 2012. Among them was a simple proposition: avoid "ASAP." I'm not unique in my disdain for the term, recognizing that it is one of the worst but most commonly used abbreviation-turned-words in the history of English.

Let's consider the root of "ASAP" and why it's not only nonsense, but it's not at all helpful. ASAP literally means "as soon as possible." This understanding implies urgency, and to its recipient it causes the adrenaline to start pumping. "As soon as possible?!" you think, "that must mean it's super important and I'd better do it right now!" The true problem dwells in the person from whom the word originates. To different people, ASAP means different things. To me it might mean "please do the project in the next hour," but to you it might mean "the next couple days" or even "I need it by Tuesday of next week." ASAP's meaning has been watered down over time to the point that it has, in fact, lost all meaning apart from its false sense of urgency.

Because "ASAP" is utterly meaningless, we're taking a new approach: ask for specificity and give it to others. Stop saying "ASAP" and start saying "in an hour" or "by tomorrow at 5" so people can plan accordingly. Have respect for the adrenaline reserves of others and ask that they have respect for your own, and perhaps our workflows will be that much easier.