FIRST IN LAST OUT
BECOMING A LEADER | Todd Elliott
You ’ re a tech person . You know how to get stuff done . Chances are you are super competent at some aspect of production : you ’ re an amazing audio engineer ; you crush video editing ; you can shine light in people ’ s eyes like nobody ’ s business .
And because you ’ ve been good at a piece of the whole production , it makes sense that you might get promoted to lead the entire production team . Unfortunately for you , the only thing you really know about leading a production team is how you would have done it differently from your last boss . You also know how to do your old job really well .
Both of these perspectives are not bad to have , but they fall far short of what is required to lead a production team .
LET GO
This was one of the more difficult parts for me about becoming a leader . I was a really good audio engineer . Stuff sounded awesome when I was behind the console . When I had to move into more of a leadership role and hire someone else to mix audio , I realized how much I loved it and that I didn ’ t like it when someone else mixed . ( Looking back , I was probably deriving too much of my significance from my killer mix .)
When you start leading people , you have to let go of the specific tasks that you used to love to do . The whole point of having a team is to increase the capacity of your department , which means you need to stop doing and let someone else take over . However , someone forgot to tell me that those tasks I was so good at weren ’ t getting done exactly the way I would do them . I found myself butting in all the time , or redoing something when people weren ’ t looking .
After banging my head against this wall for a while , I asked myself , “ Is the new person ’ s mix wrong , or just not my preference ?” I realized that I needed to give that new person some space to learn and grow and make that task their own , without imposing my way of doing it on them .
I also realized that I needed this person to succeed . I was already buried by the workload , and I knew that if I drove him away , I would not survive myself . Maybe the mix wasn ’ t so bad after all . I owed it to myself to back off . I owed it to my family to back off . And most importantly , I owed it to my team member to back off .
Remember when I said our only experience in leading was just not doing it the way my boss leads me ? How many of us have had bosses who were always in our business and not letting us make our own decisions ? How many times did we wish they would just give us some space and some actual decision-making power ? If you aren ’ t letting go of your favorite tasks so that others can do them , you are just
122 May 2023 Subscribe for Free ...