Background: I have about 20 years of game development experience. Like most programmers, I want to "get it right". I recently spoke to a company abroad about a Technical Director role and the most I've led is a small group of 13 as a team lead. This role is a big step up in my view, and I certainly would not want to make things worse at this company than if they didn't have a TD and I'd like to land the job.

So, when it comes to team leadership, I have a few tricks in my back pocket that make it all work.

1) Push people up. Give people responsibilities (not tasks) and make sure that they receive recognition from time-to-time.

2) Make sure that everyone has a say, even if it's a small say, in what they are working on. This sometimes means putting people in less-than-ideal roles because its something on which s/he wants to work.

3) Make sure that people have a firm career path. This means conducting personal meetings at least once per month (one-on-ones) to talk to each person who works for me so that I know him/her... find out what makes him/her tick.

4) I rely on a few books. Good to Great. Growing Great People.

5) Recognizing drama and shutting it down early. This is done in private, never publicly. Recognize great work in public, criticize in private.

I would like to know your opinions about the role, about what it takes to be TD, and other skills that I need to have, build, read about, or discover to be a great TD. I don't want to be adequate, or good.. we've all worked for mediocre TDs before. I really want to be great. If I am switching from programmer to TD, I really want to make the World a better place and really help people succeed; I definitely do not want to just be good enough.

Here is a link to their posting: [link replaced] http://www.dsfishlabs.com/en#block_karriere_body

http://www.dsfishlabs.com/documents/pdf/jobs/en/dsfishlabs-technical-director-en.pdf