Leadership Styles
My three-act journey developing a leadership style
I grew up with coaches like this: intense, passionate, in-your-face, and unyielding. There was no option to fail, flounder, or fuck up. It was WIN OR DIE.
For most of my life, it worked and I brought that energy wherever I went. I wanted every one to prepare, study, work doubles, and bring the same intensity I did because the belief was that if anyone faltered, we would all die.
Again, it worked, but eventually every one burned out.
Around 2018, I started to unlearn a lot of those things and change my approach. I would call this Act 1: I not only expected mistakes, but I prepared for them. I gave a lot more leeway, started thinking about the journey more than the outcome, and was generally happier.
I didn’t push people as much, respected boundaries, and bit my tongue a lot. My relationships were better, my personal life thrived, but I have to be honest I felt my work suffered.
After speaking up about my issues with Fresh Off the Boat, I developed a reputation for being “difficult” or “too opinionated”, which isn’t the most helpful in Hollywood where most people want you to look past the issues and just FEEL GREAT watching something thin and flimsy.
In that era where I was trying to present as more collaborative, a lot of the things I made were truly the result of collaboration and compromise. These are two things every one upholds as positive dynamics in a creative setting, but it produced some of my worst work.
On Boogie, I turned in a film that I loved as my director’s cut. I could say it was the film I wanted to make and an executive actually said to me, “This is beautiful and you should save it because it won’t be the film we put out. But you should save it so you remember that this is your film.”
I did save the film and I have it on my computer. Once a year I try to watch it and last about 3 minutes before turning it off.
A few weeks after turning in that director’s cut I was removed from the edit and they brought someone in to take air out of the film and put in scenes that I felt were cringe and should have stayed on the floor.
When I look back, a lot of it outright sucks, but it was necessary in my journey. I don’t blame the studio. They wanted certain moments and scenes that made the film crystal clear and while I felt it was overly didactic, I had to take responsibility for not covering the scenes they cared about with as much curiosity and interest as the scenes I cared about. In the end, I would have preferred to have the best option if those scenes had to be in the film.
No one wakes up the perfect leader with a complete awareness and understanding of their leadership style. You have to give yourself the grace to try things, make mistakes, and learn from them.
