Bad but way too common critique style for a creative leader: "I can't give you clear direction but I'll know it when I see it."

Don't be that person. Learn to recognize when you're leaning toward that state. Do the work to develop a point of view or don't be a creative lead.

It's even worse when the leader with that style is upper management or an exec. Multi-disciplinary teams need clear direction and crisp expectations too. They need to understand their success criteria: how their work will be judged by the exec and thus the company.

Worse still is the type of exec who seems to be "I'll know it when I see it" but is actually "I'll wait and if the team succeeds, it was my brainchild and if the team fails, they went rogue and we need to cut them loose or at least disempower them."

I've encountered that very type of exec multiple times over the years and as I moved into exec roles myself, they were anti-role models for me. So here are a couple tips from both a leadership and an employee POV.

In any leadership role, I try to empower my teams to let me know when I'm not giving them enough goal/success context. I don't assume I'm immune to "I'll know it when I see it" mode. I could arrive there by accident. So my team needs to feel OK about calling me on it.

Becoming a leader means you take on responsibility for some really hard conversations, like being clear with a team when their work isn't meeting expectations or going the right direction. If you avoid those conversations, you are sliding into "I know it when I see it" land.

As an individual, I try to get a sense of the people as far up the chain as I can get. If I can't interview with the folks ultimately judging my work (execs) then I ask very clear and purposeful questions about interaction with, feedback from, goals set by execs and leaders.

Listen for things that tell you execs only "meddle" some of the time, or even the concept of "exec meddling." Hearing execs are hands-off is a danger sign: they sure won't be hands-off if your team delivers anything but success. And you may not even know how they define success!

Listen and probe for feelings of anxiety, pressure, or unnatural levels of stress around any exec reviews they have. Ask how often those exec review result in big changes. Ask who attends the reviews and how info is shared out afterward.

There are no right or wrong answers here (well, except "we never hear or see the execs"). The goal is to get a sense of what it's like to work for that company, and what input you can expect from those ultimate judges of your team's hard work.

Watch out for seagull execs: swoop in, yell at you about a few pet peeves and how wrong you are, crap on the team morale, then leave and yell to other execs about how wrong you are.

Listen for when the team gingerly laughs about the feedback they get from that exec.

Don't hesitate to ask your network not just about the people you'll be working with directly, but also about leaders up the chain. What is their track record for working productively with their teams? Who do you know who has worked with them before?

Bad leaders tend to persist in game dev because we usually lack any rigor around or even commitment to growing positive, productive, servant leadership principles and people. In 25 years of game dev, all as a manager, I was never once offered a single management training course.

I was often also responsible for project planning and management (sometimes on a fairly massive scale) and later for business decision-making. But similarly, I was never offered a single course in either one. Plus everyone else in management was home-grown, like me.

And when you're also not rigorous about surveying employees for honest feedback, or having any kind of objective success evaluation for your managers and exec leaders... it's a recipe for a whole company's worth of "I'll know it when I see it" even for HR.

So for individuals, when you look for a new gig, put this on the list of things to consider and ask pointed questions about when you interview.

For leaders, be vigilant for these traits in yourself. Have a growth mindset, always ready to take feedback on board.