Ron Howard’s Rule of Collaboration—GLS22 Faculty Spotlight

As a leader, you set the vision or the tone for your team or organization. However, you also know that the vision and the end goal does not necessarily belong to you alone. Great leaders hire people they trust, who can speak into the vision and enhance the organization’s objectives. Welcoming people in to collaborate on the end goal in a meaningful way ultimately makes talented people feel valued, builds trust, and creates greatness.

With a wealth of leadership insight to share, we’re excited to welcome Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Ron Howard to our Summit stage in 2022.

Ron understands the art of collaboration and how to bring people into the creative process to create beautiful moments through film. During this interview at GLS22 with Erwin McManus, Ron will share leadership insights from his vast career in the entertainment industry, including topics like betting on your own curiosity, the art of communication, creating a culture where people thrive, building relationships that last, and telling stories that connect people to the human experience and inspire community impact.

Get your tickets to join us at The Global Leadership Summit on August 4-5, 2022, and until then enjoy a taste of his leadership insight on collaboration from this excerpt of his MasterClass.

Directors are meant to dream the movie, the episode, or the short film, or whatever it is, and visualize it and hear it. It’s all valuable; that’s a level of preparation that’s important. It’s also a great foundation. But I have discovered if you try to enforce that too rigidly, you lose all the spontaneity and organic creativity the people around you have to offer.

Six of One Rule

Coming to that understanding was the beginning of a rule I call the six of one rule—six of one, half a dozen of another. I believe when you’re working with a cinematographer, an actor, a writer, a composer, production designer—any of the key creative collaborators on a project—your job as the storyteller and as the director is the keeper of the story. Your taste is ultimately what’s going to guide the production, the editing, and the outcome.

When talented people know you’re more than willing to say “yes” to their suggestions, they are also more sanguine about accepting a “no.” In fact, they like it.

But what do you do if someone comes up with a suggestion—some talented person you’ve come to respect, who you respected enough to hire—and they come to you with a suggestion that they understand on an intuitive level, on an organic level? If that choice still achieves the super objective of the scene or the moment in the story, then it’s much better to let that person use their choice.

It accomplishes two important things, and my work really improved when I began to understand this.

• First, it invests those talented people in the project in a very important way.
• The other thing is it develops trust.

It’s much easier to edit people’s ideas and say no, and not have them be frustrated, angry, and close down on you, but instead respect your thinking when they know you’re more than willing to say yes. When talented people know you’re more than willing to say “yes” to their suggestions, they are also more sanguine about accepting a “no.” In fact, they like it. It’s liberating because then they don’t have to edit their ideas with a “God forbid he uses it, and it doesn’t work.” That’s gone. That’s no longer in the mix.

Instead, they’re free to have this dialogue going with you—the director—and they’re excited about the fact that you can edit, that you can exercise that responsibility you have to make those choices for them. My work improved.

Now, there are great directors that don’t operate that way. Charlie Chaplin didn’t listen to anyone. Kubrick was not much of a listener. There are others who have a vision, and they follow it. That’s completely valid. It just doesn’t happen to be the way I work. I revel in the excitement of the collaboration. I think it provides all of us—not just me—with a kind of creative safety net, but more than that it just energizes a set in a great way.

_{This transcript excerpt is credited to Ron Howard’s MasterClass preview.}

Learn more from Ron Howard at The Global Leadership Summit on August 4-5, 2022!

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