Application of Military Leadership to Raid Leadership

In the US Army, leadership is an awesome responsibility – it is the direct control of the lives of young soldiers that may be placed in harm's way. The leadership tests there are real and the consequences are great. While leadership in Warcraft may not carry the same burdens and consequences as taking soldiers into battle, the application of the principles of military leadership to Warcraft raids can greatly impact the two things that a raid leader has control over – the time and entertainment of its membership.

Leadership is defined by US Army FM 6-22 Army Leadership as “the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization.” The FM provides 8 core leader competencies and their supporting behaviors that help define the characteristics that define successful Army Leadership. Of the eight provided by the Army, I will apply seven to leadership within a Warcraft raid. The eighth Army competency deals with developing leadership among partners or agencies where your leadership role is not recognized, and is not as applicable.

• Leads others – provides purpose and mission, enforces standards, balances the mission and the welfare of the soldiers
• Leads by example – demonstrate competence, lead with confidence
• Communicates – listens actively, state goals for action, ensure shared understanding
• Creates a positive environment – build teamwork and cohesion, encourage initiative, demonstrate care for people
• Prepares self – be prepared for expected and unexpected challenges, expand knowledge, maintain self awareness
• Develops leaders – assess developmental needs and develop on the job, coach counsel and mentor, support professional/personal growth
• Gets results – provide direction guidance and priorities, develop and execute plans, accomplish tasks consistently

For this blog entry I'll address our first core competency, and later entries will address the others.

Leads Others
Provide Purpose and Mission – Purpose is the end-state that the leader wants to achieve, and the Mission is the task that will achieve that purpose. In the Army this might take this form -
A Mission and Purpose tell a soldier what they're doing and what their motivation for doing it is. In WoW this normally takes the form of Task – Raid Black Temple Purpose – Get Loots. Not every task and purpose is exceptionally motivating though, and when you are in the 6th month of farming an instance the purpose of “get loots” for a single player who still needs the CvoS from Illidan may not convince 24 other players to perform at their peak levels. Its up to the leadership to provide not just a task and purpose, but a meaningful task and purpose. This obviously has to be adapted to your particular guild and your player personalities. Competitive guilds might complete speed runs with goals that push its players to their limits.

Enforces Standards - standards in the military are the detailed and formalized instructions that can be described, measured and achieved. They are indicators of performance, to assess how well a task has been performed. In the Army these are dictated by all levels of leadership – there are basic standards that every soldier must meet, and there are standards that his unit will set for his particular role. At the general level these include things like maintaining a professional appearance in uniform, passing the physical fitness test. At the role level some standards for an infantryman would include qualifying with his weapon, or conducting a long road march in a specific amount of time. The key is not just to have standards but for the leadership to actively enforce them. Not everything can be enforced at once, and Army leaders create priorities on a day to day, week to week basis to verify that their subordinates perform to standard. One day the leadership might conduct a rifle range to verify weapon proficiency, the next day they conduct an inspection of the weapons that were fired to verify that soldiers are properly caring for their equipment.

Most guilds in Warcraft will have unspoken standards that are sparsely enforced. There is often friction in a raid when you suddenly try to enforce many standards all at once. As noted above the trick is to focus on one or two at a time, develop the response you want, and then move on to other deficient standards. When I was an officer in the 1st Cavalry Division, a new brigade commander announced that he would be ruthlessly enforcing a new uniform policy. At no time were soldiers to remove their kevlar helmets during training, just as we would not in a real field environment. This was new and unexpected (soldiers were used to a the previous commander who was very lax on standards as long as missions were successful) and there was plenty of resistance, and the brigade commander personally chewed out soldiers and officers, publicly, that he found in violation. Within two months the helmets were a natural extension of our bodies and it felt strange to not wear it. It became a point of pride that our brigade's level of discipline was better than other units in the Division.

You too can achieve results like this, and the key is the ruthless enforcement. People only follow the rules that they know are being enforced. The day you lax on enforcing consumable use on your progression raid is the day that people stop flasking to save some money/time. Let a guy raid in his PvP spec a few times because you aren't in the mood to argue with him, and pretty soon everyone knows that they can get away with it. Develop and publish the standards you want your raid to adhere to, and then enforce them and focus weekly on each one so that there is no slack.

Balance the Mission and the Welfare of the Soldiers – the saying in the Army is “Mission first, soldiers always.” When tasked with a mission a unit must accomplish it, but the leadership of that unit must accomplish it in a way that shows concern for its soldiers. In wartime this means that risk to the soldier is balanced against the mission - ordering soldiers to charge across an open field at an enemy machine gun nest might accomplish the mission but it would come at a horrific loss of life. Finding a covered and concealed route to create a base of support fire that enables an assault element freedom of maneuver is a solution that accomplishes the mission while minimizing risk. In day to day operations it means that leaders need to plan so that soldiers have time to spend with family, take holidays, and that risk is low during training and maintenance operations.

Applied to Warcraft, a raid leader needs to balance the need to progress in an instance against the impact of repeated failure on the players. This means that a raid leader recognizes the need to on occasion call a raid early, or for the guild to pay for repairs or resistance potions to ease the pain of a fight. Knowing that your well geared main tank isn't available you might make the call to raid a lower tiered instance instead of trying out Brutallus for the first time and enduring hours of attempts that make little meaningful progress. Najentus may be on farm, but for some reason your raid is wiping repeatedly to him one night - that's a good point for the guild bank to provide Frost Resistance cauldrons to get past the snag in the raid.


That's it for now, more to follow on this topic.