All my friends left, now I am stuck with Guild Leader

The Set up: Started in Feb 05 on Cenarius, got to Level 26 and Eldre'Thalas opened so I rerolled there with some real life friends. Got to 60 and started learning how to play. Got into the #1 progression guild and stayed for about 6 months before leaving. At this time my real life friends all rerolled on Kalecgos PvP, I stayed and joined the 3rd guild on the server and stayed thru a reform and was an officer in both of these versions of this guild. We killed C’thun once and ended on 4 Horsemen in December of 06. Several friends that I had met along the way had always wanted to make our own guild that might compete on our server for 1st in progression while maintaining a fun gaming environment so we departed our guilds and made this current guild. During the initial phase of the guild one of the priests wanted to reroll as a Feral Druid, then another priest wanted to go shadow. We went and recruited (poached) some players and started Karazhan. The other guilds that we pulled players from were all ahead of us in progression and we didn’t have enough to field a second Kara group. People started to pay attention when we got Nightbane down first but the other guilds were working on Maulgar and Gruul so I don’t think too many people aside from us were excited. At about this time our Guild Leader who was still 64 decided to game quit. Leadership is passed to the Mage and he holds the title about 5 weeks and now he and the Shadow Priest are quitting the game as well.

Now that you know how I got here and this leaves me as guild leader as of last night. The guild currently size is 79 toons with about 41-44 raiders. Currently the GM and 4 officers are the leadership of the guild. The remaining officers are very strong and capable. We are currently working on Mag.

My role as officer in my guilds has been somewhat of the bad cop. I would call people out on mistakes and suggest alternative actions to avoid the mistake in the future. I would monitor our guild DPS very closely and have been referred to as the DPS Nazi. I am a patient teacher and have shared my knowledge with others in my class. I am also a pretty funny guy on vent but the guild also knows me as a pretty serious guy when it comes to raiding.

Just a bit more here, I am 40 years old and I work full time on the west coast. I play 5-6 hours a night on weeknights and most of the day on weekends. Sundays are for Football Sept-Jan.

How do I transition into this new position? Do I drop the funny guy persona and get really serious? Do I allow my officers to run the ship and just enforce the policies we come up with together and continue being the bad guy when needed? Do I throw my entire being into the success of this guild micromanaging every little detail?

Has anyone else been faced with this and how did you handle the unexpected challenge?

Thank you for your time.

I might recommend changing the thread title to avoid the usual fate for a "best practices" thread...

I changed the title to properly reflect this as a QQ and A thread.

I'm not sure there's Guildleading 101 guide that someone could write up and you could follow. It's a very delicate position thats actions must be derived from the intricacies of your guild. I could give you advice from my personal experiences but there's no way of knowing whether or not it'd be applicable to your guild.

I wouldn't think so--you'll find that people will follow you for much longer if they feel you have a pleasant personality.

Yes and no, respectively. You should oversee every decision but you shouldn't be making every decision if that makes sense. Delegate responsibility. It's very easy to take on the task of running the whole guild at first since you'll feel that it's faster and more efficient to just do everything yourself. While that may be the case, it won't be a sustainable or optimal way for you to run your guild.

I'd note that one of his officers was one of the main officers in my previous guild (KT down, etc, etc) and another one was fairly involved in running a lot of the alchemy aspects before drama lead to her departure.

Like I said, Nat. You have good officers available to you. Lean on em. Lean the hell out of em, especially Grims.

edit: Also, pretend you're Gurgthock and go from there. :p

Be an asshole to the raid, but be nice in whispers and when addressing specific people. I've found that to work for me whenever I've had the misfortune of leading anything.

I have had a number of courses on stuff that eventually boils down in to (what I understand to be) the distillate of PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), and my completely worthless opinion is:

Relax.

The main thing about being guildmaster is being the guildleader. You don't need to be a jerkface (not saying you are) in order to achieve that end, but if it works for you and your crew, more power to you. I don't think being a complete softie works either. You also don't need to hold a parade in your own honor, reminding everyone who the guildmaster is every five seconds (that's actually a really cool way to let people know who actually *isn't*). That's all words, and actions speak louder, so shout you're the guild leader with leading actions. Most of the time, I think, the best leadership is a soft touch.

Micromanagement may occaisonally produce results, but I believe to be either A) a short term tool, or B) a short sighted organizational threat. If a wheel is broken, you get out and you fix it. But you don't sit there carrying the cart - that's why you have a wheel there. Either you, or the wheel, is now superfluous. And wheels have feelings.

Some things will happen, you can fix some of them, you can't fix all of them. Barnum's Law. Do your best and serve your membership (too many guilds don't), and sleep easy.

Oh, my best pragmatic, immediately applicable piece of advice: If anyone ever frustrates you, find an officer who isn't involved and have them adjudicate the situation. "/o Would someone have a word with X, he's doing Y, and I know if I talk to him right now about it, we're going to lose a guildmate." Bonus points if you sound like Bill Lumberg in your own head while doing it.

Positive in public and if you have to rip into someone do it in private. If you have to rip into someone that doesn't like you and/or you don't like them (and they're the type to take rebukes as insults and insults personally), find an officer to do it.

edit: "gj guys" and "wow guys, that sucked" are both okay. If the group as a whole skanked it up, then call the group on it. Don't call out specific people or a specific subset of people in front of the group. "thel, where where the f'ng heals?" not okay ... singling out someone for special attention is so-so, potential for envy/etc., so I'd keep praise to whispers as well.

This positive in public thing is amusing. Someone should tell Mike Holmgren to stop yelling so much, maybe the Hawks would have won the superbowl.

When people do well, they should get praise. When they do poorly, I don't have time to type out why its unacceptable that a mage pulls aggro in phase 2 on magtheridon 50% in with KTM.

I'm not raiding with fragile children, and when people mess up we get straight to the gut of it. You should never be personal when confronting an issue. Bring it up and face the problem, but don't cut people on a personal level. Again, its not personal, but the raid leader should get straight to the point, what went wrong, what happened, and sometimes get a little upset when people are all asleep.
I'm not talking about losing tempers here or being children, but surely you guys have had bosses that weren't your best friends, and they were probably good bosses.

I think it is actually a sign of a good leader to get upset when the raid falls asleep, and wakes everyone out of it. I assure you based on experience that getting after people, even publicaly, gets results - waking people up is a huge part of SSC for instance. We're generally kisses, hugs, and sunshine over here at Hellfish, but that doesn't mean stupid mistakes are met with a pat on the back. Again, we're not talking about the "more dots" guy, who clearly lost control - that isn't even remotely the same.

Edit to reply to previous edit:
Many wipes are caused by a few people. Why not just bring it up, "Theylna, What happened there? I didn't get a heal from you for 12 full seconds." "Who the hell bounced the green beam?"
You guys know there are people prone to shatter deaths, prone to green beam deaths... not always the same people either - just ones who suck at that particular encounter. That should be openly discussed, because EVERYONE else in the raid can learn from that individual's mistakes. Their ego will survive, and your best players will not even be bruised by it; their goal is one and the same as your own.

The good cop/bad cop dynamic is pretty trite, but it works. I've heard it theorized (and I agree with this) that there's one person in every successful guild who is the "heart and soul" of the guild. They're usually somebody who's a nutcase, who gets on everyone's nerves at some time or another but ultimately is devoted solely to the guild and its goals. That person may or may not be the raid leader...in my guild's case it's one of the founders who doesn't lead raids but is always pumped up, always energized and ready to go and more passionate about the game than anyone else. Even though he's not the greatest player or tactician, he knows how to motivate people and keep them excited about playing. Find that person and make sure they're always in the raid.

As far as the funny guy staying or going... I think if that's part of who you are, you'd not do well to try to suppress it. As long as you are serious when you need to be, it's a good feature to have in a GM. Our GM is an entertaining guy, but people know not to mess with him when it comes to important issues. It's establishing the grounds of when and where you are serious or casual, and making sure people know where those boundaries are.

Too loose, and you won't accomplish much when decisions need to be made. Too strict and no one will want to help you make decisions.

It's a balance.. good luck with finding it.