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.

Aww. Poor Nat. Best Practices: All My Friends Gquit for RL.

(Sorry for the contentless post, but he's going to have to hear it from me in game too, I just want to get him used to it.)

You have good officers. Lean on them. A lot.

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.

first, I'd ask yourself why you play the game (hopefully for fun) and if you are still having fun...

As a fellow 30+ year old player I have no desire ever to become an officer, guild leader, etc. I get paid at work to lead teams and make tough decisions, why on earth would I pay blizzard $15/month to do this in my "recreational" time?

Frankly I enjoy most the guilds where the 15-17 year olds are all the officers and GMs, they really get into it and I get to kick back and have fun.

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.

Praise in public, and i forgot what the alliterative version of scold in private is.

It's bad for morale and people's perception of you the other way around. Sort of like positive/negative reinforcement research - negative reinforcement results in behavioral changes only as long as the authority figure is present. Positive reinforcement results in permanent behavioral change. Of course, improperly done (like so many grade school candy briberies) is confused with positive reinforcement, and there are limits.

Sure, you can whip a raid into shape by telling them they're all worthless human beings if they can't even assist target MT#3 amg focusmacro, and that'll get results fast enough, for sure. For a while.

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.

Just be yourself.

Leadership is all about respect, both from you to everyone else and from everyone else to you. Most people aren't stupid and can see right through whatever role you're trying to play. If you're not being yourself, then people will have a hard time respecting you.

Be honest, but not brutally honest. If someone fucks up, then that person fucks it up for everyone in the raid, not just for the raid leader. If you don't point the mistake out, then the other 8/23 players in the raid will either think there's nothing wrong with fucking up or even worse, get angry at both you and the person that fucked up.
There's nothing bad in calling a person out, as long as you're being consistant about it; meaning that you should also call yourself and fellow officers out. Everyone fucks up once in a while, it's only human. People shouldn't be afraid to admit failure, criticism and comments are very constructive if done in a proper tone.

And like already mentioned, lean on your officers. Your guild shouldn't have one raid leader, it should have 4-5 raid leaders. Swap them around and let them run raids often enough to for people to get comfortable with them.

There's no reason to build a big hierarchy in the guild, especially not in TBC where guilds are small. The guild I'm in has been running it in a fairly flat layout; pre-TBC we had officers, classleaders and members. The classleader role is almost gone in TBC though, since the need to micromanage people from each class is almost gone.

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.

You need to be yourself. If you try to be something different, you'll eventually burn out.

Some good advice in this entire post, but the last point needs to be reiterated. People in general are very smart when it comes to social behavior. Math and English, whatever, but people can read one another, and nuances to feelings are picked up in a heartbeat by almost everyone. You should show your members the same respect as you would your colleagues in real life in a real job; unless of course, they're a dirty warlock.

Be yourself. Don't put on an act, you wont fool anyone and wont be able to keep it it. And you probably wont enjoy it.

Don't try to be more than you are just because you're the GM. Some GMs yell and rant and do everything. Some just organise certain stuff and leave other things to officers, some .. etc yadda yadda

There are no "best practices", don't look to hard for them.

More guildleader personal input inc!

Be yourself. Always. The people you are leading know how you act by now and people generally do not like change.

Be open. Always be avaible to answer questions about anything (you'll get questions you never dreamed of). Any decision which could be considered questionable should be accompanied by solid reasoning for it.

Relax. You're only one person and only human. Unless you have no quality officers (and from previous posters it sounds like your officer core is fine) you should be delagating as much as possible, but get frequent feedback and reports from this.

Focus on what YOU are best at. If you are the very best raid leader ever known focus on that and delagate everything else to your other officers. Trying to not only step upto a new position like this and taking on things you are not naturally good at doing all at once is a formula for disaster.

Make it clear that you are the leader. Being wishy-washy is a quick way to have your leadership underminded. You don't have to be a jerk or mean to accomplish this. Personally, I'm a very fun guy always. When it comes time to get serious I'm the first. I make it clear it is "game time" and afterwards we can go back to making fun of whatever we were.

Be clear and concise. It helps that I am crystal clear on vent, and while I might not happen to be the best public speaker I do get the point across.

Be honest. People will be value your honest input more than almost anyone else in the guild. As long as you're not cruel in delievering this honestly people will respect what you say. For every lie you are caught in you set back what could easily be weeks of honesty.

I like to have an officer or two more than we need. This covers when one of them has something come up. Being short is always worst than being a little heavy.

The biggest thing I will echo that has been mentioned many times in this thread is that you won't be the best guildleader overnight. A lot of trust is bestowed onto you, and if you haven't earned that level of trust yet from all of your members it will be hard going untill you do. I have 6 years of raid guild leadership, 5 years of real life job leadership, and one year of small business owner experience to draw on.... and at times it is still hard.

Zarat is the worst guildleader, EVER.

This is far to philosophical conversation for the EJ forums. Seriously.

Needless to say, there is a difference between leading a raid and leading a raid well; between being a leader and being a good leader. And there are many good leaders who have completely different approaches to similar situations.

Knowing that you need to set up groups, get everyone to buff up properly and make sure they're not AFK before pulls, make sure people know what they're meant to do, etc.. these are things you can teach someone else and make them a better raid leader. You can get some general things down on paper about running a guild too.

But this thread seems to be more about the "how can I be a good guild leader (ion general)? What type of person do I need to be, what kind of approach?". In this sense you can't really give people rules as it depends a lot on their nature/their guild/etc. If you're not a very loud forceful type it doesn't do well to try to be. If you're not able to run everything yourself it doesn't bode well if you try; if you have officers who suck then there's no point relying on them; if you have officers who are highly competent and useful then no good will come from bossing and ignoring them; . Etc, etc.

The only reason I generalized somewhat was cause I was talking from my experiences in learning to be a raid leader, not a guild leader... so I figured it'd be better to show how that can be applied to other leadership positions. And eh, it's not that philosophical.. it's almost common sense if you think a bit, I figure.

I was taught how to get people's attention, how to deal with different difficulties, what to say in certain situations... not down to the specific words I was supposed to say, but how I was supposed to say it, etc, cause I asked questions... I didn't go to a "Raid Leader's Seminar on how to clear Blackwing Lair" or anything. >_>

ot: 'Common sense' is is bit of a meaningless thing. The common body of knowledge is just as often wrong as it is right (generalisation! woo!).

Anyway.. There are many academic debates about whether certain traits can be taught or are at some sense inate.

I learned a lot of useless stuff in a lot of useless management classes, but one thing stuck. Remember the golden rule, "treat others like you want to be treated"? It doesn't work. The key is to treat others like THEY want to be treated. The golden rule stems from the common misconception that others are just like you and thus want to be treated like you would.

Mike Holmgren yells because he is coaching a group of hardcore, type A personality players. If your guild is like that then the same treatment is probably in order. But for the majority of people that is not a good way to deal with them.

I once read an interview with some famous director, and he described how he was yelling at an actor for doing poorly. Some other actor came up to him afterwards and said, "if you yelled at me like that I wouldn't get a word out for an hour". To which he replied, "that is why I would never yell at you like that".

Most people go with the approximation that everyone is like them. If someone doesn't like it, there are always new recruits out there. But if you actually care about the SPECIFIC people in your guild and not just about having 25 people that can down bosses, then it is probably not a good idea to follow any blanket advice.