Cold Comfort

Guild Management and Leadership in WoW

Posts Tagged officer

Turning Over the Reins

Feb 1

Posted by Karatheya in Best Practices, Guild Management | No Comments

matrixcoconut Turning Over the Reins

This article was suggested by Veliaf of Imperial Guardsmen.

I currently run a small guild in WoW, and have done for several years, but in the near future I’m going to be leaving WoW for a few months (probably until Cataclysm is released). Obviously this means I’ll be stepping down as GM, and this leads to questions such as who is going to take over, in what capacity, and so on.

We (that is, myself and my three officers) of course want to make the transition as smooth as possible to avoid disruption to the guild.

Managing the transition from one guild leader to another can be quite stressful.  As much as you may try to make the guild about the members, the purpose and the policies, some of your members will always put you on a pedestal and think that you stepping down means the end of the guild as they know it.

The good news: you’re thinking about it ahead of time.  The more preparation you put into this, the smoother things will go.  Many times a GM disappears without notice, catching the officers by surprise and leaving them without some of the critical privileges they need to keep the guild moving forward.

Veliaf posed some specific questions, which in and of themselves could fill an article.  But this is a huge topic to cover properly, because in order to manage the transition from one guild leader to another, you have to have an appreciation for everything that a guild leader does.  While anyone can can give a general description of what a guild leader does, it would probably be limited to the visible in-game and figurehead aspects of the position.  Guild leaders tend to do much more behinds the scenes.

To give this it’s proper due, I’m going to split this into three medium-sized articles rather than two very large ones.  First, we’ll talk about how to manage the transition itself – choosing a new guild leader, communicating the change to your members and keeping the guild on an even keel throughout the process.  Next, we’ll go a bit more in depth as to all the things that a guild leader does.  This will also serve as a laundry list of tasks that may be suitable for delegation rather than transferring them all onto one person.  Finally, I’ll talk about the practical steps you can take to prepare for your temporary or permanent departure from a guild so that you can quickly transfer leadership and deal with real life.

Crunch Time or No?

Your immediate goals for handling a leadership transfer are going to be very different depending on whether the change is planned or not.  If the current GM has decided that they need to move on and you have even a couple of weeks to make that happen, your job is going to be much much easier.

If your current GM just logged on to transfer leadership and gquit, you need to keep the guild operating smoothly while you plan out the transition.  The worst possible situation is that your GM has disappeared or announced their departure but hasn’t transferred leadership.

If you find yourself with an AWOL guild leader, you can petition a GM to transfer leadership to an officer after the account has been inactive for 30 days.  I believe that the account needs to have no login activity, so in the rare case that the GM has moved to a new realm but is actively playing, there may not be much you can do.  Until you can get control of the guild leader rank, what you can do will be limited.

I’ll go over the various things to deal with in the sections below.  If you’re dealing with an unexpected GM change, you will probably be most interested in:

  • Steady As She Goes
  • Selecting a New Leader
  • Replacing What’s Been Lost
  • Changing Things Up

If the move is planned, then you’ll find more relevant advice in:

  • Selecting a New Leader
  • Guidance Before Retirement
  • Handing Over the Keys
  • Steady As She Goes
  • Preparing For a Return
  • Changing Things Up
  • The Golden Parachute

I can only give each of these a short treatment, so if there is a topic that you’d think would be a good standalone article, please leave a comment.

(more) Steady as She Goes...

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The Service of Officers

Jan 25

Posted by Karatheya in Best Practices, Guild Management | 1 Comment

In scrounging the US and EU guild relations forums for inspiration, I came across this post on abuse within the officer ranks.  I haven’t quite got enough to say on that particular subject at the moment, but one thing the OP said jumped out at me:

All I got in response was him arguing with me for two hours saying that I’d turned his [sic] back on him, and stolen his glory

I’m assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that the “glory” referred to is the glory of being an officer within the guild.

*blink* *blink*

I would hope that I’m not the only guild leader who is surprised to hear the role of officer as being glorious.  At best, it can be frustrating and a source of additional work.  In a fair guild, I’d think that the most reward you could expect to get out of being an officer is an increased chance at being part of a raid, but only for mechanical reasons like needing a loot master – not just because you’re an officer.

I know I’m being a bit naïve here.  The guild relation forums and plenty of blogs are replete with examples of people who have abused their power as an officer.  Offenses range anywhere from ego-tripping to guild bank theft to outright sexual harassment.  But I doubt that this corruption stems from the position of being an officer.  Rather, these are examples of selfish, broken people who would press any advantage they were given.  WoW, and the anonymity it provides, just provides an outlet.  Think of it as an extension of Gabe’s G.I.F.T theorem (warning: NSFW).

The point I’m trying to make is that when you’re doing it right, being a part of guild leadership is a service to the members of your guild, not really a position of power.  It may not have the strict delineations of something like participatory politics, but you’re supposed to be facilitating the operation of the guild – not for reward but because you want to see the guild prosper.

Learning From Others – if That’s Possible

The problem then becomes one of finding people who agree with this sentiment to be your officers.  Obviously it’s not that easy based upon the reports of abuse.  I would like to dismiss these (numerous as they are) as being big on profile but not on significance.  Guilds don’t post on the guild relations forum or write on blogs when everything is going swimmingly.  Nobody keeps statistics on things like guild lifetime or officer and member turnover, so it’s hard for us to look at “the most successful guilds” and emulate their ways.

To the larger WoW community, success equals progression, but there’s no evidence to suggest that top progression guilds have the best leadership practices.  It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that most top progression guilds have a harsher leadership regime than many of us would be comfortable with – but that the members know that when they join and agree to fall in line because it gives the desired result.

I’m going to whip out the wide brush and paint guilds one of three colors:

  • guilds whose officers are the friends of the guild leader
  • guilds whose officers are simply the people willing to do the job
  • guilds whose officers are picked for their ability to do the job

There’s obviously some overlap here.  Just because you’re the friend of the guild leader doesn’t mean that you’re not capable of being a good officer and willing to put the extra time in.  Just because your guild leader doesn’t put much thought into who becomes an officer doesn’t mean that they won’t end up with a few good people in that role.  However, if you don’t take the third approach to selecting officers, then the experience for your members will be inconsistent at best.

You may have a really good recruiting officer who finds good candidates, answers all their questions before they apply, and helps shepherd them through the trial period.  Then they ask a question of the loot officer, who turns around and acts like a total tool.  Or perhaps the loot officer isn’t around, so they act another officer who doesn’t quite know all the ins and outs of the system.  They get bad information that leads them to make a mistake while in a raid.

(more) The minimum role of an officer

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