I read a few business leadership blogs. Not all of what they talk about directly translates to MMO leadership, but sometimes there’s a gem. Today I was inspired by Rhett Laubach of Personal Leadership Insight and his 10List. In the same spirit, I present you with my 10 Reasons I love being a GM list.

1) The people - As an online leader I’ve had a chance to meet and get to know some amazing people.

2) The thrill of accomplishment - Accomplishing a task in an MMO is always a thrill, looking around and realizing these people wouldn’t have come together to do it without your efforts definitely magnifies that thrill for me.

3) Constant Motivation - Having a bad day? Frustrated by real life? Doesn’t matter, people are counting on me. It’s a great motivation to “Get a helmet,” or get over life’s little hiccups. (My Pally Officer, Sultan Fantastic, frequently says “Life’s rough get a helmet.”)

4) Feeling of empowerment - While I certainly don’t get to do what I want on a whim, I more empowered than the average player to help enact the changes I want to see.

*

5) Never, ever having to pug - Seriously, I haven’t been in the LFG channel in a year. It’s wonderful.

6) Rarely having people question you when you say you’re busy - Ever been repeatedly asked by a guild mate to run them through an instance? Yeah that doesn’t happen to me. If I let one of my members know I’m working on something for the guild, that’s generally sufficient.

7) Setting Behavioral Standards - Even unintentionally a GM sets the standard for what’s acceptable behavior with their own actions, and intentionally with what they allow. This generally means if it pisses me off, it doesn’t fly.

There is always something to do - I have never logged in and wondered what I should do today. Something is always waiting.

9) The opportunity to grow out of game skills - In addition to working to master my class and overcome new raid bosses, I’m also challenged to develop my interpersonal skills, communication techniques and my organizational tools, all of these things come with me to the real world.

10) The opportunity to help others grow - In my role as GM I’ve had the opportunity to make connections with other people and help them develop both in game skills and some out of game skills. Nothing made me more proud than when one of our raiders found a job in his dream career path and had to step away from his raiding commitment but said that he’d take the lessons our guild had taught him with him to his career and he knew it would make him more successful.

When I first saw this Mr. Laubach’s list I thought this would be a short post I could have ready before my company came over. 4 hours later and with the help of my company, (Hi Gumi!) it turns out it wasn’t as quick as I thought it would be. That being said, taking the time to write down these things has really helped me focus on what makes me so passionate about my guild and good leadership. I’d encourage all of you to sit down and try this. What 10 things do you love about what you put your time into?

*Most of the pictures I use aren’t of people I know, but that one IS my puppy. I know it’s poor quality, it’s still my puppy.

When I have the spare time, I frequently chat with Matt and Wyn about all things holy priest. Sometimes when we’re talking Matt says; “you should post that.” My response is typically; “that’s not the focus on my blog. The neophyte and seasoned priests can go to your world for priesting.” That being said, I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about healing. I have to. Aside from guild leading, I wear the healing role lead hat for my guild. I build our healing strats and I evaluate, recruit, and coach our healers. Beyond that, I just enjoy it. So when Matt came to me and said “Auz, what do you think about a new healing community?” I said “YES! Sign me up.” PlusHeal.com is that community. It’s intended as a gathering spot for healers of all levels of experience; from the new wow player, to the gee I wanna make an alt, to the we’re working on Kil’jaden and everything in between.

As far as bloggers go, Matt has tapped the healing think tank. I’m frankly honored to be collaborating with such intelligent, talented people to help form this community. The roster includes:
Matticus of World of Matticus
Wyn of World of Matticus
Siha of Banana Shoulders
Anna of Too Many Annas
Lume of Lume the Mad and
Nuetralise of Spirit is Your Friend

EDIT: Just when I thought it couldn’t get better it did! Phae from Resto 4 Life has joined the team!

Matt blew the lid off our NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement for you kids who aren’t hip to the lingo - have I mentioned I’m taking a lot of medicine?) in his announcement post today. At this point, all we’re really missing is you. Even if you aren’t a healer, I encourage you to pop in. As a leader, it’s always helpful to get a perspective from a different raid role.

PS - To the English language and all who study it, I sincerely apologize for my abuse of colons and semicolons. I’d like to say it won’t happen again. I’d like to say that if you teach me the rules I’ll follow them. That fact is, I won’t. I am irreverent in my use of these misunderstood punctuation marks. I can’t help myself. Please know that while I am unwilling to renounce my sins against my mother tongue, I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering I have caused.

This started out as a comment to Wyn’s post DKP is the Devil but it got to be too long, so I thought I’d post it here. You should read her post and the comments too before you read mine. I’ll wait for you.

I thought I’d follow up since Wyn quoted me regarding why I feel so strongly that biased officers shouldn’t be a factor for not using loot council and yet we don’t use a loot council. I do stand 100% behind what I said though, if your officers are biased, it will show up and weaken your guild in ways beyond your loot system. Am I perfect? Nope. Are there other ways to do things? Yep. Am I willing to listen to you? Sure. But I’m still steering this ship, if you really don’t trust me or my officers you won’t be happy here. Loot council or DKP it doesn’t matter, too much of leading a guild is subjective and difficult to define in black and white. If you could just set up rules and let it go, you wouldn’t need a GM, and I wouldn’t have a lot to write about.

For me, the DKP system is about setting expectations. Wyn’s statement that a DKP system measures objective things, but can’t measure skill or some other more subjective things is accurate. But I’d like to think the role of your officers in a DKP system is to handle those things outside of loot, basically my view is, if I used you for the boss kill and you didn’t wipe us in a spectacular way, then you probably have the skill we need to kill the boss. If you wipe us spectacularly repeatedly, well I’m probably not going to take you unless I don’t have a better option, and if I don’t have a better option for long enough, then you probably need gear.

Congratulating a player on gear that was essentially defaulted to them based on their accumulated points rings very hollow in comparison to congratulating a guildie who was awarded gear for their contribution to the latest group effort. The difference is the same as that of receiving a gift or buying the damn thing yourself.” I actually never thought about it this way, but then I thought about it again, and I think in a DKP system congratulating a guildmate who was awarded loot is like congratulating a new mother who just had a baby. Sure, she did “buy the damn thing herself” and it wasn’t a surprise but it was the result of the culmination of 9 months of preparation, effort and lugging it around. I think the congratulations is a moment of saying, “You’ve been here with us and you’ve earned that, congratulations for your effort paying off.” I think they both reflect a contribution to the group.
I think the largest flaw we’ve seen in our DKP system is that it encourages people to play games to ensure they get what they value most. This isn’t something we’ve been able to combat entirely, but public loot plans do help. “PointWhorder, I notice you’re tops for this item and it’s listed as your best in slot why are you passing?” Though we do get “Well playerX needs it more” and it’s difficult to argue with that. We honestly don’t worry about it too much unless something is going to rot if they don’t take it.
The advantage we’ve found in a loot system is EVERYONE thinks they are the most deserving of the loot on the floor. You can’t help but always notice when you do something cool or awesome, but you can miss what your peers are doing. Even in an unbiased system, when people are passed for loot, they will most likely feel they deserve it. By having a well thought out system, people can manage their expectations so when loot is on the floor people generally know who will get it. Also we can quickly get the loot out and move on to the next thing.

In addition, I think not every DKP system is created equal. Wyn’s made the very valid point that DKP systems measure the objective, but what objective thing would you like to measure? Attendance? Contribution to the guild bank? Recruitment of quality players? Researching strats? Forum posts? Farming materials the guild needs? DPS? All of these things can be measured and tracked. If you use a DKP system, think carefully about what your guild values and make sure your system reflects that. I guess my closing to this message is just a loot system can tell you a lot about what a guild values, make sure yours sends the right message.

PS - I told you I was too sick to be writing.

I’ve been a little under the weather this week, but it’s been too long since I posted. In typical Auz fashion I’ve decided it was time to look over the guild forums and find something vaguely amusing.

I made this post today. It’s a time when as officers we decided to go back to our members for feedback about an issue. It’s also one of those weird times where we are holding a member up for discussion. Before the post was made, we talked to the member to make sure he was comfortable with this.

First and foremost let me say this is the first time we’ve asked for feedback directly relating to an individual in a public format. Given the culture of respect for our teammates we’ve developed, I’m going to assume that if you have negative things to say about the person behind the character, you’ll PM them to CasterLead or myself rather than post them here.

Alright Auz, you have my attention, what’s the deal?

We has a problem. “AffLock” is a long standing member of the guild who has recently taken on a job that prevents him from making our attendance requirement. That being said, he is making our progression nights and “CasterLead” and the other officers view him as fairly irreplaceable (I mean he LIKES affliction and he’s not all emo). When he’s not available to us, he’s taken the time to train the lovely and talented “CuteMage” and shared his account with her, so we’re guaranteed to have an affliction lock available to us.

Okay Auz, what about this is a problem?

Well being below the attendance cap means “Aff’s” not eligible for gear until all the others have passed on it. Which means slowly but surely “Aff’s” gear is going to start to lag behind, to the point where he won’t be useful on progression nights anymore.

Oh that is a problem, but you said something about not attacking “Aff”…. when do I get to say naughty things about him…errr I mean, surely Auzara, you must have a solution.

“Aff” suggested that as his actual play time hasn’t changed, just the hours he can play in, that he put that time to industriously farming for the guild to “earn” the same time you guys put in. If that’s demon slaying elixirs or “‘Aff’, can you grab me some adepts, I didn’t have the time I needed this week” In exchange we would waive the 3600 EP requirement for “Aff.” While his gear acquisition rate would be slower than the others (due to slower decay rate and less EP earned) it wouldn’t lag so significantly as to make him not useful on progression nights.

Okay Auz this is a great story, but um… shouldn’t this be in the officer forums?

It was in the officer forums, but we while we mostly support this plan, the people it’s really going to affect are you guys. You’ll have “Aff” to compete with for gear and you’ll be benefited by the farming. Also, “Aff” has earned the officer’s respect for his time and commitment to the guild but also his approach when he got this job. But anytime you make an exception of this magnitude, there will be accusations of favoritism and not fair play. So we decided that if we’re going to be showing favoritism, let’s let the caster core do it. So casters, provide us with feedback. Is “AffLock’s” offer to put in equal times farming that he’s missing raiding worth it to you guys to pull him in your loot rotation? Remember what I said though, while we are discussing a fellow player and friend please keep your comments constructive and related to the discussion. Comments I think won’t help the discussion will be moved to the officer forums.

So now, I can talk about “Aff” and that time I caught him with the goat and the crisco?

Only if you think it’s relevant to the conversation little voice in Auz’s head. Now, let’s go get ice cream!

Sweet I love ice cream!

So why’d you share this Auz, I mean other than being lazy? Well I wanted to show this as an example of:

A) Why I’m not writing for you guys right now - I mean I’m talking to myself about ice cream.

B) Involving your members in decisions - This was a sticky wicket for us, I mean the player is solid, but it’s a pretty massive departure from our rules. When you decide who’s getting in for the raid, you can’t involve the whole guild, the same with which instance we’re raiding. In this case though, we can and frankly I think we should. It these guys who will be affected by both the farming and the loot calls. Don’t forget to keep your members involved when you can.

C) Getting more opinions - You guys aren’t in my guild, so this is mostly just for my curiosity, but what do you guys think about massive departures from the established rules? Is it okay sometimes? Should it never be done? Is farming outside of raid times a valid time make up for being there for raids?

D) I can feel better about having posted “something” and focus on back on getting better and what the guild needs from me.

Hey Auz!

First off, I want to tell you how much I _love_ your blog! I mean…you’re a girl, leading a guild, and a healer…it’s like me, only, you know, with better wording. Superb! It provides such a great basis of everything I want to discuss - healing, leading, raiding, and some pretty great singing to boot. However, I’m sure you’re busy so I’ll make this quick. This was titled “Ask Auz” so I thought it was kind of…a good idea to get some feedback from you on a topic that’s been bothering me.

Introductions quickly: I’m Tulani, a holy priest and Healing Leader of Lothar US, currently 208th in the US, with 4/6 SW with Mu’ru less than a week away from server first; the very first server first for my guild (stupid alliance.) However, lately I’ve been noticing a few things in the healing core:

1) Overpopulation. We have TOO MANY HEALERS. But they’re, uh, generally, all great. Maybe one or two aren’t. Everyone’s antsy since sitting out half the roster week after week for Mu’ru isn’t good, and I’ve gotten a lot of “should I quit? I know we’re full” tells, or just the constant bitchingandwhining of “you always sit me!” To make matters worse, an old resto druid (previous healing lead), who is AMAZING, wants to come back, and the other officers, and I even, are all for it, I don’t think I could make room. What would you do to calm everyone down and make them realize that we’re a little full, yes, but that the only reason they’re feeling like this is because Mu’ru only take 6 healers?

2) Also, I’ve been noticing bad looting going on. Not just trying to scramble to get “that item first” but taking items over other people who could use it more. I often pass loot to those it would be better or more of an upgrade for, but the other priest has called me a DKP whore for it (I have amassed a giant pile), even though I pass to her often, do research on the items and my healers, and take upgrades for myself still. She on the other hand, like many healers, bids on ANYTHING she can use - shadow gear, holy gear, you name it. It all culminated on last week’s Twins kill - 5 shaman and 2 priests in raid, and the resto druid takes the haste offhand, which is THE BEST shaman offhand and a superb priest one. I had, yet again, passed in hopes that a shaman would grab it, because I didn’t think a druid would bid. We run flat out Zero Sum DKP, and I’m worried that loot monitoring would cause issues, and also slow raids. How can I tell my healers that SW will be on farm soon and you’ll all get more gear than you could ever want without talking down to them? I wanted to make a big forum post but we don’t have a specified “healing” forum…perhaps I should make one? I wanted to also, with our bloated roster, get down who needs in for what boss to help alleviate loot and raiding woes.

3) Finally, and I’ll make this quick, I started out raid leading and whatnot about 2 years ago, but usually only on the sidelines. I was appointed to healing lead here by the old one when he quit without me hardly knowing what was going on (I should have seen it, he had me start leading more and more healing while he sat out until I hardly realized it anymore). The odd thing was, I didn’t get as much respect as he did. I’m not bad at it in any stretch; I’m actually very good. However, I’ve realized over time it’s really because I’m a girl, and I’m younger than many of them. Over time I’ve gotten more and more respect, and I can lay down the law very easily, but I’m often afraid to make big posts or anything because, well, I’m afraid people won’t listen. Reading your blog though, along with experience, has really helped me out so much. Now I hardly find respect an issue, and people aren’t afraid to talk to me about topics anymore. I can also do more than just heal lead now too; I can actually lead entire raids, discuss issues, and stand up for points of view. It really has made an impact on my leadership career and I couldn’t be more proud of our guild and it’s progress, and feeling like I had a big part in it.

Thanks for your time Auz, I know you’re a busy woman and this turned out a lot longer than I ever expected. If you could respond it would be very much appreciated, but if not, I understand, and I hope you know that I love the work you’re putting out there, and you should know that it helps!

-Tulani

Tulani,

It sounds like you are suffering from one of the same problems I am. As this is something I have been struggling with too, I wanted to make sure I was giving you a well rounded response. This is why I also shared your query with a colleague I respect, Lume the Mad. In addition to blogging, Lume is a resto druid who leads a guild that’s 40th in US progression. You can find his response here.

Sunwell requires a large variation in the number and type of healers you use and the types of healers that are the strongest for the fight. In retrospect it may have been wiser for me to use some of my hybrids for healing the large healing number of healing encounters and keep the healing population more stable. That being said, not all hybrids are created equal on the healing front and in my case the most amazing healers are generally the most amazing dps.

…….

Names are obscured to protect the healy. Why’d I take a picture and not just copy the text, Matt says I need more pictures to break up my wall of text. (See Matt I listen, and yes pictures of text count)

I made that post for the first time about a month after we started the guild and since then I’ve updated it about once a month, or after a significant healer change. I think this post provides the following 3 benefits:

• My healers know I have a plan - We’re not just willy nilly adding people or making a mad dash for the best healers we can find.

• They can clearly see my raid selection criteria - When I say, well dude, you’ve been missing raids without telling me, they can’t say “I didn’t know that meant you’d be sitting me.”

• It’s clear what my expectations are and what my goals for the team are - I expect the things that get you raid invites, my goal is to speed up our target identification and reaction time.

Aside from the “State of the Healing” address, my individual healers that I think need improvement know what I want them to work on. For example, last night I took two of my druids in a channel and said: “DruidA you are amazing at emergency healing but you lack confidence in your target selection, and DruidB you are amazing at keeping hots up on the tank(s) at all times, but you are lacking in your utilization of your emergency healing spells. Finally DruidA you’re going on vacation, teach DruidB what you’ve been doing on the new fight we just learned. While you two are at it, teach each other how to do what the other is doing, because you’re both better druids than I am.” This doesn’t work with every healer pair, but it works with these two because of their respect for each other and generally positive attitudes.

Over time, I’ve found that most “’should I quit? I know we’re full’ tells, or just the constant bitchingandwhining of ‘you always sit me!’” comes from insecurity or feeling under valued. You can combat this by making the time to sit down with each of your healers and speak with them individually. I forget which leadership book I picked this up out of, but I like these meetings to follow a Positive, Negative Positive pattern. (You can see an example of this pattern in the Druid conversation above.) Regardless of if you have to go looking for the negative feedback go find it. Give them something to work on and focus on other than raid selection. If you have to dig extremely deep to find it tell them that too. Lume’s post also suggests this kind of meeting and addresses another topic you can discuss in this meeting.

It sounds like adding that resto druid back into the mix will strengthen your healing core and I think you should do it but I think the way you do it will carry weight with your team. Make it a point to sit him at first and gradually fold him into your healing roster. As a previous officer he should see the wisdom in earning his stripes with the team (especially the new ones) and he needs to learn the fights he missed while he was gone and gear up anyway. Seeing your previous officer sitting with them will drive home the point that it’s not about all about skill or trust especially with your veteran healers.

Poor Looting

First YES add a healing forum. Go do that now! I’ll wait for you to get back .

~hmms quietly to myself~

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You back? Okay good. Now this can wait until after the blog reading, but if you don’t have one go add the Tank, Melee and Caster forums too. You’ve outlined a classic problem, is having conversations with my raiders about their loot choices important enough to take up valuable raid time? The good news is we don’t have to answer that question. Make the loot decisions and have the conversations before the loot is on the floor. In my forums each of my raiders is requested to publicly post their gear plans. This provides us with the following benefits:

• An opportunity for raiders to see what their teammates want- I use a staff. Would the Illidan Gavel and the Archimonde offhand provide me with stronger stats? Yes. However, all of my healers can use the gavel with great result. I want that gavel in the hands of the people who AoE heal for me. I wear my staff with the pride of knowing that I’m one of the few people on my. team who can put that staff to good use, and having that staff means the gavel is in the hands of the people who benefit the most from it. My other healers can see what their peers want, and they can discus in advance who benefits the most from it. Do I require this from my healers when they bid on gear? Absolutely not. I do instill in my healers the knowledge that healing, more than any other role, is about teamwork, the strongest team kills bosses, not the strongest healer.

• The ability to quickly evaluate what bosses my healers still need to be killing – When we look at dropping instances or bosses off our raiding schedule, I look at these gear plans. What bosses do my healers want? When I make decision regarding who’s in for farm nights, I look at these plans. This information makes my decisions stronger.

• It forces my healers to think about what they want before it’s on the floor – When people are forced to make split second decisions, they tend to take something they aren’t sure about rather than miss the opportunity. Requesting gear plans requires them to think this out in advance when they have more time and more information available, generally resulting in better decisions.

• It allows us to have discussions where I am thinking about overruling them in advance – I love my druids, but they aren’t getting Illidan’s Gavel over my AoE healers or even my pallys. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Knowing if they want it in advance means I can tell them when I’m going to overrule them in advance. It gives me a chance to talk to them and allow them to make their case for the item in their hands when I can really focus on just them. It also allows them to hear my points without feeling rushed or having the adrenaline of having just killed a boss and thinking they’ve won loot in their system. Lume has gone over in more detail the hows and whys of overruling a player’s loot decisions in his post.

Compliments all around

First, thank you very much for the kind words. It’s very affirming to hear that the time I spend working on the blog is having a positive impact! Hearing from readers definitely adds to the reward of writing beyond just what I get out of writing things out and forcing myself to take my own advice. (I hate it when I’m right and it means more work for me.)

Second, the fact that you’re taking the time to read and ask questions means you’re doing it right. Certainly there are great leaders that can do everything by instinct, but even these great leaders can learn from other people’s experience rather than having to experience it themselves. I can’t tell you how much better my leadership has gotten since I’ve met Lume and had him to bounce ideas off of and share frustrations with. Don’t get discouraged while you try and herd your healers through Sunwell. Your leadership got them there and your dedication and continued leadership will get them through it. The trying times are what define people as leaders and give your team confidence in your leadership once you’re back on firmer ground.