So as you can see from my last post I hit rock bottom. But around every dark cloud is a silver lining.
I ended up talking to another Gm well into the early hours of the morning and he helped me see that what was upsetting me was that this was the first real challenge of my leadership of the guild. To coin his phrase, the honeymoon is over and its now crunch time.
Also as a result of talking to him i was better able to see alternatives. He has a guild somewhat larger than mine,we have 90 odd perople he has over 350 people, the guild ethos is much the same but the management style is very different. It got me looking at the tight reins I hold on the guild and asking myself if it was time to let things go. Appoint officers and have faith in them to breath the same vision for More than Raids. This is something I have had difficulty doing as I recall the days in my previous guild where there was this kind of multi headed monster that resulted in the guild leadership being ineffective because everything relied on waiting for a meeting or nothing got done because people werent as driven to achieve the goal for the guild if it required a little effort on their behalf.
Last night the lights went on for me... I dont have the same people in guild who were ineffectual in my last, I do have guildies who care about the end result of the guild and I do have guildies who want to maintain what we have... so with that knowledge whats stopping me letting lose of the reins. (Other than having to overcome my glaringly obvious character fault that is)
So today I am going to steal a couple of ideas from my counsellor of last evening and I'm going to loosen up my hold, I will start with sending an ingame mail to all guildies I just have to find the addon that lets me bulk mail.
I am going to start with taking back the control of the Whereswally situation and a) Tell all guildies to place him on block and advise them that any contact in retaliation is against guild and Blizzard desire (if they wish to be his friend thats their call but Caveat emptor to them) - that it ends here and he will no longer be given any attention at all and b) I am removing his wife from guild. It is likely a few chums may follow but I think that although she hasnt actively done anything against the guild she is a part of the problem because her pschopath husband wont leave it be as long as she is in guild. Her position with us is now untenable.
I will also talk to my pedigrees about a transition to officers roles of varying responsibilities, I will hold a once a month meeting to set the raid time table and I will ingame mail guildies for input into what they want to do.
I will also put to a vote what people think in regards to recruitment : recruit more, recruit less, that sort of thing. And discuss with pedigrees opening up the recruitment process. example: We get a couple of new guildies a week, my chat friends guild got 8 new members in the time we were talking. I can count on less than two hands the number of gkicks I have done for anything other than being inactive (offline more than 2 months). he does them weekly..So its time to ask my guild to put in two cents and provide some wind to direct this ship.
Only small steps because the reality is I cant actually let go. Its the way I am and the way my guild has grown and developed as a result. Yes I can change somethings but not everything, and in reality I dont want to change everything.
I ended up talking to another Gm well into the early hours of the morning and he helped me see that what was upsetting me was that this was the first real challenge of my leadership of the guild. To coin his phrase, the honeymoon is over and its now crunch time.
Also as a result of talking to him i was better able to see alternatives. He has a guild somewhat larger than mine,we have 90 odd perople he has over 350 people, the guild ethos is much the same but the management style is very different. It got me looking at the tight reins I hold on the guild and asking myself if it was time to let things go. Appoint officers and have faith in them to breath the same vision for More than Raids. This is something I have had difficulty doing as I recall the days in my previous guild where there was this kind of multi headed monster that resulted in the guild leadership being ineffective because everything relied on waiting for a meeting or nothing got done because people werent as driven to achieve the goal for the guild if it required a little effort on their behalf.
Last night the lights went on for me... I dont have the same people in guild who were ineffectual in my last, I do have guildies who care about the end result of the guild and I do have guildies who want to maintain what we have... so with that knowledge whats stopping me letting lose of the reins. (Other than having to overcome my glaringly obvious character fault that is)
So today I am going to steal a couple of ideas from my counsellor of last evening and I'm going to loosen up my hold, I will start with sending an ingame mail to all guildies I just have to find the addon that lets me bulk mail.
I am going to start with taking back the control of the Whereswally situation and a) Tell all guildies to place him on block and advise them that any contact in retaliation is against guild and Blizzard desire (if they wish to be his friend thats their call but Caveat emptor to them) - that it ends here and he will no longer be given any attention at all and b) I am removing his wife from guild. It is likely a few chums may follow but I think that although she hasnt actively done anything against the guild she is a part of the problem because her pschopath husband wont leave it be as long as she is in guild. Her position with us is now untenable.
I will also talk to my pedigrees about a transition to officers roles of varying responsibilities, I will hold a once a month meeting to set the raid time table and I will ingame mail guildies for input into what they want to do.
I will also put to a vote what people think in regards to recruitment : recruit more, recruit less, that sort of thing. And discuss with pedigrees opening up the recruitment process. example: We get a couple of new guildies a week, my chat friends guild got 8 new members in the time we were talking. I can count on less than two hands the number of gkicks I have done for anything other than being inactive (offline more than 2 months). he does them weekly..So its time to ask my guild to put in two cents and provide some wind to direct this ship.
Only small steps because the reality is I cant actually let go. Its the way I am and the way my guild has grown and developed as a result. Yes I can change somethings but not everything, and in reality I dont want to change everything.
I think you will find that having a good group of officers to support you will help with some of the burden. However, being a GM is still stressful. Our guild has a strong officer group that runs the guild with one appointed GM. This GM role has changed hands 5 times in the last 3 years.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to keep in mind as you implement an officer system...dealing with disagreements with guild members is difficult, but dealing with the same drama at the officer level is even harder. I think it is still worth having the support system of officers, but depending on the access you give them, your potential for drama goes way up. As an example, we typically have several officers with administrative access to the web site and to Ventrilo. After a pretty heated disagreement in an officer meeting, all of the guild's dirty laundry ended up on the guild web site for all to view. Having an officer leave the guild (gkicked or otherwise) has a big impact on the members.
Good Luck!
~Daffnae
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