I have just had an epiphany of wow proportions I think?
I posted on my personal blog this morning the following post:
http://onyxiia.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/this-is-my-life-why-i-resigned/
I think this is a major factor as to why I could not be an effective guild leader in the eyes of some people.
My real life job is about managing relationships, making people happy to use the service my company provides. It is about dealing with over 30 specific people with different personalities and goals and somehow managing to always keep them happy to come back to us.
I used this in my guild leadership methods. If people were unhappy I wanted to know why so I could investigate and correct if needed. I thought my efforts would be appreciated by people. I enjoyed having some part of the control of a guild where I could affect change when needed to ensure said happiness did occur.
Over the time as a guild leader, a few people made it quite difficult for me to do as the basic message was that you can’t make everyone happy. To a degree I agree with this statement, but as my job entails doing exactly that I was not understanding why it would not translate into the game. The point being that some people will never be happy and will always attack and belittle the people trying to make the experience good for them.
I was devastated when i left my old guild as I had believed I was making a group of people work together and put aside their differences. Obviously, they are all still together and happy so I was not a factor in that. This makes me sad to realise that not only in my gaming life, but in my personal life I am just not good at managing relationships.
Yes it was just one negative email, over the hundreds of positive ones I have received, but the negative was so very negative to me, and about my abilities and efforts.
This morning has made me realise that no matter how much you think you are making a difference or doing something good for a group of people, they will inevitably attack you on a personal level with no thought for how it affects you; emotionally or psychologically.
So in the end I suck as a guild leader because I was trying to use my tactics and methods of managing relationships at work, with my guild members in game. I was treating them as people we wanted to keep in the guild, people I wanted to stay on and be loyal and be happy with their time spent. I was a dickhead for thinking this was possible.
TL;DR version:
Treat em mean, keep em keen.
See now from my perspective you were a great guild leader and raid leader. you cant help what other people do or how they act.
You took me in when dreddds and i were looking for a home and got us through content we never thought we would see.
So i would say you do well with relationship management but lets face people are arseholes and there is nothing you can do to change that.
Just step back and take a subjective look and it was never as bad as you seem to think.
Thanks Kolibear, I have to admit you and dredders were the two people who supported me through everything 😀 I love you guys.
You don’t think I spent too long trying to make people happy?
Thanks kolibear 😀 Where have you been anyway?? Sabb mentioned you were levelling your lock or something, hit 80 by now though I am sure? ehehhe
Nah dropped that to get my shaman up to spec so i can use it as an alternate raiding toon.
Ele offspec healer seeing as we know they can throw decent heals in ele spec.
But yeah been busy at work as well.
i think you spent too much time trying to make everyone else happy ( not a bad thing ) but not enough time making sure you were happy ( a very bad thing )