The Guild Counsel: Teacher by day, guild leader by night

Last week, as I listed my guild leader New Year's resolutions, I made a passing reference to my background as a former teacher. This led to a great question by Massively reader Mike Azariah, who wrote: "I still do teach. Do you find that helping others (especially new players) starts to fall into a lesson?"

I've had discussions with other guild leaders in the past, and it always strikes me how often they talk about how the job of guild leader parallels, and often enhances, real-life occupations that involve leadership skills. This week's Guild Counsel will take a closer look at Mike's question of how much the job of teacher relates to guild leadership.

The most important lesson I learned from teaching is that what you teach outside the pages of the textbook is just as important. When you hear people talk about their favorite teachers, they always start by saying that he or she connected with them and brought the curriculum to life through a variety of teaching methods. I've met teachers who, every single day, march their class in like cattle, spend most of the time talking to the chalkboard or overhead projector, and never stray from the textbook. They're forgettable, and so is the information they convey. Similarly, there are guild leaders out there who do the same thing -- they mass invite a bunch of players, rattle off a strat from a website, and then are shocked when everyone's making mistakes and the raid is wiping over and over. The most important skills I learned through teaching were all the intangibles -- the interpersonal skills involving the student-teacher relationship.

What's funny is that when I look back, I realize I was working hard on connecting with my students and managing all the intricacies of the classroom environment, but I wasn't at all using those skills at night when I ran the guild. I was like that cattle rancher teacher I described earlier -- I used to post up these long, prosaic speeches, and I think I might have even used the word "thee" here and there. I was often addressing the guild as a whole but wasn't really connecting with each player individually.

MMO developer Raph Koster once wrote about how players subconsciously judge people by the look of their avatars, and I can honestly say that I fell into that trap a bit when I was first starting out. And that's probably the biggest difference between leading a guild and any job that involves leadership skills in the real world -- the inability to see exactly whom you are leading. In MMOs, there are so many things that mask real-life identities, and while this usually adds to the fun and the fantasy of a virtual world, it makes running a guild a very challenging task. Picture a coach walking into the locker room only to find that his football team was sporting Halloween masks and could only communicate through handwritten notes, and you've captured the essence of guild management. As a guild leader, you need to be able to evaluate your members, find a role that matches their skills, and address issues when there are differences of opinion, but you are basically blind and deaf while doing it.

Because of that, I couldn't always see people for who they really were, and not surprisingly, we had a lot of drama in the early years in EverQuest because of it. The cute little old Gnome Wizard was really a loot-hungry, deceitful, and ultimately disloyal member. And the fun-loving, female main tank was really a guy trying to sweet-talk loot out of anyone and everyone who would pay attention to him. There were plenty of great people in our guild, but a couple of bad apples really made life miserable at times, and my inability to see past their in-game avatars hurt the entire guild.

I learned my lesson the hard way, and thankfully, I had a second chance at running a guild in Vanguard and EverQuest II. Things are a little different these days, and the benefit of voice chat has really helped remove one of the hurdles to connecting with my guildmates. We haven't had a rant thread in ages, because speaking with someone and hearing his voice is a lot better than reading text, which is so easy to misinterpret. It's also helped members get to know each other better and see the person behind the mask. I've learned to see past the green scaly skin of our off-tank, who moonlights as a doctor when he's not bodying up adds. Our colorful Fae Warden is really a guy who loves his coffee and never met a mob he wouldn't want to charm. And our two new members aren't actually new by any means but are veteran gamers who have years of MMO experience under their belts. (Raise your hand if you ever treated a "newbie" like a slow-learning child. C'mon, admit it!)

That's why seeing through an avatar is so important -- it helps to uncover exactly whom you're leading and what they want or need from you. I have broad, general guild goals for the guild as a whole, but I also spend some time trying to help out with individual needs as well. One newbie might require lots of hand-holding, while another might only need a quick nudge in the right direction and be fine from there. It's the same for teaching -- at the end of the year, I have to get the class through the curriculum, but if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm also connecting with the students individually to find the best method of getting that information across effectively. As soon as I learned to stop using "hither" and began to look past the pixels, I was able to run things much better in guild.

Thanks again to Mike for the question, and I'd love to hear others' thoughts on the crossover between guild leadership and real-life careers that involve leadership skills. Do you find that one enhances the other at all? Share your stories below!

Do you have a guild problem that you just can't seem to resolve? Have a guild issue that you'd like to discuss? Every week, Karen Bryan takes on reader questions about guild management right here in The Guild Counsel column. She'll offer advice, give practical tips, and even provide a shoulder to lean on for those who are taking up the challenging task of running a guild.