BlackWolf
Landscape Designer
I was thinking of posting to help section, but as that is only for asking stuff i couldnt think any better place than this. If someone feels insulted of this then dont read or ask mods to move this.
It ispretty long, but you are not forced to read. Also this is only first edition of this matter and hopefully i will have time in the future to make it more in depth view to leading and being leader.
Approaching leadership
The following text is about leadership and especially about leadership in online games. You should be notified of that I don’t say that I know it all or that I know anything about leading or leadership. This is my view to it and there are as many views as there are leaders. In the following I will approach leading from few angles and viewpoints and give some advices. Weather you think those are true or not are up to you. You are not forced to read so please if you do keep your opinions of my viewpoints to yourself. You can of course discuss about this matter with others but thinking you know the fact and I don’t doesn’t make your job any easier.
So let’s start from basics. What is leadership? Leadership is being the one who makes all those hard decisions and takes the blame from all mistakes. That’s the simplicity of leading. Leader will hardly ever be praised and even less they are thanked. Usually leader ends up to be the spitting can of the rest of the team. At the same time leading is most rewarding. It gives results in most showing way and person can find lots of satisfaction from knowing and seeing he was the one behind it all. At the end of the day leader is only as good as the team is allowing him to be but we will return to that later.
In the following I will try to answer to few questions. Main question is what are principles of good leadership? Followed by what is good leader a like? We will go through some basic team structures as part of leading and leadership as well as will have few words about politics and human relations. I hope you will have some fun reading this or don’t read it at all. (I prefer the later
) So let’s get started.
Leading and principles
Team is only as strong as its weakest link is. In modern internet gaming culture this has lead to “players market” where every player is replaceable with someone else whom on paper seems better. Let those players be ranked amongst skill, activity or friendliness doesn’t really matter as it’s not the whole truth. Situation can be seen from other angle too. Team is only as good as its leader is making it to be and as good as its members allows its leader to be. These things are making triangle which all or none are balancing each others. Yet some things are more important than others. Good leader cant success in command of completely useless members, while good team can collapse under bad leader. Worst case is one where there’s good leader and great team, but team doesn’t see their leader as good one and it ends up to inner difficulties which makes success impossible.
So to which are should good leader focus? To himself. Its only are you can become an expert and where you can improve. Getting better players and trying to force certain structures to improve your authority are minor parts in good leading. Key part to be leader is to understand your never good leader. Optimal leader is one who doesn’t see himself as good leader, but sees himself as someone who wants to become better leader. It simply means you are thrived to learn new things about leading, yourself and others all the time. Such persons reads this all through not only cause they think its fun to see how someone is stating obvious but because they think from everything they see and read they can learn something new. Basic example of bad leader type is the guy who reads this through and only compares it to his own opinions and then forgets it all as stupid mumble and as correctly wrong. I may be wrong, but yet I’m making points which are making you to think you leading as more than just sitting on chair above others.
To understand this concept one must understand himself. That is the main problem of leading. How you can lead others and expect them to be lead if you don’t yourself know of what you sound and are? Leader is the guy who all the time seeks to improve his knowledge about his own skills and specially his own weaknesses. Same time leader is seeking to know everything he can about the ones he lead and the atmosphere where he leads.
To sum all this up:
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
Those 4 are the ones we add to our list and then we move on to next “chapter”
How leader works as the head of the team
Being leader is not an easy task, its task that requires more discipline and patience than any other. Leader is the one who’s always being blamed of every bad thing and hardly ever gets thanked of good things. Yet you are expected to carry more than your own weight on your shoulders. So how actually leader works? There are numerous approaches to this matter and these kinds of lists are often seen in leading literacy I will list here only few basic approaches to this matter.
Charismatic leader
First and most known one is charismatic leader. There are many examples of such leading (way more than others) and most of those are connected to negative things. In this matter you should not! Such examples like Napoleon and Hitler are basic examples of GOOD charismatic leader. They were persons who were able to get their team to follow them to hell and back by being good talkers. At the same time such examples are shown of bad leading because these persons were not able to overcome their own weaknesses, such as power hunger and though of being invincible. Yet they are examples of how powerful can good charismatic leader be. Charismatic leaders are basic example in internet gaming too. Usually people who ends up leading are ones who have the guts to take responsibility and who have some social skills yet more often are driven by hunger for victory and are ready to do anything its demanded to get there. This leader type even successful one is really vulnerable to leaders’ personal problems such as arrogance.
Social leader
Another leader type is social leader. These are the person whom gets their leading position from being most social and nicest persons towards all. This is often confused to charismatic leadership but it shouldn’t. Where charismatic leaders are often seen as dictators social leaders are seen as good buddies. Often members see their leader to not to be leader but to be so good fella they really don’t mind of him/her leading. Good social leaders are rare thing and especially in internet gaming seeing successful social leader is more exception than anything else. I don’t say that social leading is bad way to lead, but in such environment as internet gaming its negative sides often overcomes good sides. That’s why really good social leaders are insanely successful yet rare.
Example leader
“Example” leader (couldn’t think better name) is leader who is seen as best of all. This type of leader is basic example of WW2 best platoon leaders. Such person is actually much better leader of smaller “battle groups” than as leader of bigger alliance. These guys usually end up in army to be sergeants as they are the ones who can work in tight situations under pressure. Such leader type is based on being example to others. Such leader goes in to battle as first and leaves the battlefield as last. They are highly respected amongst their team by their will to sacrifice their own safety for their teams well being. Where this type of leaders is effective and respected it’s also hard to maintain among larger groups of people simply because leader can’t be in all places at same time.
Above are 3 basic examples of different leader types. Those are 3 main ones I wanted to list, yet there’s much more of such and even each of those 3 can be divided to sub categories. I will as last introduce 4th type which isn’t type alone but actually what should be goal of every leader.
Combining leader
Combining leader is type to be seen as combination of all leadership types. This is hardest to reach and even harder to upkeep, but same time its only way to overcome weaknesses of every basic leading types weaknesses. It may sound like its obvious, but it really is not. For someone who is charismatic leader it may be hard to lead by example as well as for social leader it is to do decisions that hurts certain persons even if those are only realistic option to be made.
We can now add to our list of principles 2 more.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
Structure to support leading
Often amongst internet gaming things are seen as black and white. People only see what suites them best and if it doesn’t it must be bad. Structure of teams is often confused to leading and what type of leaders there are. It can be easily said that armies of the world have certain structure for reason. This kind of hierarchy is based on battlefields and thousands years of learning by trial and error. Yet this kind of system is not best for all situations and good leader is able to decide beast system for all situations based on surroundings and team. To make this simpler we will start from basic army hierarchy and then move towards more open systems and how those are actually way to support leading not how leading must be if certain structure is used.
Basic army hierarchy
Army hierarchy can be seen simply as pyramid. Where leader is on top of the pyramid followed by larger and larger number of people on lower steps of it and ending up to lowest step where the main members are. Such structure is based on fact that at battlefield every member of team must know who their authority is, to be able to work effectively. This can be seen as simple system where what ever becomes as obstacle members always have someone to ask “what to do” from. This structures biggest weakness is inner problems. It consists mainly of 2 problems. One is problem of authorities and taking orders. Some people don’t like to be ordered to do something or they might think they know better than the one who is giving orders. And another problem is multiple different orders problem where members receive different orders depending of whom they ask from. Both are reducing usefulness of this system a lot. Yet while working well this structure is base for best battlefield teams out there.
At the heart of this is usually some kind of ranks system where usually best members are awarded by higher place in inner rankings and as such it’s driving members to be better and better and give more for the team to reach more voice inside team.
Situational / project structure
Situational structure is based on strengths and weaknesses of individuals. In such structure team uses best available person for each task. Its main strength is that at every situation there’s for sure “the best man on the job”. This person can be nominated for the job by few different ways such as voting or by order of higher authorities. Main problem of this kind of system comes from situations where there are multiple nearly as good persons for the task or there is no good person for that task. This kind of situations usually ends up to wasting time and effort to organize teams inside problems while there would be something more important to focus at. Yet if team is welded together enough or there’s well working hierarchy in team this kind of structure can work very well in all situations and be highly rewarding.
As mentioned earlier this kind of structure can work under different kind of leadership and shouldn’t be tied to only one kind of leading.
Divisional structure
Divisional structure is based on dividing members to teams inside main team. These teams can be based on location (for example time zones) or strengths, skills, you name it. These teams’ works as individual groups inside one bigger group. All these teams have their own structure of some sort and their named leaders are responsible to leader or another team. This structure takes advantage of strengths of the team in certain areas and uses those to get advantage. Main problem of this system is communication between teams and that members are in the end responsible to 2 “leaders”. While such structure is very good at taking advantage of teams’ strengths and inner competition drives teams to overcome each others, it may also risk whole group inner integrity if members lose the feel of being same group with other teams.
Open structure
This structure is based on that everyone is doing everything. There can be named leader, but still leading is actually done more by group together than by individuals or set leader(s). This structures strength is in that everyone feels like they are equal and as such they give their best for their common goal together. Same way this systems weakness is in that when something big is happening this kind of structure is very slow to change its course and to react to things. Also in case of problem it may turn to blaming contest of each others as group doesn’t have single operator whom to blame.
Hybrid structure
As last I introduce hybrid structure which aim is to take advantages of all or some of above structures yet overcome those weaknesses. Hybrid structures are much harder to upkeep and to make work well, yet same time is providing best combination of structures for each situation and environment.
Unlike in earlier structures I will give here one example of such hybrid structure which is based on my own leading experience.
ViruS (in bushtarion) was based on hybrid of hierarchy, project and divisional structure. While it had one leader it also had co leaders called HC (head council). Under that was group of officers and then rest were members. While that sounds basic army hierarchy inside that structure was officers and HC selected from those who had special skills for certain tasks. Some were better at battlefield and tactics and others were focusing to members and their personal problems and up keep of good atmosphere. To top of this were members encouraged to form groups of time zones, skill and routes which were working together to achieve best possible land gain under normal situations. Where during wars groups were abandoned and whole alliance worked as one to reach its goal together.
That is only one example of hybrid structure. I don’t way it’s best or even good. It is one we used and you should learn what is best for your leading style and your group and environment. As such we add 2 sections more to our principles.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
7. Learn and remember different structures. Learn how to use those and combine those.
- Study leadership and structures and learn different basic structure models and their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t only read go ahead and try.
8. Study your environment and team and try to find best structure to suite your needs.
- Its easy to confuse structure and different kind of leadership style. Yet more important is to understand that structure supports leading as well as leading supports structure. You as leader must find best structure and leading style for your members and environment.
Human resources
Humans are different. We all have our strong and weak points. While selecting best of the best or so called players market has been increasing all the time in internet gaming is often forgot that team is not based on individuals but best individual for each task working as team. This is something that is easily misunderstood and overlooked by lots of leaders and players. Making team of the best players of some game doesn’t necessary mean hey are best team or will win. Having 10 best goal makers in one football team doesn’t make that team winner as they must defend and pass that ball along too. Its often so that those people doing the hard dirty work in the background doesn’t get as much name as ones scoring most, yet often without those dirty workers these scorers are next to useless. Teams are and should be based on certain predetermined positions which need to be filled with best person for that job. All teams needs as much good spirit makers as well as those who let others takes glory. And all teams also need those who can make the score. Building the team is still nothing as important as is that how that team and its strengths are used. If you have less scorers you must work more as a team and if you have more scorers you must give them more possibilities to use their talent. This kind of balancing and fine tuning is what makes good leaders excellent leaders and what makes good teams to become best. Team is only as strong as its weakest link is and that weakest link may as well be that soloing scorer as it may be that not so good player but good spirit maker.
We will now add 9th line to our principles.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
7. Learn and remember different structures. Learn how to use those and combine those.
- Study leadership and structures and learn different basic structure models and their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t only read go ahead and try.
8. Study your environment and team and try to find best structure to suite your needs.
- Its easy to confuse structure and different kind of leadership style. Yet more important is to understand that structure supports leading as well as leading supports structure. You as leader must find best structure and leading style for your members and environment.
9. Team is only as good as its weakest link. Learn to strengthen weak even in expense of strong.
- This may sound stupid, but basically it means not caring so much of whom you pick to your team, it means more that making best to help less good and other way around. Strengthen the weaknesses of team.
Leading and personality
As last I will talk a bit about personalities. Every team is in a way image of its leader. Teams are usually strong on same areas as their leader is and same way are weak on what their leader is weak. This all reflects straight from leaders’ personality. Personality is affected by background, birth place, parents, age etc. all that reflect to how certain leaders work in certain situations. It’s often said that young leaders are more aggressive and risk taking than old leaders. Same way old leaders usually know their weaknesses better than young ones. This doesn’t mean that older leaders are better; it simply means that personality is affected by age. So what kind of person is good leader then? No one can answer to that but we can do some basic generalizations about it. To put it simple good leader is humble and never thinks he (or she) knows the truth. Same way good leader is person who knows his weaknesses and can seek ways to over come those. If you’re not good people person then you must overcome that by finding someone who is to help you. Same way if you don’t know ins and outs of some game then find one who does. Going rear end forward to tree is not sign of good leader. Instead finding someone to help you (to go rear end forward to that same tree) is. It is hard for everyone to admit to themselves they are not so good at something, yet this kind of personal problems can be straight seen from teams. If leader is neurotic about his hierarchy it can be seen from whole teams actions, as well as if leader has problems with admitting he doesn’t know something it can end up to whole teams inner destruction when members doesn’t respect their leader anymore. Examples of such things are numerous yet all of those end up to one final principle of ours.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
7. Learn and remember different structures. Learn how to use those and combine those.
- Study leadership and structures and learn different basic structure models and their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t only read go ahead and try.
8. Study your environment and team and try to find best structure to suite your needs.
- Its easy to confuse structure and different kind of leadership style. Yet more important is to understand that structure supports leading as well as leading supports structure. You as leader must find best structure and leading style for your members and environment.
9. Team is only as good as its weakest link. Learn to strengthen weak even in expense of strong.
- This may sound stupid, but basically it means not caring so much of whom you pick to your team, it means more that making best to help less good and other way around. Strengthen the weaknesses of team.
10. Be honest to yourself. Over come first yourself and then become leader who can overcome others.
- If your not ready to accept your not perfect then your not leader. Good leader is never perfect, but far from it. Still good leader tries his best to find his own weaknesses and overcome those.
There that’s my list of 10 principles of being good leader. I don’t say this is only way to see things or that this is right way. I say it’s my way. If you have read this far you must have learned something if not then your not good leader. I think I learned something while writing this and as such I think I’m now bit better leader than I was when I began to write this.
There are 2 more things I’m forced to mention here:
1. I think majority of good leaders are females. Yet English as language is writing of males not females and as such it may give wrong perspective to females. I respect females as leaders usually above males.
2. This I wrote is only scratch to surface of leading and leadership. There are lots and lots of books about leading in corporation and army world. Those are not more or less good when brought to internet gaming but I’m sure books you read about leading aren’t harming you. Some things might be less easy to understand in gaming concept and some are far easier to introduce straight to internet gaming, yet all information you can gather from as many sources as possible are the steps among the road to become better leader. But only if you want to become better leader. Do you?
It ispretty long, but you are not forced to read. Also this is only first edition of this matter and hopefully i will have time in the future to make it more in depth view to leading and being leader.
Approaching leadership
The following text is about leadership and especially about leadership in online games. You should be notified of that I don’t say that I know it all or that I know anything about leading or leadership. This is my view to it and there are as many views as there are leaders. In the following I will approach leading from few angles and viewpoints and give some advices. Weather you think those are true or not are up to you. You are not forced to read so please if you do keep your opinions of my viewpoints to yourself. You can of course discuss about this matter with others but thinking you know the fact and I don’t doesn’t make your job any easier.
So let’s start from basics. What is leadership? Leadership is being the one who makes all those hard decisions and takes the blame from all mistakes. That’s the simplicity of leading. Leader will hardly ever be praised and even less they are thanked. Usually leader ends up to be the spitting can of the rest of the team. At the same time leading is most rewarding. It gives results in most showing way and person can find lots of satisfaction from knowing and seeing he was the one behind it all. At the end of the day leader is only as good as the team is allowing him to be but we will return to that later.
In the following I will try to answer to few questions. Main question is what are principles of good leadership? Followed by what is good leader a like? We will go through some basic team structures as part of leading and leadership as well as will have few words about politics and human relations. I hope you will have some fun reading this or don’t read it at all. (I prefer the later
) So let’s get started.Leading and principles
Team is only as strong as its weakest link is. In modern internet gaming culture this has lead to “players market” where every player is replaceable with someone else whom on paper seems better. Let those players be ranked amongst skill, activity or friendliness doesn’t really matter as it’s not the whole truth. Situation can be seen from other angle too. Team is only as good as its leader is making it to be and as good as its members allows its leader to be. These things are making triangle which all or none are balancing each others. Yet some things are more important than others. Good leader cant success in command of completely useless members, while good team can collapse under bad leader. Worst case is one where there’s good leader and great team, but team doesn’t see their leader as good one and it ends up to inner difficulties which makes success impossible.
So to which are should good leader focus? To himself. Its only are you can become an expert and where you can improve. Getting better players and trying to force certain structures to improve your authority are minor parts in good leading. Key part to be leader is to understand your never good leader. Optimal leader is one who doesn’t see himself as good leader, but sees himself as someone who wants to become better leader. It simply means you are thrived to learn new things about leading, yourself and others all the time. Such persons reads this all through not only cause they think its fun to see how someone is stating obvious but because they think from everything they see and read they can learn something new. Basic example of bad leader type is the guy who reads this through and only compares it to his own opinions and then forgets it all as stupid mumble and as correctly wrong. I may be wrong, but yet I’m making points which are making you to think you leading as more than just sitting on chair above others.
To understand this concept one must understand himself. That is the main problem of leading. How you can lead others and expect them to be lead if you don’t yourself know of what you sound and are? Leader is the guy who all the time seeks to improve his knowledge about his own skills and specially his own weaknesses. Same time leader is seeking to know everything he can about the ones he lead and the atmosphere where he leads.
To sum all this up:
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
Those 4 are the ones we add to our list and then we move on to next “chapter”
How leader works as the head of the team
Being leader is not an easy task, its task that requires more discipline and patience than any other. Leader is the one who’s always being blamed of every bad thing and hardly ever gets thanked of good things. Yet you are expected to carry more than your own weight on your shoulders. So how actually leader works? There are numerous approaches to this matter and these kinds of lists are often seen in leading literacy I will list here only few basic approaches to this matter.
Charismatic leader
First and most known one is charismatic leader. There are many examples of such leading (way more than others) and most of those are connected to negative things. In this matter you should not! Such examples like Napoleon and Hitler are basic examples of GOOD charismatic leader. They were persons who were able to get their team to follow them to hell and back by being good talkers. At the same time such examples are shown of bad leading because these persons were not able to overcome their own weaknesses, such as power hunger and though of being invincible. Yet they are examples of how powerful can good charismatic leader be. Charismatic leaders are basic example in internet gaming too. Usually people who ends up leading are ones who have the guts to take responsibility and who have some social skills yet more often are driven by hunger for victory and are ready to do anything its demanded to get there. This leader type even successful one is really vulnerable to leaders’ personal problems such as arrogance.
Social leader
Another leader type is social leader. These are the person whom gets their leading position from being most social and nicest persons towards all. This is often confused to charismatic leadership but it shouldn’t. Where charismatic leaders are often seen as dictators social leaders are seen as good buddies. Often members see their leader to not to be leader but to be so good fella they really don’t mind of him/her leading. Good social leaders are rare thing and especially in internet gaming seeing successful social leader is more exception than anything else. I don’t say that social leading is bad way to lead, but in such environment as internet gaming its negative sides often overcomes good sides. That’s why really good social leaders are insanely successful yet rare.
Example leader
“Example” leader (couldn’t think better name) is leader who is seen as best of all. This type of leader is basic example of WW2 best platoon leaders. Such person is actually much better leader of smaller “battle groups” than as leader of bigger alliance. These guys usually end up in army to be sergeants as they are the ones who can work in tight situations under pressure. Such leader type is based on being example to others. Such leader goes in to battle as first and leaves the battlefield as last. They are highly respected amongst their team by their will to sacrifice their own safety for their teams well being. Where this type of leaders is effective and respected it’s also hard to maintain among larger groups of people simply because leader can’t be in all places at same time.
Above are 3 basic examples of different leader types. Those are 3 main ones I wanted to list, yet there’s much more of such and even each of those 3 can be divided to sub categories. I will as last introduce 4th type which isn’t type alone but actually what should be goal of every leader.
Combining leader
Combining leader is type to be seen as combination of all leadership types. This is hardest to reach and even harder to upkeep, but same time its only way to overcome weaknesses of every basic leading types weaknesses. It may sound like its obvious, but it really is not. For someone who is charismatic leader it may be hard to lead by example as well as for social leader it is to do decisions that hurts certain persons even if those are only realistic option to be made.
We can now add to our list of principles 2 more.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
Structure to support leading
Often amongst internet gaming things are seen as black and white. People only see what suites them best and if it doesn’t it must be bad. Structure of teams is often confused to leading and what type of leaders there are. It can be easily said that armies of the world have certain structure for reason. This kind of hierarchy is based on battlefields and thousands years of learning by trial and error. Yet this kind of system is not best for all situations and good leader is able to decide beast system for all situations based on surroundings and team. To make this simpler we will start from basic army hierarchy and then move towards more open systems and how those are actually way to support leading not how leading must be if certain structure is used.
Basic army hierarchy
Army hierarchy can be seen simply as pyramid. Where leader is on top of the pyramid followed by larger and larger number of people on lower steps of it and ending up to lowest step where the main members are. Such structure is based on fact that at battlefield every member of team must know who their authority is, to be able to work effectively. This can be seen as simple system where what ever becomes as obstacle members always have someone to ask “what to do” from. This structures biggest weakness is inner problems. It consists mainly of 2 problems. One is problem of authorities and taking orders. Some people don’t like to be ordered to do something or they might think they know better than the one who is giving orders. And another problem is multiple different orders problem where members receive different orders depending of whom they ask from. Both are reducing usefulness of this system a lot. Yet while working well this structure is base for best battlefield teams out there.
At the heart of this is usually some kind of ranks system where usually best members are awarded by higher place in inner rankings and as such it’s driving members to be better and better and give more for the team to reach more voice inside team.
Situational / project structure
Situational structure is based on strengths and weaknesses of individuals. In such structure team uses best available person for each task. Its main strength is that at every situation there’s for sure “the best man on the job”. This person can be nominated for the job by few different ways such as voting or by order of higher authorities. Main problem of this kind of system comes from situations where there are multiple nearly as good persons for the task or there is no good person for that task. This kind of situations usually ends up to wasting time and effort to organize teams inside problems while there would be something more important to focus at. Yet if team is welded together enough or there’s well working hierarchy in team this kind of structure can work very well in all situations and be highly rewarding.
As mentioned earlier this kind of structure can work under different kind of leadership and shouldn’t be tied to only one kind of leading.
Divisional structure
Divisional structure is based on dividing members to teams inside main team. These teams can be based on location (for example time zones) or strengths, skills, you name it. These teams’ works as individual groups inside one bigger group. All these teams have their own structure of some sort and their named leaders are responsible to leader or another team. This structure takes advantage of strengths of the team in certain areas and uses those to get advantage. Main problem of this system is communication between teams and that members are in the end responsible to 2 “leaders”. While such structure is very good at taking advantage of teams’ strengths and inner competition drives teams to overcome each others, it may also risk whole group inner integrity if members lose the feel of being same group with other teams.
Open structure
This structure is based on that everyone is doing everything. There can be named leader, but still leading is actually done more by group together than by individuals or set leader(s). This structures strength is in that everyone feels like they are equal and as such they give their best for their common goal together. Same way this systems weakness is in that when something big is happening this kind of structure is very slow to change its course and to react to things. Also in case of problem it may turn to blaming contest of each others as group doesn’t have single operator whom to blame.
Hybrid structure
As last I introduce hybrid structure which aim is to take advantages of all or some of above structures yet overcome those weaknesses. Hybrid structures are much harder to upkeep and to make work well, yet same time is providing best combination of structures for each situation and environment.
Unlike in earlier structures I will give here one example of such hybrid structure which is based on my own leading experience.
ViruS (in bushtarion) was based on hybrid of hierarchy, project and divisional structure. While it had one leader it also had co leaders called HC (head council). Under that was group of officers and then rest were members. While that sounds basic army hierarchy inside that structure was officers and HC selected from those who had special skills for certain tasks. Some were better at battlefield and tactics and others were focusing to members and their personal problems and up keep of good atmosphere. To top of this were members encouraged to form groups of time zones, skill and routes which were working together to achieve best possible land gain under normal situations. Where during wars groups were abandoned and whole alliance worked as one to reach its goal together.
That is only one example of hybrid structure. I don’t way it’s best or even good. It is one we used and you should learn what is best for your leading style and your group and environment. As such we add 2 sections more to our principles.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
7. Learn and remember different structures. Learn how to use those and combine those.
- Study leadership and structures and learn different basic structure models and their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t only read go ahead and try.
8. Study your environment and team and try to find best structure to suite your needs.
- Its easy to confuse structure and different kind of leadership style. Yet more important is to understand that structure supports leading as well as leading supports structure. You as leader must find best structure and leading style for your members and environment.
Human resources
Humans are different. We all have our strong and weak points. While selecting best of the best or so called players market has been increasing all the time in internet gaming is often forgot that team is not based on individuals but best individual for each task working as team. This is something that is easily misunderstood and overlooked by lots of leaders and players. Making team of the best players of some game doesn’t necessary mean hey are best team or will win. Having 10 best goal makers in one football team doesn’t make that team winner as they must defend and pass that ball along too. Its often so that those people doing the hard dirty work in the background doesn’t get as much name as ones scoring most, yet often without those dirty workers these scorers are next to useless. Teams are and should be based on certain predetermined positions which need to be filled with best person for that job. All teams needs as much good spirit makers as well as those who let others takes glory. And all teams also need those who can make the score. Building the team is still nothing as important as is that how that team and its strengths are used. If you have less scorers you must work more as a team and if you have more scorers you must give them more possibilities to use their talent. This kind of balancing and fine tuning is what makes good leaders excellent leaders and what makes good teams to become best. Team is only as strong as its weakest link is and that weakest link may as well be that soloing scorer as it may be that not so good player but good spirit maker.
We will now add 9th line to our principles.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
7. Learn and remember different structures. Learn how to use those and combine those.
- Study leadership and structures and learn different basic structure models and their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t only read go ahead and try.
8. Study your environment and team and try to find best structure to suite your needs.
- Its easy to confuse structure and different kind of leadership style. Yet more important is to understand that structure supports leading as well as leading supports structure. You as leader must find best structure and leading style for your members and environment.
9. Team is only as good as its weakest link. Learn to strengthen weak even in expense of strong.
- This may sound stupid, but basically it means not caring so much of whom you pick to your team, it means more that making best to help less good and other way around. Strengthen the weaknesses of team.
Leading and personality
As last I will talk a bit about personalities. Every team is in a way image of its leader. Teams are usually strong on same areas as their leader is and same way are weak on what their leader is weak. This all reflects straight from leaders’ personality. Personality is affected by background, birth place, parents, age etc. all that reflect to how certain leaders work in certain situations. It’s often said that young leaders are more aggressive and risk taking than old leaders. Same way old leaders usually know their weaknesses better than young ones. This doesn’t mean that older leaders are better; it simply means that personality is affected by age. So what kind of person is good leader then? No one can answer to that but we can do some basic generalizations about it. To put it simple good leader is humble and never thinks he (or she) knows the truth. Same way good leader is person who knows his weaknesses and can seek ways to over come those. If you’re not good people person then you must overcome that by finding someone who is to help you. Same way if you don’t know ins and outs of some game then find one who does. Going rear end forward to tree is not sign of good leader. Instead finding someone to help you (to go rear end forward to that same tree) is. It is hard for everyone to admit to themselves they are not so good at something, yet this kind of personal problems can be straight seen from teams. If leader is neurotic about his hierarchy it can be seen from whole teams actions, as well as if leader has problems with admitting he doesn’t know something it can end up to whole teams inner destruction when members doesn’t respect their leader anymore. Examples of such things are numerous yet all of those end up to one final principle of ours.
1. Learn everything you can from every source you can.
- There is no such thing as bollocks information.
2. Know more than others.
- Leader seeks to know everything he can of his team and its members. Leaders are expected to know and remember things like names, places where people stay etc. (no one is telling you can’t cheat and keep records!)
3. Know yourself.
- Leader never sees himself as complete all knowing person but one who knows less more he learns.
4. Learn and know your weaknesses.
- Leader thrives to be better than he currently is. To reach this goal you must be able to know your weaknesses. If you know your weaknesses you can overcome them or at least try. The day you think you don’t have weakness is the day your not good leader.
5. Know what kind of leader you are.
- Leader is often certain type of person who is falling to trap of his own personality. Good leader can’t afford that but needs to overcome such and be able to step out of that picture.
6. Aim to become combining leader.
- Even there’s no set thing what kind of leader must or should be you should aim to be leader who is not leader of any type but all types together.
7. Learn and remember different structures. Learn how to use those and combine those.
- Study leadership and structures and learn different basic structure models and their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t only read go ahead and try.
8. Study your environment and team and try to find best structure to suite your needs.
- Its easy to confuse structure and different kind of leadership style. Yet more important is to understand that structure supports leading as well as leading supports structure. You as leader must find best structure and leading style for your members and environment.
9. Team is only as good as its weakest link. Learn to strengthen weak even in expense of strong.
- This may sound stupid, but basically it means not caring so much of whom you pick to your team, it means more that making best to help less good and other way around. Strengthen the weaknesses of team.
10. Be honest to yourself. Over come first yourself and then become leader who can overcome others.
- If your not ready to accept your not perfect then your not leader. Good leader is never perfect, but far from it. Still good leader tries his best to find his own weaknesses and overcome those.
There that’s my list of 10 principles of being good leader. I don’t say this is only way to see things or that this is right way. I say it’s my way. If you have read this far you must have learned something if not then your not good leader. I think I learned something while writing this and as such I think I’m now bit better leader than I was when I began to write this.
There are 2 more things I’m forced to mention here:
1. I think majority of good leaders are females. Yet English as language is writing of males not females and as such it may give wrong perspective to females. I respect females as leaders usually above males.
2. This I wrote is only scratch to surface of leading and leadership. There are lots and lots of books about leading in corporation and army world. Those are not more or less good when brought to internet gaming but I’m sure books you read about leading aren’t harming you. Some things might be less easy to understand in gaming concept and some are far easier to introduce straight to internet gaming, yet all information you can gather from as many sources as possible are the steps among the road to become better leader. But only if you want to become better leader. Do you?
