Casual Raiding Series Installment 2
This installment in the Casual Raiding series will cover leadership and decision making processes. There’s a bunch more philosophical stuff in here alas, ’cause that’s just the way I think it seems. But I’m trying to lay the groundwork here before getting into the list of rules — to explain why the rules exist and why they’re necessary for casual raid teams.
As always, these are just my opinions on the best way to structure and run a casual raiding team. The only experience I can credit is running a successful casual raid team, various small group communication and dynamics courses in college, and random management experience.
Leadership
This seems like a solid starting-off point. Let’s start with Frostheim’s philosophy on raid team leadership:
You cannot lead by consensus, and you cannot lead without listening to the team.
There are a lot of ways to lead a team, and the only way that’s truly destined to fail is the idea that “we’ll just all decide together!” Consensus is the most difficult and time-consuming decision-making process and ironically one of the most likely to lead to hard feelings.
It is certainly possible for groups to function via consensus, but it is rare and the larger the group the less likely it is. Consensus starts to fall apart when a group reaches two people and the failure rate grows exponentially from there.
Basically what I’m saying is you have to have a leader. Not just a leader of your actual raids, but of your raid team. This is the person who ultimately decides what strat you’ll be using, where you’ll be raiding, who’s getting invited tonight, what loot system you use and what the rules of the team are. I’m also a big fan of leadership teams because it gives you redundancy when one leader can’t make it, spreads the load, and let’s them bounce ideas off each other; however, even in a leadership team make sure you know who is ultimately in charge. Hrist and I run our 10-man team, but if we have different views, we do it Hrist’s way.
Your leader should be fair, knowledgeable, have the time to devote to it, listen to the input of all team members, but also be able to make tough and unpopular decisions for the good of the team.
I’ll probably go more into the onerous tasks of the team leaders much later in this series.
Decision Making
Your raid team is going to have to make decisions, especially if you’re revamping your current raid team. But how do you decide what rules to implement for the entire team? Before we go into the common decision-making methods, let’s look at the two basic types of raid group we have:
1: Forming a New Team
If you’re just forming a new raid team, you’ve got it easy. You probably have a small number of people with similar goals and levels of dedication. You’ll find that you tend to agree in philosophy about what your team should be doing and what should be required of the team members.
Now if you’re forming a new raid team and you’re just one person… well perhaps you should consider finding an existing team to join, no?
2: Revamping an Existing Team
If you already have an existing raid team that is foundering or needs revamping (as is the case in most of the emails I get) then you’re likely in for a world of hurt.
In an existing team, especially a 25 man, you probably have people with conflicting goals and differing levels of dedication. You’ve got some people who just show up between working on holiday achievements and trips to the barber shop and others who really want to be raiding end-game content, or even hardmodes.
This is a common situation for casual raid teams to get into, and it happens because the team did not have clear goals and rules at the outset. The team usually started with “hey, let’s raid” and then continued to hamstring itself with “well, we need every body we can get” until one day there were plenty of raiders, and the raid is not doing well at all. But now half your raid doesn’t think they should have to get epic gems and the other half wants to kill the first for holding them back and people are complaining and starting to quit.
The solution here is to set a goal and make some rules. But to do that, you first have to make some decisions.
Consensus
I make fun of consensus a lot – and truly it is a horrible and misunderstood thing – but the truth is that in small groups consensus is the ideal way to reach a decision. Keep in mind, however, that consensus is a different decision-making process from compromise.
In general a group should be able to reach a consensus very swiftly. Once the process looks like it’s starting to drag out – drop it fast! Things getting argumentative, personal attacks, and compromise are all signs that consensus is failing (or possibly that the debaters are just gits). In a consensus the idea is that everyone agrees on a decision without regret, bitterness, or giving anything up.
Now, a little bit of compromise is okay if it’s directly related to the issue, but in general I’m not very comfortable with the notion of “I give up something that I think is important and so do you – now we’re both unhappy!” It also encourages people to take false positions just for the sake of bargaining leverage.
The problem with consensus is it’s one of the decision-making methods that’s most likely to cause hard feelings. When you have a large group (like a 25-man raid team) discussing the team and people have widely differing opinions, you’re gonna have some people arguing rationally, some people arguing emotionally, and some people just arguing semantics.
You have maybe 10% of your group that could possibly be swayed by an argument, and the rest won’t no matter how logical the argument. Studies show that most people make a decision emotionally that “feels” right and their brains later rationalize their decision. This cognitive dissonance makes consensus nearly impossible in larger groups (groups that tend to be resistant to this are economists, statisticians, theorycrafters, and sociopaths devoid of emotion 
).
The end result of a long and unsuccessful consensus discussion is that almost every party that felt strongly (on any side of the issue) is bitter and resentful of the other baffoons that wouldn’t listen to reason.
Majority Rule
When consensus fails, majority rule is typically the next step. There’s a vote, and whatever side gets the most votes wins. The downside with majority rule is much the same as consensus – there’s the long discussion and the bitter arguments. Majority rule then adds to this by having a vote in which some percentage of your team-mates are then declared the losers.
Majority rule has the advantage of being kinda fair and following the edict of “the good of the team outweighs the good of the individual.”
If you’re going to go with a vote on something, make the issue as clear and factual as possible (strip it of semantics and prettiness), explain the effect of the vote, and then keep discussion time short. The longer the discussion drags on, the more emotionally invested people will become, and the more hurt they’ll be after the process.
Realize that almost no one will change their positions after the first day. Any discussion past that will degenerate rapidly.
Then How do We Decide?
Right, if consensus and compromise and majority rule are all bad, then how the heck do we make a decision.
Well, through consensus and majority rule of course!
I’m only half-serious, you’ll actually make the majority of your decisions with the most efficient decision-making process: dictatorship.
What you need to do is simplify your decisions. Don’t ask your raid team to decide on whether they should use in-game voice or vent, or what gear level should be required, or if there should be dps throughput benchmarks. There’s only two decisions your team needs to make.
- Where do you want to raid and how often?
- Who should the team leader(s) be?
That’s it.
The raid group should decide on where they want to spend most of their time raiding (you’ll always do other stuff from time to time). Once you know that, you then have to decide who the team leader should be — or multiple leaders if that’s what you want.
When the questions are this simple, it’s sometimes even possible to form a consensus. If there is significant debate, cut it off and announce a vote. Give maybe 1 more day for discussion and hold the vote.
This brings me to another philosophy of mine:
The team decides where they want to raid and when. The team leaders decide how to make that happen. The leaders exist to efficiently implement the will of the team.
Now, your leaders still need to get input from the raid about in-game voice or vent, if they want dps benchmarks, etc. A leader cannot decide what is best for the raid without their input. But the leader is making the decision, has the final call, and squashes pointless debate and petty quarrels.
I’m Taking My Ball and Going Home
When you’re changing the way your raid works (especially if your raid has no rules and isn’t working) you may have people threaten to quit if XX happens or if YY doesn’t happen.
Don’t worry about it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone taking their ball and going home.
Look, if your raid has 20 people who want to raid endgame content and 5 people who don’t care but won’t buy gems or read strats, and neither will budge, then you gotta either lose those 5 people, or the first 20 people. You really have a decision of pissing off the 5 or the 20 — though I suppose the third option is to leave everyone unhappy, which will result in people leaving anyway.
Raiders can be replaced.
Remember, your raid team isn’t your guild. You aren’t kicking people out of your guild or saying you don’t want to be friends. You’re telling them that while they’re playing t-ball, you’d rather be playing baseball. There’s nothing wrong with t-ball, it’s just not what you want to be doing. You can still invite them to your alt raids and run heroics with them, after all.
And if you’re the one in the minority, you can take your ball and go home too. It’s not petty or petulant. You should be doing what you want to be doing in your game, just like they should be doing what they want to.
Remove emotion from the decision and you’ll make a better decision in the long-run. In fact, most decisions are better made when you remove emotion.
Coming Soon
Next up on Casual Raiding is Forming the Team, where we’ll talk about team goals, communication, scheduling, cross-guild teams, and recruiting. Future articles will cover suggested rules for raid teams, loot systems discussion (and the great secret of avoiding loot drama), raid leader addons, and then some more detailed stuff about team leading and working with your team members and something about wiping in there somewhere too.
If there are specific topics you’d like to see addressed, please drop me a line at frostheim@warcrafthuntersunion.com
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Loving these.
I’m enjoying these philosophical raid organization posts more and more. I wasn’t a big fan of the concept at the beginning, but it’s definitely growing on me.
These are great posts Frost, keep them coming. My guild is going through almost exactly the issues that have been described in these entries – your first post sparked a VERY positive discussion on our officer forums. Everyone likes!
The other night we had an Undying Naxx run, which failed, the raid leader said “let’s finish Ulduar”, but someone in the raid killed the group by stating “I’m NOT going to run Ulduar” and leaving the group. This bad attitude spread to another person, and the raid was done. So your series of articles is timely. 
Awesome article Frost! I’m posting links to these in my former guild’s officers forums (yeah I have still have access).
This is the exact road my old guild has gone down, and now appears to be going down yet again.
Oh and about taking your ball and going home, it sometimes means finding a new home.
Maybe we can convince Euripides to carve out a slice of Hunting Party Time to discuss further some day :p
“Basically what I’m saying is you have to have a leader. Not just a leader of your actual raids, but of your raid team. This is the person who ultimately decides what strat you’ll be using, where you’ll be raiding, who’s getting invited tonight, what loot system you use and what the rules of the team are. I’m also a big fan of leadership teams because it gives you redundancy when one leader can’t make it, spreads the load, and let’s them bounce ideas off each other; however, even in a leadership team make sure you know who is ultimately in charge.”
I think this is the real key. When the leader/s are respected by the raid/team, the decision process goes much smoother and usually quicker. Consensus is more easily built, compromise more easily attained and a lot more balls are taken home.
My guild has trouble raiding more than 10mans because we play by a lot of these rules. They preclude us from grabbing any and every guildy for a 25man, but they enable us to make it to the end of Uld10 normal, to make progress on ToGC10, etc. I’m fine with that.
There are some real gems of wisdom here. Thank you.
The Haterade
OMG our secrets! You have given them away!!!!
Member
Frost, I completely agree with you here. I just left a long-time guild home on my server because of an issue with the raid leader. He was a very inefficient, make-everybody-happy kind of raid leader, and there were no established loot rules or participation rules. The mindset of this guild (which was one of those ‘fun’ guilds, not a raiding guild) was “Oh, let’s raid tonight, and we’ll schedule a week in advance, whoever signs up first gets to go”… very, VERY inefficient.
Added on top of this, he was very biased on choosing who would go (aka not following his own attendance rules), then we’d get in there and he would spend 10-20 minutes (I kid you not) discussing and rolling for loot. Made for incredibly sluggish pace trying to clear anything. He became very emotional and got his feelings hurt when I sent him a message with a few suggestions on how to streamline things.
A dictatorship IS needed INSIDE the raids (for the most part). You need a drill sergeant there pushing you to your best performance, that’s how people really start pushing. But even if you don’t agree with that, I’m sure you can agree with this: slow raids make for bored players. Bored players make for poor raids. Having to take 15-20 minutes to explain each and every fight, each and every time for newbies in the raids is NOT conducive to clearing content.
Organization and a clear leadership structure is pivotal in having a fun, efficient raid. Think of your 10-mans as military units… you want to know the people you’re running with and want to be able to count on them to have your back, and they know you have theirs. There’s a reason the military is not a consensus based group… some people lead well and others follow well. There is no shame or glory in either. Leaders would be nothing without followers and vice versa.
Member
Great stuff, as usual, Frost.
I worry a little bit about this changing of raid teams within the guild. It seems to me that while everything you say is logical and efficient, there’s a real chance for ugly drama when raid teams are changing, pushing people out and pulling other people in. While that’s supposed to be a raid team issue, isn’t it very likely to affect the guild as a whole and/or lead to ugly raid team rivalries?
They only way I can see that not happening is if the guild is very large and the raid teams are just a microcosm of the guild.
Rather than a dictator, perhaps a good leader with clear expectations. I’ve run with a lot of raid leaders (and worked with both good and bad leaders in RL). The best ones have clear expectations of what it means to be part of the team, are consistent, honest and fair. I think the biggest key to being a good raid leader is their ability to quickly earn and retain the respect of the team. You can be a dictator and never have the respect of your team but, you can’t be a good leader without it.
“some people lead well and others follow well. There is no shame or glory in either. Leaders would be nothing without followers and vice versa.”
Absolutely!
Admin
Grim,
I certainly think that if your raid has no problems, there’s no reason to change! However if you are having conflict or problems with the raid team, I believe that revamping to set things up right will mean less drama in the long run.
There’s always the possibility for negative ramifications within the guild, especially if you have some drama queens in there. However I think if things are handled well, people will understand. You just need to take a ground up approach — ask where they want to raid, select a leader (however you want to), and then explain that you are doing what’s best for the most people. Give the raid team a new name to help separate it in people’s minds, make it its own entity. Then post the rules for that team and invite people to sign up.
Ideally if things are handled a bit diplomatically and unemotionally people will respond in kind.
And again, if some people choose to quit because they don’t like the way it’s set up, that’s fine. You should encourage them to enjoy the game however they want
Hey Frost,
Great post! Thank you.
@Grim:The raid is not the guild was Frost’s #1 statement! It’s not appropriate for the raiders to cause guild drama over a raid issue (raid drama however, is slightly more appropriate, if immature).
Lets consider for a moment if the raid was the guild. The Raid Leader is also likely the GM and if you’re going to disagree with him/her to the extent that there is ugly drama, you’re going to get a swift gkick (if the GM is a good manager).
Option 3 is what I am in atm, the raid is an official part of the guild, but separate. Raid drama again, should not cause guild drama but if there is a disagreement where raid leader and raider cannot agree, there is a next level of authority to go to (the GM). Again, causing drama in the guild over a raid issue will get a swift gkick.
The separation between raid and guild is a very important concept. If the person has a problem with the raid, it affects the raid not the guild.
So the important concept here to avoid drama is that the raiders understand the authority of the raid and the guild and how they relate. In Frost’s case, they don’t. If you don’t like the raid, don’t be in it and it doesn’t affect the guild at all. In my case they do, if you don’t like the raid, talk to the GM who has the authority to change something if it has to (he won’t without a major, major, major cause but he can). The second case is identical to the first except there is no distinction between the guild and the raid, if you don’t like the raid, leave the guild.
If the extent of the relationship between the guild and the raid is clearly expressed and any paths of disagreement/problem solving are clearly laid out, anyone causing drama is not someone you want in the raid/guild anyway.
TL;DR: Drama llama’s are bad, clear authority structure identifies and distinguishes Drama llama’s and legitimate complaints.
Splendid work, Frostheim and team. You demonstrate real insight into the psychology of raiding.
“Groups” are not the same as “teams”. The enlightened raid leader knows the difference.
“Studies show that most people make a decision emotionally that “feels” right and their brains later rationalize their decision.”
Hey Frost, great article. Just a small digression, can you throw me a link to the abstract, maybe in my email? This is intriguing and I’d like to read more about it. Thanks!
Admin
TKW: I don’t have the study I was thinking of bookmarked anymore (originally found it linked from Scott Adams’ blog) however, if you just google cognitive dissonance you’ll find lots of fascinating information about the way people deliberately ignore reason in decision making.
Best of all, cognitive dissonance studies are frequently very funny.
Another great quote about cognitive dissonance (and people’s desperate desire to avoid it):
“Finally, perhaps the most important way people deal with cognitive dissonance is to prevent it in the first place. If someone is presented with information that is dissonant from what they already know, the easiest way to deal with this new information is to ignore it, refuse to accept it, or simply avoid that type of information in general. Thus, a new study that says ice cream is more fattening than originally thought would be easily dealt with by ignoring it. Further, future problems can be prevented by simply avoiding that type of information — simply refusing to read studies on ice cream, health magazines, etc.”