What does it mean to be a leader? Or more specifically, what do you look for in a leader? What qualities do you look for in a person that makes you want to follow through thick and thin? Loyalty, why are you loyal to a person?
I ask these things because leadership to me is an important part of a successfull fleeet, corporation, alliance, and coalition on every level. If your leadership sucks, you will have high turnover. High turnover is an issue in the fast food industry, for example. Companies who are not loyal and support their employees will not get that loyalty and support in return.
A leader who is always raging over comms or in corp chat, for example, is not a leader I want to follow. Some calm person, confident in their calls, and a person who accepts responsibilities for their fuckups instead of blaming their bad calls on some random member of their fleet; even if it was that persons fault the fleet exploded, the fleet commander is who the blame rests on in the end. So yeah, Ive encountered a couple of people who take killboards and fleets too seriously. A few people who get pissed off and threaten to kick people who arent online or are afk.
The way to motivate your membership is not to threaten or degrade them and then expect them to do what you say. Especially in a game that most people play to have fun. The way to motivate your corporate or even alliance level membership base is to provide a good time while being respectful of them and their RL issues and random occurances. Positive reinforcement is better than negative reinforcement, or so they say. I whipped my boys ass when he got in trouble and he learned not to do that specific thing again. I setup a system of rewards for doing well in school and he not only habitually developed the preferred behavior, but he also propagated it by telling his friends and in turn, they told their parents. Again, degrading and threatening comments are a no go to get your kid to do what you want, the same as with friends or corpmates in EvE.
If you have good leaders, though, how do you keep them? How do you get rid of the bad ones? Well, actually, bad leaders sort themselves out, as eventually, no one follows them anymore. A bad leader though, can ruin a corp or alliance. So its best to nip the bud before it blossums and becomes that big of an issue. A good leader though, is difficult to keep around. You need to make sure they are well taken care of. A plex here and there so they dont need to worry about ratting for iskies is a nice gesture. A Ship Replaceement program for FCs is a nice touch as well, if your alliance or corp doesnt have one for every member, the FCs should be covered.
So back to the point of this post: What kind of leader do you want to follow? The asshole, constantly degrading and making threats to kick people who are afk 30-45 mins prior to an OP or the asshole FC who consistently provides a fun, exciting OP while remaining calm and confident taking responsibility for a failed roam?
Myself, Ill go with the second asshole because Im too old to take shit from asshole A.
This sounds like a rage-against-Maka post, but since you aren't in -A-, maybe not so much lol.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about your post is that it lends itself towards a singular entity as leadership, when in 0.0 there are at minimum two groups: the alliance heads and the FCs. The FCs usually play the role of the visible King while the alliance heads usually play shadow-king. Typically speaking, if one goes bad, people will stay for the other, to a point, although if the FCs go bad, the alliance might also need a reboot after a break. On the other hand, if the alliance heads go bad, the entire alliance might cascade. It's an interesting situation.
Not so much a rage against anyone as much as an observation of the different leadership things Ive met. I been looking up different things on leading a fleet and how to do it well, so this post is just a small reflection of it.
DeleteBut youre right, I didnt think of it like the two groups of leaders. Most of the time, its been the same for me; the leaders of the corp are also the FCs for fleets. Experiencing null sec more now, and since you mentioned it, I do see the division of the two groups you mention.
Interesting indeed.