Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

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Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Sir Anastasia » Sun Jan 18, 2009 9:54 pm

I think I do a great job running my realm and putting on events, but often the weight falls more on my shoulders than those of my fellow officers. I have a few people I can count on for certain things, but I have been disappointed before. I plan on being realm leader for 6 years or so, which is fine, but I would really like for my realms to survive in my absence. They have been able to survive when I go on vacation, which makes them about as reliable as a house plant. (Plz don't say I have to quit the cruelty).

Current Strengths in Officers: Charisma, Recruiting tactics (when present), annual elections
Current Areas that need improvement: attendance, remembering weapon's bag, following through, initiative

Question: How do you get people to want to do the work? Title or not.
Question: How do you get people to want innovation, to think of what else we could do and then make it happen? Sadly, as an old/sore critter, I need them to be the energetic ones.
Question: How do you get the next gen to step up and not learn bad habits?
Thanks,
Anastasia of Chamonix
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby bangor » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:44 pm

In Amtgard, we solve the problem by replacing leaders every 6 months by doctrine. In reality, it's the same people pulling the weight the whole time.
This is a problem that spans across every organization.

How do you get past it?

Develop new leaders. This is something I learned readily in the Army. Your ultimate goal as a leader is to make yourself absolutely useless. It seems counter-intuitive, but the more you aren't needed, the better you are doing as a leader.

The first step to this process is identifying people who others listen to, and then taking them under your wing. Don't dump everything on them at once, as it's simply overwhelming in every instance. Instead, give them a slice of the pie, and different slices to others you've seen exhibit leadership qualities. Be careful here, sometimes the introvert actually has the capacity for leadership, while the braggart has none, and vice versa. Chosing is the most difficult part. Once you dole out these duties, these duties should really be THEIRS, you are simply there to assist them with wisdom, but not direct the result. You'll find there are many ways for things to work well, and what you know to be best is just one of many ways that will work.

You continue increasing what you'd like to see from these people until you basically can rest on your laurels,and then let them decide amongst themselves who should lead. By giving them this decision, they all share in power, leaving none feeling left out. If it works out right, the new 'leader' gives responsibility to several others, and the process repeats itself.

There's also a fine art into checking on the progress of others, but that's a separate topic altogether. Do it, because it makes things flow, but don't do it too much or you seem annoying or demanding.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Dacian » Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:25 pm

One way of doing it (which I know seemed to help Khatovar quite a bit a few years back) is look into starting a knighthood.

"Knight" is something people like to work towards, and it's a good test to see who's willing to take and devote their time into the game and realm.

Also, every little thing helps. As a current realm leader, I have different people in charge of recruitment, weapons making, running practices, helping "politic" with local realms, etc. How does this happen? Well, one way is Titles. Everyone loves to have a title. If they sound "important", they tend to take things a *little* more seriously. Also, instead of telling someone "Hey, you get to basically run everything when I'm gone", just give a couple people small aspects of what you need done. This way, a handful of people each doing little things adds up in a big way.

If you have any more questions about how I currently run the realm with people (who are not always incredibly gung-ho about things), just throw me a PM.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Sir Anastasia » Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:00 pm

No knights in our realm...it's a tradition of Chamonix.

The people in question do have titles though, but they don't follow through. They have poor communication between each other, ie if I give their group a task-they won't communicate to get it done.

Maybe I need to specify that "Joe" does a task, ect, instead of the campus officers. Mostly, I am upset that there are no consequences for letting the group down. They just don't seem to feel bad about it. I don't want to pound their heads too much, because then my group would be smaller. I just wish they would realize the importance of following through.

Thanks,
Ana
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Derian » Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:02 pm

It sounds like you might need new leaders.

Not everyone is cut out to be a leader. If they don't want to do it, you can't make them.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Soo Ma Tai » Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:03 pm

You need to find people who ~want~ to help, not because it's cool, or you get a title, but because they actually want to see the game improve. Those will be the best leader types you can find. You can't force someone to be the leader, but you can take a natural leader, who's already applying themselves, and turn them into an exceptional leader. I think the important part is that they are already doing the work, not for the credit but for love of the game. Those people are only going to be about 1 in every 50 you recruit, so keep your eye out for the truly enthusiastic ones who are willing to put forth the necessary effort. They are the ones you want to take under your wing and show the ropes too.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Kensman Bam » Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:58 pm

One thing I like to do is issue challenges, such as the first person to make the realm 10 swords gets a free lunch or some belt fob that says "Weaponsmaker" on it on something. People like to work towards a goal and to be recognized when to do something. We have artisan ranks as well as fighter ranks our unit. I would say try to get volunteers first, like Soo said, but then make it a challenge.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Soo Ma Tai » Tue Jan 20, 2009 4:05 pm

BAM speaks the truth! You need to challenge them and reward the people who rise to the challenge. If you just hand out titles and that, no one will give them any respect, if you make them earn it, not only will they respect themselves more, so will their peers.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Sir Anastasia » Tue Jan 20, 2009 8:53 pm

OoOoOoOoO Challenges! Wicked. I knew you guys would come up with something. All of the other stuff I had either already done, or in the sad case of 1:50 suspected would be true. But, I had not tried challanges for work related things.

Earlier in the year, I had a recruitment challenge where for every 5 people recruited to come to fighting 2X, I would build the recruiter one blue sword. This worked well for me (as many people tried hard to get this, but only a few got the prize). I think this might work very well. Thanks again BAM and Soo!

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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Sir Killian » Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:07 am

you need to instill a sense of pride....
pride is a major driving factor...

no one wants to be in charge of something that turns out ****... make the people want to fix it...

its all politics...
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Xipher » Wed Feb 04, 2009 2:09 pm

Sorry to bring up an old post, but I feel I have something to offer.

My number one rule for building a realm is Numbers. It takes a lot of milling the wheat from the chaff to find people who will stick around and fight regularly, and it takes even more to find leaders. In a given group of twenty people, you are not likely to have any other leaders besides yourself. It takes cycling group after group after group to find the people with leadership capabilities. If you think you have found one, hold on to them!

I have had good results taking an incremental approach. There are a very few people who you can ask to complete a complicated task and have them get it done correctly, quickly, or sometimes at all. Start by asking people for favors. Help transporting weapons. Storing weapons from one practice to the next. Asking someone to be sure to be the first person to practice to get people organized. Asking people to herald. Asking people to run a weapon making session. Start by only asking for one discrete favor and if they compete it correctly and without complaint, then ask them again, and again, and again, until helping out is second nature to them. That is the time to ask them to hold a permenant position of responsibility, and no sooner. You will have to groom them into a leadership position and it takes a long time- like, years.

Since this is such a time intensive process, you will want to plant as many seeds as you think may be viable, since some of them will die off before budding. It is these people who will hold a realm together, since they will all have experience doing the basic tasks of running a realm (remember all those favors?) and individually they will have specialized knowledge or talents to help the realm survive and prosper.

As far as supporting excitement and innovation, I would recommend exposing your realm members to the greater world of Belegarth as much as possible. Encourage them to read the web board. STRONGLY encourage them to attend events- the more events and the further away they are, the better. Exposure to what the game can be at its best is the absolute best way to foster excitement and love for the game.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Derian » Wed Feb 04, 2009 3:41 pm

Xipher speaks truth. There was a time when he just roamed the countryside as Xipher Realmseed, founding realms as he went.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Xipher » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:25 pm

Nevermind where those legands say those seeds came from.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Sir Anastasia » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:38 pm

Oh well. I guess I'll have to shoulder the brunt of it for a little while longer. I did try stepping back a little with regard to financing and the crew might get it together to sell T-shirts. I also put forth the challenges-so I will let you know how that goes.

We heavily recruit several times a year-so I am hoping to grow in numbers for a few years (until we have recruited 4 years of freshmen). Then we will probably max out in numbers.

I agree with the exposure thing. I honestly attend more events than I like just to make sure a carpool is running for the club. We also hosted a large event, so the exposure came to us. All in all I'm in a very good spot. I think I am poised to have the largest realm in the west in a few years, but we will have to see.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed,
Ana
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Soo Ma Tai » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:44 pm

You are certainly in a very good place to grow a huge realm. If there is anything else we can do to help, just let us know.
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Re: Recruiting/Fostering Leadership

Postby Sir Anastasia » Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:13 pm

Keep being awesome neighbors and go to Chaos so we can fight together!

Ty in Advance,
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