Finding Guild Officers

I’ve been the solo officer in Fury Untold for a while now. I previously had two officers, one went on a longish WoW break, the other had left the guild with some friends due to some personality conflicts. I’ve done a decent job of keeping that herd of cats together, but there is more I’d like to be able to do with the guild, and my efforts were being consumed by keeping the machine trudging along.

I had previously done most of my officer deliberation in private, sorting out who I think would serve the guild well. I had approached the hopefuls and given them a not-so-nonobligatory question about them taking up a position of responsibility/power in the guild. I never had good results from this. People that had seemed like that were good leaders, or wanted to lead, often fell short. The leadership turned more into a private committee for me and my deliberation. When the weight of the guild fell back on my shoulders and things started to get thick again, nobody was willing to step up even though they were officers.

This time around, I’ve created a basic Officer Application, one that is available to all the members of the guild. This gave the ones that wanted to lead an avenue to do so, and didn’t have me wrapping my head around which ones I should push into offer the position. My reasoning behind this was to let them Opt-in to the responsibilities of the position, as well as getting a bit more of a formal interview/intro process (to get the details sorted out).

In preparing this application, I scoured the internet, looking for other examples from which I could gather inspiration. I looked across any search terms I could, spanning multiple MMO’s guilds/clans/other social boundary. I didn’t appear to be the first to consider this, however I was severely disappointed by the quality of the application, and of the implementation.

I decided to get a little adventurous, and created a form. In case you missed the link, here is our Officer Application. In this form I ask them several things:

• General Information: IRL name, email…
• Experience: GL/RL exp, class knowledge
• Leadership Goals: Guild direction, their ideas…
• Situation Handling: Dealing with drama…

I like this method of selecting Officers because it allows people to pick and choose what they want to do. If I need somebody to do the things they want to do, awesome. If not, we can talk it out. At this point in my leadership career, I’d rather pass on something, than have them just carry the title with no real responsibility. I feel empowering the new officers, and letting them enjoy their role is much more important than having every responsibility assigned to somebody.