To close out the officer series, I’m going to try and tackle one of the tougher parts of leading a guild today – how to manage and potentially dismiss officers.  Hiring officers is fairly straightforward, and usually a flattering request for the recipient.  It’s never easy to demote someone, though.  Often, you become fairly good friends with your officers over time – especially if they’ve served quite a while.  This is actually the first topic I wrote to Scott Andrews over, a couple years ago – you can read his comments here.  (You can tell it’s me when the letter is so wordy, it gets parsed down!)  His advice was excellent, so my first recommendation is to take his advice there.

So basically, there are three reasons you might need to part ways with an officer.  The first is inactivity.  This is the easiest to deal with.  Being an officer can often burn players out – after all, unless you’re fabulously wealthy in the real world and willing to pay people, your officers are all volunteers.  They volunteer their time, energy, and put themselves in challenging positions on your and the guild’s behalf just to help out and because it is asked of them.  After a few months – and especially, after a few years, like many of us in our current guild – it can really get tiring.  Sometimes, people will speak up themselves and ask to retire, which is the best outcome.  Other times, they just – disappear quietly, logging in once in a blue moon or vanishing altogether.  On top of all of the normal reasons that lead an officer to quietly fade, WoW is definitely hitting a dull patch in terms of development, and a LOT of players these days are going inactive and/or cancelling their subscriptions.  There’s a lot of speculation on why that is that you can read elsewhere, but what it means for guild leaders is that you can expect an even higher rate of inactives than you normally would.  So – how do you handle inactive officers?  If you use forums, I recommend sending the person a PM (private message) first, explaining that you’ve noticed they’re not around very often.  From there, you can ask them if everything is ok and if they expect to become more active in game again, so you can keep them on the officer roster or if they’re busy and would like to retire, or you can just explain that they no longer seem to be managing the activity level and you’ll need to bump them back down to member rank.  Personally, I recommend the former – but it really depends on your personal management style.  I also recommend making sure the person knows that if they do become more active again, you can restore their previous position.  Then wait for a response, or if a week or two go by and you never hear, well – that’s a response too, in a way. 😉  Go ahead and bump them back down to member in game, and find a new, active member to fill that role.

The second reason you might be forced to demote an officer is abuse of power – and the good news is, this is actually much easier to deal with in terms of emotional involvement than the last type.  Abuse of power can take a few forms – in an early case, we had an officer stealing epics from the guild bank to use for his (unguilded, no less) alts without paying for them.  It can also be belligerence, belittlement of players or treating people in a way outside of the guild rules, breaking guild rules in general, or seeking personal profit from their position as officer (such as the “embezzelement” case above.)  Now the good news is – if the person you trusted to uphold the responsibilities of the guild is failing in that duty, it’s straightforward to fire them.  Point to the rule(s) in question they were violating, and then you can choose to either ask for a response or improvement, or just dismiss them from service.  If you do a disciplinary meeting – which I would recommend either for a first-time offense or a less severe one – then set clear guidelines about your own expectations, as well as how long the probationary period will be.  The more up front you are about your expectations and any deliverables, the easier this is to handle.  The reason I say this is the easiest of types to manage is because – well, in my experience, when I catch an officer abusing the power I entrusted with this, I get a little steamed about it.  It’s a lot less like kicking a puppy, and a lot more like holding someone accountable for being corrupt.  Remember – as with anything, always be polite and professional, but firm.

That leaves us with the third reason – which is what prompted me to write Scott all those years ago.  It’s lack of activity.  This is different from inactivity, where the officer in question stops playing the game (or that character) and just isn’t around anymore.  Lack of activity is where the person in question is active in game – logging in, checking forums, being around and available.  They’re just not really helping as much anymore, their responsibilities are falling through the cracks, and more and more work is left to the other officers or the guild leader.  Now, the easy temptation here is to just promote new officers – find someone else willing to take on those tasks and promote them, and leave the other officer at rank so you can avoid the awkward conversation.  But the problem is, this isn’t the best way to handle it – and in fact, if this comes up again with another officer, soon you’ll find your guild top-heavy with many officers and few members to manage.  Really, you will need to sit down and talk with the officer, ask them if everything is ok and if they’re still interested in being an officer for the guild.  I recommend treating them politely and professionally, trying to balance being both a friend but also a boss.  This is HARD.  On the one hand, you need to be very sympathetic, because it may be there’s something going on in that person’s life that is preoccupying them and taking away their energy to deal with in game personnel management.  Going into there asking why they’re not doing their job is a recipe for failure, and likely to alienate the officer – which is doubly bad if there is some background issue going on.  Other times, the officer just – enjoys the rank and having a special chat line to their other friends, but has lost either their enthusiasm for the game, or their energy and commitment to upholding their officer responsibilities.  In this case, I’d recommend one of two solutions.  First – you can explain that the duties still need doing, and if they can’t manage their previous workload then you’d like to ask them to step down as member so you can have someone else take that over.  Second, you can create an “emeritus” rank – a rank for retired officers (and potentially which can also include honored or valued members who are not officers, in special cases) that will allow them officer chat privileges, but without the responsibilities. This allows the person(s) in question to still have access to ochat, but again frees up the officer slot for someone who has the time, energy and availability to take on the extra work and stay on top of it.

Above all, I recommend being a mix of polite, professional, and firm.  You want to be sympathetic and understanding, but not so much so that you wind up with an entirely inactive officer corps that leaves you handling all the day to day work.  You want to be firm and clear about expectations, but not so much that you sound like a tyrant.  Remember, above all – officer is a VOLUNTEER position, so be understanding about that and what it entails – you’re not paying them, so be reasonable in your expectations.

Next time, we’ll talk a little bit about game burnout in general, and how to help motivate members and players during the down times of guild recruiting/game play.