Leadership; what style to use

[Kasgrin]

Anyone who is an officer in a guild or leads raids will inevitably be leading people. Leading is perhaps one of the hardest skills anyone can master. It's a process that consumes time and energy but can ultimately make your guild or raid stronger as a group. In this item I don't want to discuss viable ways of leading a group. I only want to make people aware of two styles of leadership. It's important that you, as a leader, are aware of which style of leadership you employ, as it can be a crucial success factor.

The two styles are;
1. Participative leadership
2. Directive leadership

Participative leadership revolves around involving the people you lead in your decision making process. You encourage people to discuss and think constructively about a problem at hand and possibly even decide on the course to take. Directive leadership revolves around the leader going through his thought and decision making process by himself and presenting the people he leads with his solution.

Both sides have positive and negative elements. I'll start with participative leadership. As Participative leadership revolves around including a number of people into a process, it is obvious that this form of leadership can be time consuming, especially when many people feel the need to contribute to an ongoing desicion making process. Another potentially negative side is that different people will have different opinions which can lead to internal division when tempers rise. On the positive side this method uses the background and experience of many people. In that way a leader can cover his own weaker points with the input from others who are more familiar in a specific field. Another good element is that the group feel integrated into processes and feels it has the ability to influence the way things go, which can be a tremendous motivator.

The obvious pitfall in this style of leadership is letting people contribute to the decision making process but not making the result of their contribution clear. That will de-motivate like nothing else. There's another pitfall, partcipative doesn't mean a leader shouldn’t steer a process. If the leader fails to steer the process he might end up with a result that is completely out of line with what the process was destined to achieve.

Directive leadership is more or less the opposite of partcipative and many negatives of partcipative are positives in Directive leadership. Directive leadership is fast. Not having others to consult cuts back time needed significantly, and it forces others to comply with the decision made. With the target clear in sight it's also enables a leader to go straight for his intended goal, without distractions. Downside is that a leader will have to decide based just on what he knows, which might not cover the entire spectrum. It's also a leadership style which makes any contribution from the "workforce" irrelevant, which can lead to unthinking and uncaring behaviour from the audience of a leader.

Pitfalls are narrow sightedness and coming across as a dictator. Narrow sightedness means that a leader loses sight of important factors because his focus is completely on the issue and hand. The dictator thing is quite obvious in this leadership style.

So, what should you use? Ideally a leader should use both styles as he sees fit. Both have obvious strengths and weaknesses. That is why it's so important a leader is aware of what style he uses, or intends to use at any given moment. It's also clear that one style will fit a leader better than the other. That doesn't mean that the style that feels less comfortable is less desirable.

In WoW the above is certainly applicable. In many guilds the major decisions are not made just by the officers. The officers will have discussed amongst each other and then present options to the guild community. The community then gets to give feedback. That's a very clear example of participative leadership. In that same guild a particular raid boss remains hard to grasp. Although there are different opinions on the tactic to take, the raid leader decides it's a good time to firmly take charge. He settles down the raid and sets very clear directives for every raid member which should be followed to the letter, slamming the readycheck button as soon as he's done talking.

Both examples clearly show what I described above and both should sound familiar to the general public. Hopefully this post will make you aware of what style you are using, and perhaps will make you decide to go with another style at a certain point. There are no wrongs and rights in this, the choice is situational. I can't help you with that, but at least I hope I've shown you some factors to take into consideration when deciding on what leadership style you intend to use.

[Kasgrin]

What I didn't include but do want to share is a bit of background on my part:

I am an army officer and as such leading people is core business to me. Since I started playing WoW about 5 years ago I have been an officer in nearly every guild I have been in, mostly in the realm of raidleading. I have been a part of both progression style guilds and casual guilds and led raids in both.

At the moment I am an officer and raidleader in a very casual guild that focusses on 10 man raiding but is able to host its own 25 man raids as well. We're 11/12 normal in 25 man en 6/12 hardcore 10 man.

[Gravity]

Great post, Kasgrin. I'll add my perspective from years of raid leadership, guild leadership and senior management at work.

Firstly, you have to know when to switch between the two styles. The best leaders can choose. Many leaders only have one style and simply cannot switch.
Therefore, secondly you need to learn how to switch.

In my view, the two key factors which decides whether you should go from one style to another are:

• the urgency of the situation
• your need to bring action out lethargy or failure, such as to rally the troops

Khaas gave a good example in another post about drawing the line for his team, telling them to shape-up or ship-out:

Now, we only raid 8 hours per week (Tues and Thurs for four hours each), Thursday we have RS, Valithria, Sindragosa, and Lich King. We still had nearly 3 hours left by the time the complaints for "Normal Mode" started. So, I took to Vent with my verdict: "I don't expect us to kill Sindy in Hard this week, because some of you obviously don't care about it. But this raid's got 2 and a half hours left, and if you want to see Lich King loot you'll execute these Ice Blocks as directed. If you can't accomplish this simple task you don't deserve anymore loot this week. And if you don't like that, you're welcome to leave. I'm done with lowering expectations... you guys can do better than this." I further let them know that if they executed the blocks properly and we still failed, I would set it to normal and we'd burn through. But if they didn't execute the blocks they weren't going to get anywhere tonight.

Apparently that got their attention. Next attempt we got her to half, people hit their marks and honestly I think we could've taken her out with another couple of tries. But I'm a man of my word, they executed the maneuver. I gave them a "hell yeah, that's what I like to see" over Vent and set it to Normal Mode. We ground her into the dirt, then one shot LK. We still left ICC early, and everyone in the raid learned a valuable lesson.

It's tough times right now for a lot of people. But as ever, I'm a believer in balance. Be firm, don't let people settle. And be fair, one more attempt means one more attempt. If you do adopt a similar stance, don't flinch from it. Or you'll undo everything you've worked for.

Now here he switched to directive. He didn't ask "oh guys, shall we try once more?".
Instead, he stepped into the fray and demanded higher performance.

It's possible that earlier in the night he might have used participative decision-making and leadership to work our their strategy for the fight (which is usually the right way to do it).

For learning to do this, one personal characteristic which massively gates whether you can do it or not, is your willingness to step into conflict. Your comfort with disagreement, and of people not liking you. You have to be comfortable with that, so much so that you do not hesitate to be directive when it's the right time to do so.

This takes courage.

[Kasgrin]

Agreed there Gravity.

As most corperate managers will tell you, parcipative is currently the style managers are being taught as the style to end all. In truth I think that any leader worth his salt should use parcipative whenever possible, but still keep the option to switch to directive in the back pocket as plan B, however, especially the ability to use expertise of a large group of people is just too good to pass up, especially while tackling a complex problem.

Coming from the military I suppose many people would assume I'd be more comfortable with the directive approach. The reverse is true though. While directive leadership works well at platoon level and lower, there are very few processes in the world that are as complicated as military operations. The military has embraced the concept of partipative leadership. At any time during a decision making process specialists from all branches will constantly be consulted. When the operation goes underway things change of course, with commanders in the field often needing to take split second desicions, which ony fit the directive approach.

It's much the same for WoW, as your example with Khaas shows.

I think you're spot on with your key factors, especially since those tie into the weaknesses of parcipative leadership and strenghts of directive leadership. Working under the assumption that partcipative leadership is your normal framework which is used, the only logical transition point to directive leadership would be those two.

I started out my post with stating that leadership is one of the hardest skills anyone can master. Crucial to directive leadership, as you pointed out, is that people accept when you take this approach. Acceptance is gained through motivation, information and performance. That's somewhat of a different discussion which would be great to have at a future time.

[Khaas]

As you say, leadership is a complex animal. First and foremost you have to have a solid infrastructure. With us it revolves around a guild leader and co leader, and four role officers (ranged, melee dps, heals, and tank). In a way it's organized (somewhat) militarily, with role officers governing a lot of the tasks for those under them. Healing officer for instance will cordinate healers for fights like Valithria (who's going in the portals, who's on tanks and raid heals, etc) outside the raid these officers act as a primary contact for new recruits. That said, these people are trusted individuals who've proved their worth and earned their positions, this allows me and the guild leader to focus on other concerns with the raid and day to day functions of the guild. At times however (as with the Sindragosa situation) I have to beat my chest and growl in Vent. And it does get results, but I can't stress enough that it's not something you can (or should) do all of the time.

So for me, it's about subordinate leadership (mostly), directives are given and it's up to the subordinates to achieve those directives. As you say though, the key is knowing when to exert authority and when to let your subordinates move as they will. Communication is as much a factor as instinct, there will be times when subordinates simply won't know what to do. Maybe they don't have the necessary field data or experience, in which case you may need to step in. But overall, if you've chosen your subordinates well and give them the freedom to act as they need to, you should have few problems and can focus on other things.

This type of leadership structure provides very distinct benefits and very distinct restrictions, but I think overall it's the best for a lot of situations. Especially in a 25 man raid environment.

P.S.
I blame my grandfather for all of the military films we watched when I was growing up. And the war games we used to play in the garage (table top war strategy, like warhammer but no lasers). That and coming from a long line of military men.

[Gravity]

It's a good thing to be blamed for. I'd like to be a granddad like that too.

[Splug]

Delegation can create the advantages of a quick directive approach, while maintaining the topic specialism and check-and-balance factor from a participative approach. All the officers are still involved, one person just functions as the arbitrator for each particular topic (recruiting, dkp, website administration, etc). In most cases, they're able to make a decision, refer it up the food chain a level (or to the group as a whole), get a quick approval, and move on.

I also agree with occasionally stepping up and just making a call, but it's worth mentioning that there is a diminishing return on the shock value of switching gears. In the case of the Sindragosa example given above, that will work a few times, or once in a while. If it becomes a regular occurrence, it can lead to officers feeling as though they have no reliable input into the system, as well as the guild as a whole not getting a major change in momentum out of it. Inspirational speeches work the same way: they're great when you really need them, but trying to give the "we can do this guys" speech every pull quickly loses flavor.

[Kasgrin]

I also agree with occasionally stepping up and just making a call, but it's worth mentioning that there is a diminishing return on the shock value of switching gears.

Well said and I agree wholly, which is why I posted:

In truth I think that any leader worth his salt should use parcipative whenever possible,

In the military we use a catch phrase for this. Information + Motivation = Acceptance. It's much more effecient to tell people what is up and why it is up what that means than just telling them to go do something. In the latter they don't know why they are doing something and can therefor lose the acceptance of the taskthey are doing.

Delegating responsibility is a management tool. In essence it doesn't have much to do with leadership. Of course a leader can't do everything on his own and will therefor delegate certain responsibilities, but that doesn't have any bearing on taking a directive or paricipative approach. I do agree that by delegating you can get some of the advantages of the directive approach. On the other hand, any responsibility delegated will still require your frequent atention as you'll want feedback and at some point results.

[brangwen]

Information + Motivation = Acceptation

(is acceptation a word?? LOL or do you mean acceptance?)
This goes true for most situations. People are so much more accepting of decisions, delays, anything if they have had an explanation of what is going on. It doesn't take much out of your time to post a one line explanation of a decision. Even if that is a "Too much talk, I decide this Lets go". You are the leader, at the end of the day responsibility falls on your shoulders. I use this in my day to day work as well for the part of my job that is tech support. Tell the person with the issue what you are doing, that you are working on it, that you are still figuring it out blah blah and they will wait for the solution and not complain. You can deliver the answer 4 days late and still get emails saying how awesome you were dealing with their issue.

I always used participatory leadership as the ongoing methodology, I then defaulted to directive when decisions needed to be made and no consensus was agreed upon, or timeframes were short (ie shut up, we need to kill this boss). In fact, I empowered the RL to be directive whenever they saw the need within a raid context. So, between the two of us, one of us would default to directive if participatory became an obstacle to achieving the goal. We would communicate in Ochat to decide when to do this. Eventually, we didn't need to as we learned the cues we gave each other for when and who should make the call.

I always advocated empowerment to my leadership team and supported/encouraged them to that end. If my officers made a decision in my stead because I was not there for whatever reason, or for each other, or even in my presence I always backed that decision up with my agreement EVEN IF I DISAGREED WITH THE CHOICE OR WOULD HAVE HANDLED THE SITUATION DIFFERENTLY. One thing you really cannot have is dissention in the leadership to your guildies.

At the end of the day, a good leader should know all the tools at their disposal and use whichever they need to get the job done in the most effective way possible. Understanding your tools is essential, and this is a great summary of the 2 major styles used by all leaders.

[Kasgrin]

Information + Motivation = Acceptation

(is acceptation a word?? LOL or do you mean acceptance?)

Non-native speaker and the correct word got lost in translation. Changed it, thanks.

get the job done in the most effective way possible

Spot on.

[Gravity]

Good followers are absolutely crucial.
This video is not only really funny, but conveys a crucial message about leadership. Please watch and reflect on it, as a lesson on how to bring about change, which is one of the things we deal with in leadership.