One of my guild’s best healers (Diggie) asked once in officer chat, how do I learn to raid lead? He’s been doing it since, improving all the time, by running a Naxx 10 alts night. He also asked during a run ‘tell me if there is anything else I should do’.

So if you’d like to raid lead, here is some advice.

The first thing you need is a willingness to learn like Diggie. The fortitude to try leading and possibly fail. One reason some people do not even step up is the false belief that the raid leader needs to know everything and do everything.

Knowing the content

At a minimum: you want to know the raid content about as well as everyone else in the raid.

Ideally: you should know it much better. You want to understand what each role has to do, where they stand, what debuffs are priority to remove, what burst damage healers need to be aware of, and so on.

How to achieve:

• read the strategy guides and watch the TankSpot videos. Key: try to correlate the visual effect with the special ability.
• when raiding not as a leader, actually watch what everyone else is doing. Pan your camera around. Where do they stand? What is the raid leader saying about priorities? Why did you wipe, was it preventable?

Progression: if you’re all learning content together, the raid leaders role becomes more that of ‘problem solving leader’. You work out what to try, and when to persevere, and make the decision about whether the strategy is wrong or just the execution of the strategy is bad. This role is more archetypal leadership because you want to draw out insight from people, and also get noisy useless contributions shut down. You will probably have someone who knows the content a little better, so hear them out. » continue reading