WoW Officers: Traits
So I talked a little yesterday about some basic processes in promoting officers. But what about qualifications? Even when having a free for all democratic style vote you want to let people know that there needs to be some qualifications in the officers that you choose. You aren't going to want someone who is on once a month to ninja the guild bank to be an officer(well you might) just because they were the popular vote, but what type of person do you really want?
I know that many guilds have many different idea's(and I would still like to hear them) about different qualifications, but here are the ones that I think are important(not necessarily in order of importance).
1)Being online - You want someone who is on at least a few times a week for a few hours at a time. Someone who is on rarely really isn't going to help you lead anything because they'll be uninformed of what's going on and really can't provide much insight to the general working of your guild. That doesn't mean the person who is on 24/7 is the best candidate either.
2)Likability - You don't have to have an officer that is loved by everyone because frankly, it's nigh impossible. In a large group someone is always going to dislike someone else for whatever reason. But, you want to have someone who isn't hated by the majority. Promoting someone shouldn't cause your guild to be like "uggh, he got it over so and so, all he does is talk rude to people" or whatever it may be.
3)Game Knowledge - You want officers that know a decent amount of the game. Someone who does zero research, has no clue who Thrall is, and generally needs to be told what to do when it comes to coming prepared is probably not going to be your best asset. You want people who are able to answer others questions. Officers are looked up to as knowing everything about everything and while that is of course not true they need to know how to find those things for themselves or forward it to another person who does.
4)Self Reliance - Depending how many officers you have there is probably not going to be multiple officers on all at one time, which means each officer needs to be able to operate independently in representing the leadership. This is really about that whole officer are looked up to as knowing everything thing.
5)Maturity - This doesn't mean they need to be adults, but your officers need to be mature enough to handle the issues that they will face. They need to know when to play and when to be serious. An officer who is always joking around 100% of the time will not be taken seriously and will either be disregarded by your guild or be taken advantage of, both which could be very detrimental to the guild. Conversely, an officer who is too serious all the time will either become disliked or simply ignored by your guild.
6)Generosity(this one I took from Scott Andrews at WoW Insider) - "Those who hoard their tangible resources are rarely willing to part with their intangible ones. Guild need officers that don't mind spending an hour to resolve a dispute or tutor someone on how to perform better at their class." Don't, however, get too overboard with this. Someone who never wants anything for themselves is often too weak to be a leader as well. There is a fine line between helping people out and doing it for them. As you can imagine, this is another trait which can quickly be abused if the officer can't control it. Sometimes the art of telling people places they could go and making them do the work themselves is much more helpful to your guild than telling the person how to heal.
7)Ability to handle situations - A key part of being an officer requires them to deal with situations that normally aren't going so well. Sometimes you can defer the situation to another officer who might better handle it but more often than not it boils over fast and needs to be dealt with equally as fast. Being able to resolve the situation's that come up without causing irreparable damage is a key trait.
The list could go on and on, but these I think are some of the most important traits. But don't let these traits bog you down. Not every officer needs to be amazing at all these traits and you may even have officers who only do one thing and one thing only because you knew they just aren't that good at the other requirements. Someone could be an amazing recruiter but not be able to lead a raid or diffuse situations but that person is still an asset because they are good at what they do.
But keep in mind, the bad traits can also make your guild look bad. If that great recruiter tries to solve situations knowing they just aren't good at it you may end up with a whole guild war because of something they said incorrectly.
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