Qualities of a Successful Guild Leader (from least to most important).
What you want ultimately is to be loved by your people. You want to be trusted, respected and adored.
10. Be willing to shell out money
9. Selfless
8. Determined
7. Willing to put the time in
6. Organized
10. Be willing to shell out money
You are going to need two things to run a guild over the long run that will cost money.
A. A great looking website like wowguilds.ca offers. Guildlaunch or guildportal have free and less robust features but a full featured website with forums is an absolute must for a successful guild.
B. A ventrilo server with a minimum of a capacity of 25. 50 would be recommended but you can always upgrade later on down the road.
Being able to communicate with your guildies off line and voice to voice is one of the best ways to form lasting relationships and truly get to know them beyond what guild chat can offer.
9. Be Selfless
Running guild is all about your members and not about you.
Plan on not playing the game as much and instead managing what you’ve started. Especially at first you want to cultivate that all important guild culture.
If you are not willing to sacrifice your time for your guild, this is the wrong job for you. Being a guild leader is the hugest of huge commitments.
I remember always seeing a guild leader sitting in a particular place all the time. I’d walk by and there he was sitting on his mount in the same spot not doing anything, I always wondered what the heck that guy was doing. Now I understand.
8. Be determined
There have been 2 times that I can remember saying screw all this stuff, it’s not worth it. That is usually when people that I’ve spent countless hours talking to and helping just up and quit to join another guild.
This is going to happen. Repeat this…this is going to happen.
You gotta keep it going especially at the beginning of starting a guild.
I have a rule when someone leaves you go recruit two people.
These relationshitps that are severed like that can really hurt sometimes. It could hurt your raid team or just your feelings, so make sure you are emotionally stable so you don’t fall victim to just saying screw it!
Running a guild is without question the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
7. Willingness to put time in
If you’re thinking how many hours per week does it take? That depends on several things:
A. Your officers
B. Your goals
Probably 1-3 hours per day. You have to be able to play nearly everyday no question.
Remember you can’t burn yourself out.
If you burn yourself out it’s over – especially at the beginning.
Plan on spending a lot of time chatting to people via text or on ventrilo.
You must build personal relationships with people or they will leave you in a heartbeat. You must invest in them so that they will invest in your guild.
You will also have to spend lots of time updating your website and making it pro looking. You do not want to recruit people and direct them to an unattractive website.
You will be in charge of planning events, scheduling instance runs, raids or other affairs.
Emailing guild mates in game or responding to forum posts.
You’ll be recruiting new guild members.
Getting new members is one challange, keeping them around is another far more difficult endeavor.
It’s non stop because there isn’t specific hours doing the day when people play. It’s 24-7 all day every day.
Without all of this stuff especially in the beginning your guild will fail.
Remember with a guild with 50-200 members this can be like a small to medium corporation. Are you ready for all that?
I’ve seen guilds with 200 members fold overnight. This comes from pure lack of leadership. And expanding too fast.
How do I become an effective leader? You’re listening to it. Do these 10 things and you’ll be doing exactly what it takes to have a healthy happy successful guild that can accomplish anything that you want.
6. Be organized
You are going to be whispered within 5 sec of logging in sometimes by multiple people all wanting something. (this is a worst case thing be it isn’t uncommon)
I recommend you have a planner for your guild that is separate from your RL planner. If you want to be effective as a guild leader your have to know what you are going to do with your time. Bank organization, setting up raids, recruiting, helping someone set up ventrilo, 5 mans,…
It may not be fun all the time but you have to have a written plan for everything, with geals for the month and week. If you spend all your time in heroics you’ll neglect lots of areas of the guild.
You’re going to have to have written policies, raid rules, loot systems, prewritten in advance of even starting the guild.
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