I'm an Aquarius III (born in the 3 quadrant of the month), and a characteristic of my sign is having a strong empathy and intuition about things. I tend to feel when something is not right or if there is a negative energy surrounding someone. At the risk of equating myself to my dog, Bailey, it's the same as when salespeople come knocking at our door; he wags his tail and want to be pet by one visitor but, the next visitor he's growling and snarling trying to get the person to go away. He has a great sense of a person's personality and tries to protect our home.
In real life, I tend to steer away from people who cause me to have that pang of doubt in my stomach about their intentions. I have been known to remove people from my life who have caused drama or pain. In game, as GM I believe it is important to stay objective. Like a workplace, sometimes you have to work with the personalities you have and even though you get the feeling something is wrong with someone, you almost have to ignore it and base opinions on actions rather than feelings.
But at what point do stop ignoring gut instinct?
There have been several times in the past few years I have had my "spidey senses" tingle about a situation or person in relation to the guild, that I have ignored and treated my decisions based on actions, only to have an immense amount of drama happen within days or weeks of the feeling.
Now, I cannot arbitrarily go around removing players from the guild that I get bad vibes from, nor can I go around paranoid about every situation that goes on, but at what point do you act upon those primal urges to remove the problem outright without a concrete action to base it upon?
Everytime I run into a situation that could have been stopped by acting upon my feeling right away, I tell myself, "Next time I am going on gut, forget objectiveness!" But how does that align myself with being the fair and just guild leader that I am/try to be?
I'm hoping to make a guide post about this soon, but I am looking for input. How do you deal with your gut feelings and drama in your lives or guilds?
Hey
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, dont think I have seen anyone approach guilddrama from this perspective :)
I think I know where you are coming from. Regardless of starsign (I honestly believe in that suff, but your general point is more then valid enough :) )- if you pay attention to the personal interrelationships in a guild, just not what it says on the WWS logs: You will after a while be able to see those who would turn a good thing into a drama fest.
My advice would still be to not do anything preemptive. Cause if you do, then YOU are the one causing drama. Then you would be the one doing things without any seemingly good reason.
Even though I think I am quite good at reading people in online settings, I often have to realize that my first (or second or third) impression was wrong.
Just the other day I was speaking to a new member who I thought seemed really nice and was looking forward to raid with, just to kick him after the raid due to his complete incompetance, both regarding the game and how to deal with the other people in it.
Equally, people I personally find stressing and that gives me that "tingly feeling" of a bomb waiting to go off - has great relations with other people in the guild, and show thema completely different side of themselves.
So, how do I deal with gut feelings?
I tell my fellow officers. If we all share the opinion, we will be on the lookout for signs of it going bad, and try to nip it in the butt before something too big happens.
As a general rule we need 3 or more of the officers to agree to kick a player. With that consensus behind me I can use my gut instict to weed out the bad ones, but at the same time: have a safetynet with me so that I dont go overboard when I (or someone else) is having a bad day.
This is why women should not lead / run a guild to many emotions.
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