5 Things Video Games Taught Us About Leadership

Michael and I have never met in person, in fact, we have only spoken once. However, Michael and I share two commonalities. We both graduated from the Bloomsburg MSIT program and we both have a love of video games.

We chatted about what we liked about the games we played and more importantly about the leadership traits that playing games with others takes. We’ve decided to cover 5 traits of a leader that speak to us both.

You can view Michael’s top 5 perspective here.

I started playing World of Warcraft (WoW) in my freshman year of college. I was hooked and I spent most of my spare time in undergrad playing. I was eventually able to make it into a top raiding guild on my server. In raids you work with a team of 10-25 members, in order to achieve a goal of getting through a heroic and taking down all of the bosses. Some nights you’ll spend 6 hours straight trying to get through a part of one heroic. Many times you will fail. Every single person on a raid has a specific role to play and your guild leader plays an even more crucial role (much like leaders and people managers of business do). I mean, the raid leader has to to keep team morale up for potentially 6+ hours and encourage people to do it the next night before the heroic resets itself.

 A few years ago you may have seen the article on John Seely Brown (an Organizational Researcher) who stated,

“I would rather hire a high-level World of Warcraft player than an MBA from Harvard” – John Seely Brown

Confidence

WoW: In WoW when you are looking for a guild you want to look for a confident leader. You know that the most confident raid leaders are those that are not willing to give up during a fight.  They will constantly remind everyone that we will win. You’ll also note that they are more positive and willing to take well thought out risks in order to win.

Workplace: When a leader exudes confidence, you then feel more confident in yourself. Whenever I have worked with confident leaders, I have had a more positive work experience.  I have felt like the project I was working on had meaning. I felt that it would be successful because the leader was certain about our work’s importance and their decisions.

Develops the Team

WoW: In raids in WoW all players must be prepared with the skills and gear needed to take down a boss with the team. Leaders know that if not every single person in the party is prepared then the entire team is likely to fail. I was in a guild once where our raid leader spent weeks helping get all 25 members of our team their fire resistant gear for a specific boss fight. He knew what we needed to succeed and even raised the funds to do so.

Workplace: In the workplace your team may need specific skills for upcoming projects or maybe even everyday tasks. It’s important that your team’s leader invest in building your skills, so that you and your projects can be successful. When you are successful then they too are successful. They are driving results through the team.

Manages Setbacks and Failures

WoW: Like I mentioned above, in WoW you will be faced with long raid times and sometimes low success rates but you need someone there to help you manage your setbacks. One of the most popular videos to ever come out of WoW (with over 44 million hits) has been the one with Leeroy Jenkins. During a smaller 10 person raid, Leeroy decided to run into a room full of mobs (lots of enemies) and his entire team died.  When your team fails a raid (due to player issues, skill issues, or tactics) it is the leader’s job to figure out what the setbacks are and get everyone back on track.

Workplace: In the workplace a good leader will turn failures into a positive thing. You can chalk up failures to a lesson learned, you don’t want to ruminate too much over them. You want the team and yourself to realize what went wrong and how to better prepare in the future. You want to reflect but keep charging ahead.

One Voice

WoW: During raids you have to be focused on your job and be aware of what that job is. There are some raids that players must multitask a lot during. Your leader must make a game plan or you will fail. In the video above Leeroy’s raid leader communicates well and they probably would have been fine if it were not for Leeroy. Failure often happens when there is more than one voice. Players will start arguing about strategy and the next thing you know, the whole team is wiped and you have to start over. Teams that have one voice will always be more successful because they’ll be more focused.

Workplace: In the workplace your team will have objectives and goals they need to meet. I have worked on teams where the leader and the rest of the team have not been clear on the goals. There was a mix up in communication. When your entire team is not clear on what your objectives are then you likely are not going to meet them. Define the goals, make sure your team is clear, and ensure they can make it over the hill, have the skills, and the will to reach those goals.

Gives Recognition

WoW: Recognition is extremely important when it comes to raiding. You may have a guild of 100+ members and only 25 slots to raid. Even some of the best players will have to sacrifice being in the top party or even raiding period. When people would give up their raid spot we would give them proper recognition. They might become the guild member of the week or earn extra DKP to spend on rare loot.

Workplace: I believe in the workplace it is important for leaders to recognize team members that go above and beyond or take on a task that they would not normally do (or like to do). One of the great things that our team does is recognition at the beginning of every team call. Recognition also helps teams to know what they are doing right and they will feel that they play an integral role on the team.

– Mel