Letting Someone Go With Dignity - The Dreaded GKick

Here's a business tip from the New York Times Boss Blog: LINK to original article

It's The Secret World MMO. It's just a game.

But...

Having to part ways with someone in your cabal can be nearly as distressing as firing someone from a job.  Sure, it's not like you're depriving them of wages, or upsetting their family finances, and sure, it's far easier to find another cabal than it is another job.

But...

It still hurts.  Both the person who is let go, and the people who let them go, often experience significant stress. On the cabal management side, it's often far more appealing to just let it slide for longer and longer and longer.  Unsurprisingly, if you have someone in your cabal that really needs to go, this is just going to let those reasons fester, and maybe spill out onto more of your people.

On the personal side, being "fired" is a statement that "you don't belong here and/or we just don't like you." As terrible as it is to say to someone, it's worse when that someone is you! It will affect their self-worth, their confidence, and can be humiliating.

Which is why the mantra "hire slow, fire fast,” is a thing. The firing process is so traumatic - for everyone, that you want to avoid it if you can, and if you can't, you need to do it right.

This is where we part ways...
(From Funcom's media library)

Recruitment mistakes happen. They just do. Someone looks good "on paper" in the application, but then once they're on the inside, you may find out they're not a good fit. That's not the applicant's fault - it's yours for recruiting them!  Therefore you owe it to them to to make the exit process as gentle as possible.  This is in your own best interest because the less you hurt that person's feelings, the less resentment and backlash you'll have to deal with.  (The bigger problem here is recruiting the wrong people, or too many people, but that's another problem for another post.)  Here are some things to keep in mind when you start thinking it's time to part ways with one of your cabalmates.

Can't I just ignore this person?

Short answer, no, its bad for your cabal and it's bad for YOU as a person.  You're doing the rest of your cabal a great disservice. A lesson from the business world (from Danny Boice, the co-founder and CTO of Speek) is that you are, as a cabal manager, likely to spend more time dealing with the minority of people in your cabal who are problematic than the majority of people who are doing great. So you are, essentially wasting your time with problem management rather than investing your time and energy into the people who are awesome.

Let me ask you this question. If you're a cabal manager, what's more likely to get you down and contribute to burnout - dealing with the problems, or working with the people who are fun, active, and working towards your cabal goals?

You can't just ignore the people who are dragging you, and your cabal down.  If you've got someone that is consistently a thorn in your side, then it's time to consider parting ways - it's best for you, and it's best for the people who are depending on you.

By the time you get to this point, you should have had several heart-to-heart conversations about what's not working.  It's unfair (in most circumstances) to just kick someone without making a sincere effort to try to get them more settled into your cabal culture.  There are exceptions, but they're usually cases of extreme malfeasance that we're not going into here.

Let go of your pride - the mistake is yours, not theirs.

If you get to the point where you need to ask someone to leave your cabal, you need to admit that YOU were the one that screwed up the recruiting process.  Putting aside your pride, and owning the blame for the situation should be high on your list. Consider apologizing to the person that because 1) it's true and 2) it may help them decide to move along voluntarily.

Let it be their decision to go.

The key to letting someone go with dignity is to help them realize that they are better off somewhere else. It's much less embarrassing to move on than to be gkicked. Try to lead them to the discussion.  Even a simple set of questions can be useful. "Are you happy here? How do you feel your role in this group is working out? Where do you see yourself going in the future?" Focus on where the person wants to go - and point out that this is the time for this person to go do that thing. Maybe they want to start their own group. Maybe they want a group that focuses on different things than your own cabal does. Maybe they need more structure - or maybe less! Regardless, focus on this person's "dream cabal".  He or she may decide that it's in their best interest to strike out in a new direction - and it really is. If it evolves into a situation where the person is voluntarily moving on, then that way, the person is still in charge of his fate, and can go with dignity.

Don’t procrastinate.

If you've tried to remediate this person, and you know it's not going to work out, then don't procrastinate. There are few things more demotivational than having someone in your group that is a problem - and for the rest of your cabal to see you (a cabal manager*) doing nothing about it!  In some cases, this can be seen as a tacit approval of the very behaviors that make the person in question a poor fit for your cabal culture.

Be clear about what happens next and help them as much as you can.

Let them know, at the end of the conversation, what happens next.  You might give them some time to say goodbye to friends in your website, but take them out of the in-game cabal immediately (so there are no unfortunate temptations with items in the cabal bank). Do whatever is best for your group.

Also, let them know if you're willing to help them find another cabal. Sometimes, if it's just a question of fit, you might be willing to help the person relocate.

Announce it to the cabal and let them say goodbye.

Hopefully, the person sees this as his or her decision, and sees that (in reality) this is in their own best interests. Ideally, it can be announced as the person's decision.  Sometimes a forum post on your own website is the appropriate medium (so the entire group can see it), sometimes a discussion in game on your cabal chat channel is better. Regardless, find something nice to say about this person if you can. If they've contributed to your group at all, now is the time to call attention to that and thank them - honestly - for what they have done.

When someone leaves, make sure that the cabal managers can be around in your forums/chat and in game to make sure to quell negativity.  People may need time to adjust and/or grieve and you would rather be there than not. Be sure to tell your people the truth - that the split was in everyone's best interests.


* Cabal manager is an inclusive term that indicates a cabal leader, a cabal officer, or a cabal veteran that is widely looked up to even without a formal leadership title.

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Outside comments:

"Whenever someone left my guilds/cabals, I've always cautioned my guild members the same way. "How we treat someone who leaves is going to say more about who we are as a guild than how we treated them when they were here." That is true whether it was a voluntary or involuntary separation.

I always tried to make sure that when I had to /kick someone from my guild, they understood why. They may not agree, but I tried to help them understand. In the best cases, I would ask them to voluntarily leave the guild rather than being forced to /kick them."

Jonray - The Secret World Forums, 12-02-2014

How To Know When Your Cabal Has A Crisis It Can't Ignore

Here's a business tip from the Harvard Business Review: LINK to original article

One of the great truths of the universe - as unyielding as the laws of thermodynamics - is this:

Crises happen.

It's human nature.  Generally, as a cabal manager* you can deal with these as they come up, but then, something happens, and you have a sense of Keanu-like "whoa" as you realize this problem is on a whole new level compared to the others.

Suddenly, this thing becomes a turning point for the whole group. Often these kind of crises may take months to develop, but then are sprung in one spectacular moment. It's when you realize that "the way we do things around here" is suddenly no longer workable, and there needs to be some sort of large-scale paradigm shift in who or what the cabal is all about. This is not necessarily a negative thing (though it certainly may be).

That's something we can't ignore!
(From Funcom's media library)

• Maybe it's a RP thing, where after a months of casual RP, you realize that NOW is the time to take the cabal in a somewhat different direction that makes a lot more sense or provides excellent RP opportunities.
• Or maybe it's an OOC cultural shift that you realize will make your cabal a kinder, nicer place to be, or more appealing to various demographics.
• Or maybe it's a personality thing, and part of your cabal decides to strike out on their own as an entirely new group.
• Maybe it's an organizational thing. When your cabal was smaller, organization was casual. Now that you're bigger, more structure is needed.

Regardless, the big unignorable moments involve a culture crisis within your group.  At this point, as a cabal manager you have a choice to either ignore it or embrace it.

Spoiler alert: Ignore at your own peril. 

Sometimes, these are just the kind of changes that are desperately needed by your community.

Sometimes the crises start making your player-base start questioning what your organization stands for, or what it's really trying to do.  If you ignore it, you're looking at (perhaps) stifling dissent, bickering, and paralysis.  If you embrace it, you're looking at (perhaps) deep change which may lead to a stronger group.

So how do you know when you're at that moment where you have a challenge that you cannot ignore, or treat with the same old methods.  The Harvard Business Review suggests that, given their analyses of business cases, these unignorable moments have four characteristics in common.

1. They are public.
2. They are irreversible.
3. They are systemic.
4. They challenge identity.

They are public.

Your definition of "public" may vary. This might mean it's widely visible to people inside your organization, or even visible to people outside of your organization. Perhaps it was something that snowballed on Twitter or on the public TSW or TSW-RP.com forums.  Maybe it was something that happened in one of the more populated areas in game.  Regardless, there is a large group of people interested in, perhaps invested in, the outcome of the crisis.

They are irreversible.

Once it's said in public, there are no takebacks. No amount of "retcon" of RP is going to fix the way people's feelings have changed because of the crisis.  People might forgive, but they aren't likely to forget.  Whatever happened, it's going to change the way people think about your group, or the way the people in your cabal think about that cabal.

They are systemic.

Unignorable moments are, at their root, based on "the way we do things around here."  Maybe it's the way someone feels recruits are being handled, or the way the leadership of the cabal works, or the balance of the cabal's focus on PvE versus RP events. Regardless, they are a root-level challenge to the way the cabal has been in the past.

They challenge identity.

The unignorable moment - because it is systemic - can bring up uncomfortable uncertainty about the organizational identity.  Are we a light RP cabal or have we turned into a heavy RP cabal?  Are we a RP cabal or have we turned into a more PvE/Social cabal?  Are our characters the bad guys, or are they really the good guys? There becomes a dissonance between what the group was and what it is becoming.

The flip side.

Change is terrifying, and the unignorable moment is the herald of change.  It's far, far, far better to realize that you are in a position where your cabal must change, and to manage it mindfully, rather than to just react to things as they occur.  The way the cabal management approaches the unignorable moment can define the future course of the group - for the better!



* Cabal manager is an inclusive term that indicates a cabal leader, a cabal officer, or a cabal veteran that is widely looked up to even without a formal leadership title.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Outside comments:

"Crisis management is critical to cabal management. And it becomes even more important for the leadership to identify it and have a strategy for how to handle it rather than playing things "off the cuff". Emotional responses aren't going to help anyone."

Jonray - The Secret World Forums, 12-02-2014

The difference between leaders and managers (guest column by Captrench)

The difference between leaders and managers, in the business world and the game world, as reported from a man who knows the trenches - Captrench from the TSW Forums.  (Original post here).  This post is entirely his/her work.

"This is actually a topic that for the past two years has never been far from my mind. Although I've led teams in the past, I've started accumulating more "senior" type responsibilities, in a much more formal and structured sense than before. 

I've started appreciating the difference in skill and effort required between getting the best out of a team of like minded individuals, and a team of those who are not. Its easy to say "See? Simples!" when your team is full of "can do" people with work ethics you relate with and understand.

But that's a bit obvious and self serving. You haven't had to show any skill or effort yourself, because the team is low maintenance and motivated already. The challenge, and skill/effort, is for when your team or individual members is much less than ideal.

To me, there are two generic skills that often get mixed together and used interchangeably, despite being very different and distinct. And that becoming aware of these made it easier for me to appreciate my own bosses/managers, their strengths and weaknesses. Which in turn, now, also helps me to known my own. These are, Management and Leadership. Each is distinct, but each on its own in isolation can lead to extreme scenarios best avoided.

Roughly, Management is the ability to prioritise and organise work needed with the resources needed to accomplish it, to maximise resource expense with result gained.

Leadership is the ability to inspire and generate the desired behaviours, and enforce the ethics of, the relevant role. The leadership shown by and required of say, a bereavement counsellor, to their team of social workers might be very different than that required of the leader of a squadron of soldiers under enemy fire.

That's enemy "fire"... literally.
(From Funcom's media library)

As a technician, I find I'm a better "leader", than I am a manager. And as a senior within my field, that is the lions share of what is required of me. I need to set the correct example of behaviour and ethics, mentor those junior to me, nurture confidence, technical knowledge. I try to teach (passionately) that accountability is much more important than pure technical excellence, and ensure that mistakes admitted to are not a rod to be beaten with. My favourite adage is "Experience, unfortunately, is a greater teacher than foresight". We will all make mistakes.

I'm also very emphatic about asking questions, and the importance of repeating the question until you understand what's required. I don't remember anything until I've been through it myself, and struggled through all the usual gotchas. So I don't expect anyone I mentor to be a memory master of what's now intuitive to me. Asking is smart, breaking systems because you didn't ask (again) is dumb. If its me you will ask... ask, ask and ask again. I don't care.

I'm very passionate about ethics, principles and the "right" thing to do, both personally and professionally. But its also a huge overhead. It can take huge emotional, effort and time investment. Dogmatically sticking to principles at all costs can cause unnecessary friction, and limit progress, which professionally is really short sighted, and career limiting. This is where Management comes in.

My passion for moral principles and professional ethics is an overhead, which I'm happy to pay, but it can cause problems when I have to "manage" difficult situations/personalities. Developing a "manager head", I have to remember that how I have to handle a situation may differ very much from my emotional response to it. How I present an idea to people needs to cater to the audience, not a simplistic "Follow me!".

When a flood of emotions rushes you, you cant efficiently erect a dam to block them, you have to channel them constructively. Easier said than done, for me. But over the last few years I've started appreciating that I need to be a little more sophisticated in my responses. The "right" thing to do in principle may not be achieved simply by insisting its so.

Whether in social groups, such as Guilds, or business, I appreciate leaders and managers (especially people who can be both) much more now. I've had managers with no leadership skills, and vice versa and each comes with its issues. Also, not all roles require both specifically, so it may be perfectly acceptable to have pure management or leader roles.

Principles are often horizons we aim for. How we get to them is rarely a straight line. Insisting on the straight line will have you crash into every wave and landmass along the way. Management of the journey is how make that journey as efficient and painless as possible, whilst still aiming for the principle."

Dealing with immediate problems - pause with poise

Another cabal management tip from the Harvard Business Review: LINK to original article here.

As MMO players (and roleplayers) we communicate a lot by text.  And sometimes, that can lead to arguing, or just disagreeing, by text which can get complex, politically sensitive, or even unnerving. There's also a culture of immediacy to the event - "I know you're on line!" or "I know you're in game!"- that urges us to respond to all of these emails sooner rather than later. In fact, people (particularly people who have a problem they are bringing to you in your capacity as a cabal manager*) may get upset if you don't reply to them near-instantly.

Most of us are smart enough to pause for a moment, but often we don't take the time to fully theorycraft the best response, or to get advice before responding.

Sometimes you need to look for a middle ground between "immediate reply" and "well thought out answer."

Here are some ways to give yourself a little time to pause with poise.

Sometimes, you don't have the luxury of time to think!
(From Funcom's media library)

Suboptimal: "I got your message" or "okay". Hey, at least the person knows they're not being ignored.

Better: "I got your message, and I'm swamped today.  Let's talk tomorrow, okay?" They may demand to talk now, but you should stick to your guns and schedule a time to talk once you've done your thinking.

Now that you've got some time, what are you going to do with it?  The Harvard Business Review calls these the Four Cs of Effective Communication: context, content, contact, and channel.

Context – Consider who else is involved and what they want and need from the reply.

Content – Particularly since most of these communications are by text, make sure that your response is mindfully deliberate.  Run it by a neutral party to make sure you're being clear.

Contact – Think it through, and confirm that you're the right person to respond. Maybe you need to pass the question off to a different officer or cabal leader, or perhaps to someone else with expertise.

Channel – Just because someone catches you in game, or via IM, or by email, that doesn't mean you have to respond that way.  Sometimes it's better to set up a "real time" conversation in game or via IMs rather than respond by email - or vice versa.

Take your time and get it right - and remember to take the option to pause with poise before hitting that send button.



* Cabal manager is an inclusive term that indicates a cabal leader, a cabal officer, or a cabal veteran that is widely looked up to even without a formal leadership title.

Credit where credit is due!

Here's a business tip from the Harvard Business Review: LINK to original article

The article is short, barely more than a paragraph, but it speaks to something every cabal manager must do, which is to give public thanks and appreciation (credit) to the people in his or her cabal.

The people in a cabal work for for that cabal. They are perhaps roleplayers who create content to entertain the people in the cabal. Perhaps they are PvErs who have set up a dungeon run, or organize some way to get people through the content.  Maybe they're social leaders who set up a fun way to get people into voice chat and who provide a way for people to enjoy the game together.

Regardless, these people are the people in your cabal that you, as a cabal manager, are strongly encouraged to "pay".  Of course, we're not talking about money changing hands, or even in game loot. No, that's not what these people are "working" for. There are far easier ways to get loot than to work on creating group content.

They want credit.  

They want their contributions, work, organization, and planning to be acknowledged - preferably in public.  Sure, the people who were entertained by their efforts are likely to say 'thank you' and that's part of the equation.  However, as a cabal leader or officer, you should be very grateful for these people, and you should make sure they (and everyone else) knows it.

So, say something in cabal chat to thank them.  Consider posting something on your cabal forums. Jump into voice chat and make sure to tell them thank you - and be bold about doing so where other people can hear it!

Sometimes it's complex trying to assign credit when several people collaborated on an event. Make sure that you're appropriately congratulating the people that coordinated on it - AND - make sure you're focusing on group success over individual contributions.

Suboptimal: "Thanks Fred! Good job Velma! I hear that Shaggy and Daphne helped, too."

Better: "Thanks folks, that was a great event! You got a whole lot of people through the Halloween content. People seem really happy.  Nice work!"

In the prior case, perhaps some people feel like their contributions are being marginalized, and you might make the very human mistake of forgetting someone on the team.  The latter example reinforces teamwork, and stresses the results, rather than who did what.

Also, don't forget to recognize the effort that people put into an event or initiative even if it flops. Maybe it was just at a time that wasn't convenient for people, or the event itself didn't appeal to the player base. Some events are just not going to work - people aren't perfect - occasional failure is just a part of life. Be sure to appreciate the attempt - this encourages people to take risks AND it encourages these same people to try again and improve.