Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
To one extent or another, I've made every mistake on this list, and watched friends of mine do the same, and I've seen the consequences. I'm primarily thinking of faction admin responsibilities, but if new staffers find some of this useful, yay.
- Become capable of separating what was said from who said it. Don't privilege bad ideas from people you like and respect; don't reject good ideas from people you dislike and don't respect.
- Always, always, always be aware of the optics. In the long run, it doesn't matter whether you're within the rules or you have a good reason for doing something. What matters is how it looks. Nobody has time to verify that you've dotted your i's and crossed your t's. All they'll see is that you own everything.
- Don't own everything. Seriously. Don't just write yourself out, give it away. Corollary: 'If I don't snap up X, player Y will get it and they already have too much' is generally not a valid reason to add to your collection of things and positions.
- When appropriate, use transparent and democratic processes and respect the right of appeal.
- Get familiar with groupthink. Groupthink kills faction staff teams, faction chats, etc. It's a primary source of toxicity.
- Beware of tyranny of the majority. Momentum is great, and don't give so much credence to dissenting opinions that energy gets lost -- but take the needs of the rest seriously.
- Whenever possible, construct checks and balances. One decent way to do this is to appoint people who're outside your immediate circle. Classic example: the Admin team, in all its incarnations. Most Admins don't RP with each other or, as a general rule, hang out much. I chuckle when people say they're always best buds. They're not appointed for being part of a certain social group; they're appointed because they have useful qualities and skills, and generally know how to behave themselves. Reference: I've been one twice. Almost learned how to behave myself, too.
- Get familiar with fundamental attribution error, and remind yourself about it daily. It's another primary source of toxicity, especially in faction chats and faction warfare. Google it, but in a nutshell, fundamental attribution error means that we're more likely to see our own actions as the result of external factors ('I had to do it, there was pressure, it was the fair option, he earned it, he deserved it, I was out of time') and see others' actions as the result of internal factors ('Well, he did that because he's a dick'; 'Clearly he was lying, that wasn't a mistake'; 'She made that call because she's incompetent.')
- When given equal options - two candidates for faction admin or subfaction boss, say, both equally invested and qualified - strongly consider picking the one that isn't your buddy. Corollary: consider all candidates. Spread your net wider, then focus harder on each thing that falls in your net.
- Once you have power or influence, you have to decide whether to make things better for a small group, a larger group (like a faction), or the board as a whole. Keep a sense of proportion. Audacity can galvanize factions, but don't go on crusades, don't launch vendettas, and be willing to patch things up with old enemies as far as possible.
- Don't accept responsibilities when you know you won't measure up to them for longer than a week. If you've accepted a responsibility, put its business before personal RP when reasonable.
- Don't make definitive statements, or off-the-cuff remarks that could be taken as definitive statements, without considering whether you're in private and/or on the record. Because in a very real sense, you are always on the record. You will forget you said it, and someone will hold you to it or take it as license to do something you never intended. Guaranteed. A good chunk of this board's angst comes from half-remembered citations of people who used to be staff. Do not make authoritative statements without doing proper research first.
- Get familiar with the rules. Read them often, especially the parts that apply most directly to your responsibilities. Nothing discourages, inconveniences, and annoys members as much as RPJs who get board rules wrong, FJs who get posted factory standards wrong, and faction admins who get invasion/dominion rules wrong. That happens, we're all fallible, but it's a thing to be minimized.
- Be very aware of your actions when you wear multiple hats, and avoid it if possible. Conflict of interest is a very real thing. In days of yore, and not necessarily on this board (I leave it ambiguous because there are people here who were there), I once had to slap a junior staffer pretty hard for telling a member he couldn't have a very powerful thing, and that only player factions X or Y were big enough to have it -- then showing up IC as a senior member of faction X and trying to claim the very powerful thing. Be very careful when wearing multiple hats. Even when you do it with the best intentions, at the greatest need, and keep things entirely separate, there'll always be criticism. Be ready for that, and consider not taking multiple potentially-conflicting responsibilities unless necessary.
- Sometimes the people who want the job just want it for the bling. Sometimes they want it because they feel they could do a good job. The two are more or less indistinguishable in most cases, so don't necessarily reject 'appoint me' and don't necessarily accept 'sure, if you need a hand...'
- Your reform agenda is limited. There's only so much you can do, for a whole raft of reasons. Change everything in one fell swoop and you'll go off the rails.
- You will burn out, either in one big nasty moment of crisis, or 'not with a bang but a whimper' as you lose interest in the face of other priorities. That's just a given. Accept that you won't be in that position forever, and ask yourself what you want to have accomplished when it's done, what you want your legacy to be.
- Consider minimizing the Skype presence attached to your responsibility. Team building is great, friendship is awesome, but many major factions and administrations have ground themselves into the dust because their people spent all their time shooting the breeze on Skype, instead of learning how to have more fun together on the board. It's been a primary factor in the failure of over half the major factions in board history.
- If you're a faction admin, take responsibility for the environment of your faction's forums and Skype chats. Set standards and take care of problems. Don't use the boot too heavily, but don't be afraid to use it either.
- If you've spent longer than two days explaining something to someone, they're never going to get it. Find another way.
- Don't go on a rampage after getting only half the story. Find the facts, then hit the gas. Not only will you avoid looking stupid, you'll get much better results.
- Even when you find a compromise, the other side is going to spin things. Accept it.
- Be aware of when you're using other people's expectations of you to get away with things that other people couldn't. Just because nothing's said doesn't mean it's not privilege at work.
- Accept that you're not going to get away from your reputation, earned or not, without sincere work. For better or worse, it's going to color everything you do. That's just plain unavoidable, so don't gripe about it, fix it.
- Say no to your friends when they need it, and don't take it too personally when a friend says no to you or calls you out on your crap. Checks and balances are supposed to suck -- that's the point.
