Are You Leading?

Is it possible to become a leader (even virtual) from games? Though question, I'd say. To answer it we need to define some points to which we'll have to compare.

First point is that we are talking about a person who others are willing to follow, not a simple manager or tyrant who oversees people and processes. Second, the leader must care for his people and do his best to help them grow and learn. Third, he must be authentic. In other words when he says something he has to do it. And last, but not least he must admit his errors and try to hear all viewpoints.

That being said, let's see what my experience says about it. I'll be using Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes game as it has guilds and needs team coordination to achieve certain milestones. Some time ago, I created a guild (actually, on the day EA released this feature). At the beginning, it was more or less experimenting until we reached a moment where we had to have some rules. Then someone had to monitor following those rules (btw we lost some valuable members due to violations). Here is the process we went through:

• First thing was that I as a leader of the guild had to give up my power to other guild members and the authority to act on my behalf. Note that those are people I've never met before. Still giving up power and trusting people is one of the most powerful tool any leader could master.
• Second thing was we made a private Google+ page where we could help each other grow and learn more about the game, by sharing videos, images from our own gaming experience and stuff like that.
• Third thing was that we needed to align the rules with all guild members. Some discussions, multiple reworks of the rules and we were there (together as a team). I'd say we all made some compromises, but the final result was accepted by all. 
• And the last thing we did was constantly helping new members with advice, strategies and sometimes jokes, to overcome the challenges they were facing during their growth as a player.

We are far from perfect, and we are yet to reach another milestone of beating a Heroic AAT Raid, but I'm pretty confident we can do it as a team. All Officers and more experienced members are learning to be leaders whether they realize it or not. It's up to your judgment to decide whether you can learn leadership from games or not.

Keep learning and may the Force be with you!