Managing people is difficult. I know, through the various twists and turns my career path has taken over the course of my life the majority of my employed life has been me being paid to motivate, cajole and nag people into doing what I want them to do what is best and most profitable for the company. My management style in the beginning lacked just that style as I fumbled, guessing and testing through the earlier years, convinced that some day, some one would figure out that I didnt have a clue what I was doing. Fortunately as days and months and years passed something evolved out of those early awkward attempts that had more polish and refined and moved on to manage in other capacities. I owe that evolution to both the patience of those poor baristas who put up with me in those early coffee house days and the wonders of text based role playing games.
Now, you snicker. I did too the first time I read about how major companies were recruiting Guild Leaders from World of Warcraft games to work as managers and consultants. But now, reflecting backwards on my career now I can see invaluable my experiences in the realm of fantasy have been to my experiences in the realm of reality. What is Text Based Gaming? Essentially it is a game with out (or with very minimal) graphics where in players assume a role inside of a fantasy world and together write a story. These worlds vary greatly, from those that mirror our own very closely with only a sprinkling of the fantastic to those of high fantasy and magic to thought of deep science fiction. Many are little chunks of very history, lovingly nurtured by those who love a particular period or era and do their best to remain as true to it inside their story as possible and become almost academic endeavors while other fuss reality and fiction such as FiranMUX which takes the bronze age we are familiar with and places it inside of the fictional world of Anarinuell.
Inside of these games it is not uncommon to find yourself and your character in a position in which you must convince people to work for you. You may be a starship captain, or an army leader or a political head. You could be the town mayor or a criminal lord, or a high priest. It is there in these imaginary playgrounds where leadership is multi-leveled, requiring a person to out of character (OOC) motivate players to play and have fun and in character (IC) work through your own fictional character to rally other fictitious personas to a common goal, that I was able to take all those theories and ideas developed and learned during my college years and put them to test. There where there is no real life risk and nothing to lose but very real people to react that represent a good cross section of those one might encounter in a work place.
It was in these spaces, particularly in FiranMUX where I have been a player for several years, that I honed my skills at mediation, particularly with those whom my in character relationships were adversarial to issue that despite being on a different team so to speak we still enjoyed ourselves and our time together. And there that I learned how to communicate and direct effectively people not only of various personality types both similar and radically different from my own but also those from a vast array of cultures and nationalities as the game draws players from across the globe. And there inside the make believe economy I learned how important it is to work for those who work for you because inside of a game, unlike the real world, unhappy people can just leave.
All of these lessons, and many more on managing resources, on delegation, on learning to negotiate, on how to most effectively communicate with others through text based media I have taken from my hobby and into my real world life where theyve helped me to understand what qualities people seek out in the sort of leader they want to follow rather then those they have to follow and in the end were all happier and more productive for it.
About the Author:
Jamie is an avid gamer and a successful business woman.
All I Ever Needed to Know About Managing People I Learned from Text Based Gaming
