More Crown Council Thoughts.

.....Khalja was in a mood to cause trouble on Saturday at Crown Council (I say that in a loving way, of course. :-)). There was a period of time when Khalja pulled me and Fearga aside to engage in a little conversation on how our respective branches and grouped worked. What we did in common that was good, and ways we could improve our respective groups.

.....One thing on which we touched is what we had in common when we were our most successful. It didn't take long for us to figure it out. When we ran a successful event or a successful group function or ran a successful branch, it was we were able to act as a real TEAM.

.....It sounds like a cliche, a bad one at that. But in reality everyone wants to belong to something. They want to be a member of the family. It's a monkey group dynamic thing. :-) Let's get together and pick fleas. :-) But belonging to the group gives one a feeling of safety and comfort, so it is easy to see why people gravitate to this.

.....Now I'm not saying anything new or groundbreaking at all. It is a VERY simple concept. But I was thinking of my favorite events and they were the ones in which I was Chairman of 'Team Haggis' which is the autocratting 'family' I enact every time I am running with an event. I work hard at making sure to praise everyone involved. I try hard to give everyone as much as they are willing to take. I encourage everyone to talk about their ideas. I do the cheerleading functions constantly, even to the point of encouraging T-Shirts with our own Team Haggis logo on it and having Team parties at the completion of our event.

.....Over the past couple of days I've put out a couple of posts talking about how things are running and how we could encourage people to take on duties in support of the Barony and of the game in general. I have to say that I was a bit surprised at the frustration people feel playing in the Barony. There have been various expressions of how they are not trusted to run with the 'sexy' jobs. That they are given relatively demeaning work and forgotten.

.....That is an over-simplification of course. But if a couple of people are actually saying something, I always wonder how many people are frustrated and NOT saying anything. Don't get me wrong, I still think that Dragon's Laire is a fantastic branch. Probably one of the very best operating branches in the Kingdom. But there is always room for improvement. So, how best to make that improvement?

.....I suppose that we spread the wealth on sexy jobs. But Her Excellency herself pointed out the fact that almost all the major autocrat jobs last year were done by relatively new people. Maybe instead we need to encourage people to try new and sexier things? Maybe new types of events that we've never done before? Or new Projects that they could lead? I'll have to mind meld with Their Excellencies and see what ideas they have.

.....I was thinking about the 'demeaning' or 'low skill' jobs. Do we naturally give these to relative newcomers exclusively? I'm just not seeing it. Or maybe I'm just too close to it. At Candlemas here recently, I did a storage unit run, put out signs, helped in the kitchen all day, schlepped stuff in and out of the main hall, did clean up after the event. Schlepped stuff home. Cleaned it all up. And then schlepped it back to the storage unit. I'm an old time player too. So, I'm not sure what to say to that assessment. Maybe I need to be a bit more diva-ish and complain about ALL the hard work I do, with a few dramatic pauses for affect? :-) Nawwww, that is just plain wrong. :-)

.....But what I know I will do is to be more aware of how I treat the relative newcomer and make sure that I'm not part of the problem. The people starting to play now are our future. Again with the cliche, but it is the truth. They are the branch officers, the autocrats, the artists, the fighters, and the friends upon who we'll rely to carry us into the future. And the cool thing is that they will also add their part of 'the dream' with ours and make it all that much better.

.....They are also the new members of my family. I'll need them to pick the fleas I can't reach. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.