Friday was one of those blessid days. Why you ask? Because we got mail!!!!
Now… I actually have a decent amount of people who read what I write, but comments are kind of few, and emails are kind of slow some days, but Edgar… we love you man. Since you wrote in to ask me about a topic I hold dear, you get to be answered all personal and such :p
Edgar wrote:
Hey Starman, I’m a new reader of your Casual Raid Leader blog, so I’m not sure if you’ve addressed this before but I saw an article on WoW.com that dealt with the topic “How to coach your raid members“. I was interested in knowing what you felt, knew and could say about the topic in general, not just what was said in the article.
Regards,
Edgar
Thanks Edgar. I actually hadn’t even noticed that article to be honest… though I’m not even sure how I missed it. Its not a bad article, but… I feel it glanced over a few key points. Lets pop the hood and see what we’ve got.
Coaching Concept
I know I’m on a hiatus right now, but I’ve been a raid leader for several years. Let me say… this isn’t always my strong point, but I’m learning. What I mean is that I understand the concept, but being a generally positive person, I probably cut people a bit more slack than I should and I should approach it a bit more analytically.
What you need to bear in mind while coaching is that it really breaks down into four key parts from my view.
- Analysis – i.e. what’s going on.
- Education – Finding out what YOU need to know.
- Coaching – Offering solutions.. suggestions and engagement
- Feedback and Follow up – Starts analysis again and reviewing forward progress.
The Environment of Coaching
First and foremost, I’m going to whole heartedly agree with Wow.com’s first point about coaching being about everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. Everyone has to enter into the raid understanding that coaching is just part of what you’re trying to accomplish, but… that has to be weighed with what your raiding goals are.
If you’re in the raid to just mess around and have a good time with friends, then coaching might be more geared toward catching someone who is taking things a bit too serious. The coaching has to be appropriate to where you want to go as a group.
For instance I would expect a progression raiding guild to coach people constantly on how to up their DPS, how to avoid damage, how to maximize their healing for a given fight. If you want to down bosses, you need to communicate. Especially if you’re progression raiding. People need to share what works for them and their own ideas.
Coaching though has to include the raid leader. I know personally, I’ve found myself occassionally falling down on my tanking and not generating enough threat simply because I got lazy or I was too busy trying to make sure that everyone else was doing their job. So I missed rotations and boom… someone got killed.
Does that mean its only my fault? No… obviously the DPS should have watched their threat, BUT… I’m not blameless, and.. I have something to learn in that instance. You have to be willing to accept you aren’t perfect either and understand the simple fact that shit happens…
Analysis…. Don’t go it alone
Analysis of a problem is where a lot of people fall down. Its hard to coach on a problem if you don’t really understand what the problem is. You also have to have a threshold where you recognize that a problem is going to hinder you. Does it mean you can’t always strive to get better and push your limits? No… but.. you know there’s a point where things should be “good enough”.
One key point I can’t stress enough is that you can’t do it all on your own. Matticus, of World of Matticus, has sited on numerous occassions, that he has a team of people who help him sort through Wow Log parses to find problems. He has built a raiding guild based on working together, coaching each other and learning from one another to excel. To be honest… I’d love to see them at some point just to see how it all works. From the outside looking in, it just sounds like a fantastic setup.
The key point though is that Matticus does not proclaim to be an expert on Feral Bear Tanking… or Unholy Death Knight DPS. Matticus knows, that he can’t solve every problem on his own. He has a team of people who understand log parsing, understand their classes, and basically watch out for problems.
You would be foolish to assume you are gods gift to all things and thus able to just hand out advice to anyone and everyone on how to play their class. You know that guy in the PUG raid that you do that just grates you wrong.
You know that guy who is playing a DK and says, “Hey Mages need to do X… and its easy… I should know I have a mage.”
You know how that guy just pisses you off and you want to scream at him to “DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!!!”
Don’t be that guy… k
What you need to do is fully understand the scope of the problem. So don’t be afraid to sit down and sift through the logs. Take those logs to some experts you know… either in guild or out of guild. Here is a great example. We have a Boomkin in my current guild who is really good at DPS, but… their overall numbers tend to be low. Its not a huge hinderance, but it confuses the hell out of some people. How can you do 3600 DPS, and be down near the bottom of the overall damage list? I mean what’s going on?
When you sift through the logs, one thing pops out for you… the person does wonderful on fights where you have a single target… and you have to nuke it, but any fight that requires transitioning from target to target is a problem. Or maybe their time on target is bad. Their DPS is solid when they DPS, but maybe they aren’t consistently doing their rotation all the time.
In this particular case, I don’t know what the problem is as I’m not running the logs, but its probably a likely cause. Is it hindering us as a guild? No… honestly we’ve cleared all the content except for Yogg Saron and Alagon the Observer, but if you’re going to coach someone, you need to understand:
- Is there a problem?
- What is the problem?
Educating yourself
Once you understand the scope of the problem, education is the best way to ensure that you know what you’re talking about. This can be as simple as googling a few resources online, or talking with your class lead, or consulting a friend/expert you know. Other problems might take a bit more time and energy.
Odds are high if you are in a 25 man raiding guild that you have class leads and “experts” that can help you in guild. Educate yourself so the next time you are trouble shooting a problem, you know what to look for, and what they solution might be. Don’t be afraid to brainstorm with your officers or your raid leaders to find possible solutions. Some times the KISS principle is best. Keep it Simple Stupid!!!
If you are from a smaller guild, your in house resources are probably limited. Many 10 man guilds DON’T have a dedicated class lead. Its hard to have a lead for every class when there are exactly 10 classes and odds are you don’t have exactly 1 of each class in your raid. If you’re from a smaller guild, I recommend finding online resources to educate yourself. Find blogs that have good reviews of the class or problem you’re trying to solve. Sift through some authoritative sources, but always double check with at least two other somewhat reputable sources.
When I’m trying to diagnose a problem or find a solution to a particularly vexing fight, I’ll typically talk over the situation with a couple of other raid leaders. They’ll offer suggestions based on their experiences on things we can try or ideas. At the end of the day, I’m picking the brains of other people to come up with a solution to my problem.
The important thing is that you have to know what your options for solving the problem are. If your problem is that people are having trouble ensuring they are killing the right mob at the right time, you might have two simple solutions.
- Have a well defined marking and kill order. Have people memorize what each mark means and ALWAYS follow it.
- Assign a “main assist”. That person is in charge of determining what mob NEEDS to die next. Everyone else has an “assist” macro and always kills the assist’s target.
Both are easy solutions, but one might work better for your group. Understanding the group dynamic is important. Having solutions to problems is important too.
Coaching appropriately
Coaching is a type of feedback. Which means… it should follow the general rules for feedback. It needs to be timely.. and specific. It does you no good to coach someone on an incident that’s 4 weeks old. By that point, the person in question won’t have a clue what you’re talking about and depending on the scenario, things may have drifted out of hand by that point. People can get bitter when you let things just kind of hang out there and suddenly hit them with it.
Ensure that the person doing the coaching can approach the person without coming across condescending.. or trite. Let me give you an example… in my last guild, our GM was well…. lets just say socially challenged. He was a good guy to talk with. He was a good guy to joke around with, but when it came to discipline or coaching, he had all the sublty of a bullet train. He’d roll over you and leave you sitting there either completely willing to fight back or just stunned and awed as to what just happened.
Lets face is, not everyone is cut out for talking with people. Odds are, if you’re a decent raid leader, you’ve probably gotten the chance to know some of your players and your probably approachable. However, coaching needs to come from the appropriate source. If you’re guild has the expectation that coaching comes from class leads, then you need to ensure your class lead is the person doing the coaching… and that they have the skill to do it.
In my opinion, you need to ensure that when you approach the person, I’d recommend personally getting on vent. Pull the person into a private channel and discussing with them the situation. The reason I recommend Vent over typing is that a lot of times, the things you type won’t come across with the right emotion, or emphasis or empathy as just talking with someone. A statement that you think is just a simple statement, can come across as abrasive or even acusatory.
If the problem involves one or two people, NEVER address it in front of the entire raid. Coaching should happen on the side where people don’t need to feel like their being embarressed in front of the entire raid. People’s tolerance for being embarressed will vary greatly. However almost nobody wants to feel like they are being put down in front of an entire room full of people.
Coaching though can be raid wide as well. For example, if you’re running into problems with phase 2 of Iron Council where Molgeim throws down the huge green rune of death, then it might be appropriate to coach the team right after the fight… or before the fight. The coaching must be timely and address the specific problem you’re trying to solve.
I do agree with Wow.com that in most cases, the person involved, has to be willing to go to bat and be part of the solution. If the problem is that too many people are dying due to frost damage, offer to help people get what they need to make frost resist gear. If the problem is that someone has trouble swapping targets, find them a person to assist. You need to make the person feel that you’re willing to work with them. You’re milage may vary depending on your guild, but from personal experience, I believe that the person you thought was clueless before, might turn out to be one of your best raiders, if you coach them and set them up to succeed.
Feedback and Following Up
For better or worse, we are humans and we don’t function well in a vacuum. Once you’ve coached, you need to ensure that you establish a two way feedback channel. The person being coached needs to be providing feedback on what they learned, what is causing them issues, and maybe some suggestions they have to help them. Your coaching person needs to be analyzing the situation to look for improvements, changes in the situation and then provide a solid channel of honest feedback to the person.
This could be making your leadership team aware of the situation and then having them all watch for improvements. This could be an “atta boy/girl” that you toss out when you see them do what you want. Positive reinforcement can be a wonderful thing. We all want to hear that we’re improving and we can succeed.
As you monitor your problem, remember to keep in mind what solution(s) you’re trying. Don’t be afraid to change directions mid stream and look at other solutions. At this point, you are really in a cycle. You want to periodically go back to the Analysis step, ensure that you have a problem and look for new solutions or see if your situation is getting better. You can keep cycling through these steps until the problem is resolved, but in some cases, it may not be solvable.
If you have a problem with someone consistently dying during fights where there are huge amounts of AOE effects on the screen and they basically go to 1-2 FPS, then there may not be anything you can do if the person can’t upgrade their PC hardware. Some problems are limited by financial things like this. I know personally I have issues with AOE bloom. Its generally not fatal for the DPS in 10 man, but if I tank in 25 man, I’m always praying that I don’t get anyone killed. I’m planning an upgrade, but hey… finances take time.. and I’m trying to limp my PC along till I get a loan paid off…. so I do the best with what I can, but I can’t make my PC render any faster till I upgrade it.
If I were to boil down my thoughts on raid coaching into a single idea, it would have to be about establishing a two way feedback channel for your raiders. Raid coaching is about providing a two way dialogue where you try to solve your problems or challenges in a constructive manner.
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Great article Star,
I saw the article on wow.com but tbh it seemed a touch clinical, so many differences in groups, people, leadership and styles that have so many variables really make this subject quite tricky.
Sometimes the best person to coach a raider isnt the raid leader and sometimes it is. I dont think it always even depends if you know the class or not, sometimes it’s ideas that can come from anywhere.
Personally I have 3 people who I try to get to do any type of coaching if I dont think i’m the right person to do it, I’m lucky, between those 3 people and me we have most classes covered in terms of knowledge.
the one main thing I think your right on is choosing the time and the place, dont call them up in the middle of a raid unless you want to give them a public dressing down on purpose. It has it’s uses but it will alienate them for a while so be aware of that.
I used to work in a call center as a project and training manager, analysis and coaching/mentoring is something that I did as a proffession for 7+ years and it applies in game as much as it does in the real world. Be smart about it, follow up with some positives and set timescales for improvement, dont go in guns blazing and you could even work out who they have the best raiding relationship with and ask them to support their buddy.
I’ve recently asked a raider to give their mate a hand because they are underperforming and I had tried to help a couple of times but been met with a brick wall and the online equivalent of an icy stare, so I had to be clever and get the job done another way. Knowing your team and their relationships with each other and using that to your benefit is a big advantage.
Great article, i think i’m going to put something together myself, thanks for the inspiration!!
Cyb
Cybac´s last blog ..Raid Leader: Too many on the bench?