Rocking the Boat

If the officer core doesn't know a member has a problem, they cannot address it. This idea falls in with Teo's post on Tuesday about communication and openness but also brings in some conflict management.

There are two types of problems in a guild -- the kind that are nobody's business and the kind that can be fixed. If something has any possibility of affecting the guild, your placement in the guild, or the people around you, you have a responsibility to let the officers know something (at the very least) is going on. And if it can be fixed, a few simple (if uncomfortable) conversations are a very cheap price to pay for a pleasant coexistence.

A lot of people think "Well, I don't want to rock the boat, and it really just affects me..."

"It just affects me" is a lie. If you are unhappy with any part of your guild, and that part isn't going to magically go away, you are going to keep getting more and more miserable about it until you gquit.

And that does affect other people. Especially in family guilds! A gquit hurts people deeply. And if you asked anyone in my guild "Would you rather someone complain about stuff or wait until it gets to be too much?" they would say "I would rather they deal with it now. Anything to keep them from leaving!"

There is a very basic tenant of conflict management, and I'm talking particularly to people who hate confrontation, like me: If you don't deal with problems when they're small, they will get bigger, and then they'll explode on you.

You don't think you like dealing with little problems? Yeah, just wait. Not talking about it is going to make it grow until it's a monster, and it will eat you alive. It will cause guild drama, it will make you a focus of unpleasant attention, and it will rip your poor unsuspecting fellow players an orifice they never wanted.

So consider. Do you want to deal with very small problems as they surface and nip them in the bud with some discomfort but no hard feelings? Or do you want to wait until everyone will resent you for bringing the drama hammer down on the guild? Or even leave a guild you enjoy because you're too scared to be honest with people? That's no way to live! That is no way to live, constantly running away from things that are good just because you're afraid of confrontation, of conflict.

Boats rock. It's natural, it's part of life. But if you ignore the little waves, you're setting everyone in that boat to be tipped over by a monsoon. During my months in the officer core, I never ever saw anyone get mad about a simple request reasonably stated. You aren't going to get eaten alive by addressing things that honestly bother you, not unless the people around you are morons (in which case, find a new guild). But I have seen people let things fester because they're too afraid to upset others, and it's always a lot more painful for everyone than it otherwise could have been. Should have been.

One of my professors once said, "It's the shy who have it hardest in this world. We must try harder, discomfit ourselves more often, to be heard among the noisy throng."

We were given the short end of the stick. I'm not arguing that. But if we don't try, we'll never be comfortable in our own guilds. And we need to at least be comfortable.

Don't you think?

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.