Driving Unsuitables Out

If you're in the position I warned against in the application and recruitment posts, the position of having members who really and sincerely don't fit with your members or plans, sometimes the nicest thing you can do for everyone is get rid of them.

I'm not talking about gkicking. Nor am I talking about ostracization, where you cut people off from the resources, events, and society of the rest of the guild.

I'm talking about being honest with them and yourselves. In IVV, when Teo returned to guild leadership right before Wrath, he sat all of the officers down and had a little chat with us. Some members wanted or expected IVV to be things it just wasn't. And Teo told us that we needed to stop trying to cater to those people, the ones who didn't quite fit in, who wanted us for raiding more than friendship, who made conscious decisions to keep their personal feelings out of the guild.

I'll call them Unsuitables. They would be excellent members to most guilds, but they would never be good family guild members, as long as they chose to keep us at arms length.

I realized as Teo talked that by catering to the Unsuitables, by spending energy and resources fighting to keep them happy, we ignored the beating heart of our guild. We overlooked the people who deserved our attention.

Teo led the officers to reroute our time and energy toward the members who wanted us for who we were, people we might have trouble satisfying but who could be satisfied by our focusing on their emotional lives in the guild. These members didn't care how many raids they got in as long as they got a fair shake and the chance to play with their friends.

We needed to focus on pleasing the members who wanted us for ourselves, not for our goals.

Part of this plan included a focus on 10-man raiding. It was not a clever diversion to beat out Unsuitables with a stick. It was an intelligent, reachable plan that served the needs of members who'd had trouble making raid times. Most importantly, the plan managed to express who we were in a visible way. We did not lie or trick or badger. We just decided to go a more friends-and-family viable way with the guild. We refocused.

And the result was that Unsuitables who wanted something else from us trickled away. No hard feelings, no drama. But by being who we were, we drove them out.

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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.