Creating a Team: Leadership

The last time we talked about the “Metagame members”, covering pretty much the whole concept of a team, its players and how they should be like. If you haven’t read it – I strongly suggest it – it covers all the basics you need to know about and look out for in players. On the other hand, it pretty much describes the function of perhaps your main role and might give you a few insights you were not aware of.

So, let us continue Creating a team in League of Legends and talk about leadership!

Let us start with that one crazy guy who wants to create a team. What exactly is he at that point? Is he the leader? Is he the owner? Or perhaps the manager? Well, at this point it is kind of a hard to say – that one person pretty much covers everything – for the time being. You will see as we progress that the leader will become less and less of this one, big, overwhelming term.

There we are, creating a team – posting on forums, reddit, searching the globe for suitable partners and players to join us into the adventure of gaming. There you are giving out requirements, age restrictions, covering language barriers, defining the team’s idea, potential and mission. It pretty much starts to look like a small organization. And you got a big job ahead of you.

There are tons of people who want to try out for your team, tons of players who want to join the team and twice as many people who are just going to waste your precious time. This part of being “the leader” is the most exhausting one – the basic grouping of the team. At this point, you don’t really have created a team yet, but you are trying to find a stable and suitable 5 man army.

This is the part where we can start to “separate” our leadership term. You can either be a player looking for 4 additional players where you will be the person responsible for the team and pretty much cover the leadership part. Or, you can be the guy who is offering leadership to a 5 man team. Now the difference here is that it is easier to find a suitable team if you are playing as well. Playing with the actual try outs will give you far more insight on the state of the team, as well as give you the opportunity to get to know everyone a little bit better. Truth is, you are at the front of the battle and therefore have a better point of view.

If you are acting as the owner and are looking for 5 players, it will be a little bit more difficult. You will probably be looking for a “ready” 5 man team who already has a steady past, a solid team play and morale, and is looking for someone to point them into the right direction.

So, here we are at the first part of the Leadership article – The creator of a team – What Leader are you? The “Captain”, or the “Owner”?

What defines the Captain? The Captain is a strong willed and friendly guy, who knows however when to be serious and how to act responsibly. This includes showing your strong side when needed and not going weak in hard situations. Remember, the whole team depends on you, whether they tend to tell you that or not – they look up to you, they wait on your orders and sometimes they even realize how much time and nerves you are investing into this team. The Captain plans the daily schedules, listens to insights, inputs, watches replays, gives out orders, arranges scrims and pretty much is the first to come and last to go. On a more intimate level, the Captain will most of the times be the “link” between players, covering up problems and trying to make everyone work things out. It is a daily job and it requires a mature person to do so.

You have to understand all the troubles this guy has gone through to find players, to test them out, and probably most importantly – to keep players. More than often will you find a team but certain people will not show consistency in showing up on arranged schedules – or they won’t listen to calls – or they will make fun of other players on a very disrespectful way.

Generally speaking, those people will be the biggest problem in your mission to create a team. They are pretty much the result of soloQ. These people do not have enough willpower to play in a team, or are not mature enough to make a distinction between soloQ and team based play. As soon as training is over they will “forget” about the team and probably continue spamming soloQ. They might even apply for another team, not being able to really commit to a single one. These people jump around like crazy lunatics and are the biggest problem you as the Captain can face.

I guess one of the biggest problems with the LoL community is the fact that most of its players are young – very young – and in that age they naturally refuse to listen to their parents – or in other words a “parenting figure”. Since you as the Captain are in one way or the other the parenting figure of the team, these young people tend to refuse to listen, and simply act as they would act RL to their parents.

However, there is as well the “bit older” group of players who are in their prime time, experiencing maybe the “pleasures” of life and feel strong and mature just by doing so and therefore will act egoistic and overly cocky. You have to deal with those people as well and really give it a thought – is it worth it investing in those people or should you simply avoid and ignore them as soon as you see them acting like this?

So there you are, Captain. Are you good enough to keep players attached to you? Are you strong enough to make them listen to you? Are you intimidating enough to make them want to show up on time? Are you friendly enough to keep morale high? Well, you certainly should be – in all cases, if you plan on getting anywhere.

What about you – the Owner? What exactly is your duty? Well, you might be having a little bit less of player to player interaction. You will probably spend some time getting to know the future Captain of your team – or the predefined leader of the 5 man team you picked up. You will probably not care too much about the rest of the players for the time being and will try to organize this team as much as you can.

But how? Well, you will probably arrange a website and voice chat for your guys. You might as well make a daily schedule for online meetings where you discuss things with everyone. You might want to have a weekly report from your trusted Captain? You may want to apply for tournaments and force trainings this way – and just show them a path, you know. You will be basically trying to keep these guys interested and active. Your primary objective is to make them better and you should as well let them know it. Show it to them – show them you care – show them your respect. Don’t be the shadow of the team, working only in the back and hoping for the best. You are after all, the owner. Let them know it and feel it. Oh and don’t forget, you will work with social affairs, money and the press.

Now of course, you might say that there don’t have to be 2 individuals in the leadership sector. And yes, it is quite possible that one person is capable of doing both things – being the leader and being the owner. However, it is highly suggested that there does exist a distinction between these 2 terms. Being both in one person, you will find a big burden on your shoulders. There comes a time where you simply cannot act as the morale boosting Captain when a lot depends on the things you have to think about as the Owner.

Your players will probably not always realize how much time and nerves you are investing by being both the Owner and the Captain – and after all, they should not even care. That’s your burden and your job. But as said, you will have a hard time trying to balance this out. You might see an impact on your quality as a player – you might start playing less good. You might see more problems between players in your team – or even between you and certain players. Not being able to really focus on one thing, the team might start collapsing – slowly but surely into a forgotten name.

Of course, this does not have to happen. However, to be honest, it is the most likely thing to happen – it is just natural – the more “power” you seek to show in organizing everything, the sooner it will all collapse. You cannot “act” these 2 different roles – and here I literally mean act, because even though you may show qualities of a leader, sometimes you simply have to act about certain things and these 2 terms – Owner and Captain – just simply have too many different kinds of acts required of you to be performed to perfection.

So, think about it – take some time - it won’t hurt now, but might hurt later if you decide to act as the whole leadership in one person. This isn’t the place or the time to show off nor is it your main objective. Your main objective is to create a team.

You might wonder however about one thing – so the Owner decides to lead a team and picks a Captain from that team – so he has already dealt with the double-bladed leadership problem. What should the Captain do? What should the guy do that isn’t the actual “Owner” but simply the Captain of the team? Should he act as both, or should he look for an Owner? Well this case usually takes a bit longer to succeed.

You first have to make a strong team and show that you are capable of being the Captain of it. Sooner or later you will eventually force sponsorships or simply look out for people who you might represent as a team. Eventually, one tends to find the other and as long as you can keep your mind clear of one side and excel at the other – everything should turn out fine.

So, we got ourselves a team – the players, and leadership – the captain and owner.

What else could we be looking for?

Let us see what the Captain could put off his shoulders as well. You know, to make his life easier and to make the team more stable – to work more together – to spend more quality time together and to eventually bond on more than just a friendly online nature.

Well, the Captain does not have to make all strategies, watch all replays, or follow every single insider tip available on the internet. You might want to call out for 2 roles – a strategist and a game analyst.

So what would the job of the strategist be? He would of course go through strategies (omg!). Let us try to elaborate this a little bit, shall we? There are a lot of things that you can strategize about in LoL – first of all there are the champion mechanics. Then we have certain team setups, map objectives, in game calls, opportunities, ideas on how to capitalize on enemy mistakes and so on.

So what should the game analyst do then? He will of course work very close with the strategist on team composition, picks and bans, and give a lot of insight about all the mathematical influences you can have in LoL – this includes damage outputs, lane matchups, composition matchups, ward coverage and so on.

Now, remember these are 2 players of your team suddenly becoming more than just pure players. They have a “professional” add-on to them now. If you feel that it could lower their quality of game, you might want to consider merging the terms strategist and game analyst into one ultimate person.

He would become the best friend of the team, outside the actual team. And probably the best part about this guy is that he doesn’t have this “parenting” aura around himself. He isn’t directly playing with the team, he isn’t directly controlling their moves while playing. He is their friend who is trying to make their life easier in so many ways and they appreciate it because he appreciates them as well. With a coach, you suddenly have a more vibrant and less painful game experience. Everyone is working the best they can and everyone seems to care. There is less tension between the players and the Captain, and it is simply nice to have that one person who looks after you.

As said, the Captain can be all that, but it will certainly improve your overall team performance if there is a Coach doing the playing outside the game while you are playing. But how and when do you get to the stage of having this Coach in your team? Well, in most cases being successful as a team will call for more and more professional moves – one of them being getting a Coach. How do you choose one? Is it simply a high skilled player? Is it simply an overly friendly guy? Remember, this guy has to be much more – he has to be experienced as a gamer, not only a player of a certain game – he has to be mature and probably even well-educated to make an impact on all those things we mentioned – the strategies, the game, the psychological and mental state of the team. This guy pretty much becomes a “manager” within the team.

Alright, so far so good. Here’s where we are at the moment - we got ourselves a team – the players; leadership – the captain and owner; strategist and game analyst – the coach. What else could we bring along to make life easier for everyone?

We said that the Couch becomes a “manager” within the team. Well, we could use a manger outside the team, aye? Even though the Owner can pretty much represent this, we could draw a line between them. The Owner could remain the main guy for organizing the team website, the voice chat servers, sponsorships and overall money issues. He remains the main face behind the team and is active in all kinds of media.

The Manager however, could be the guy who is working strictly on getting the team “out there”, get the name known and apply for tournaments, leagues and arrange meetings with possible partners. He could as well lead LAN visits, organizing everything needed for the team – hotels, daily schedules and so on. While the Coach makes sure the team is efficient, the Manager makes sure the team is economic. He might as well work and cooperate a lot with the press, depending on how important the subject really is – if it exceeds his influence the Owner should always be the guy to talk to the press. But, this is more of a thing between the Owner and Manager and something that they should define.

As said, the Manager can work with the press and force certain activities around it. But, does he really have the time to do all the press work? Eventually you will need to do something about it as well.

You might actually consider getting your own Staff – doesn’t have to be too many people – a few mature and efficient individuals will do – the more quality they bring along, the more efficient they will be, especially if they can become consistent in their job. Quality over quantity should be the real moto here. These people cover articles, live feeds, work with the community, fan base and simply keep the Team name alive.

So there we are finally – you have a Staff that is covering your team’s progress and keeps your influence within the community active. You have a manager working side by side with the Owner and the Staff who is making sure that everything is running smoothly, economic and that your team has everything it needs to function properly. You have a Coach who makes sure that the team is healthy, both mentally and physically, and who is tracking progress of the team and making strategic reports about it.

You have a Captain who is the core of the players and the team, boosting their morale, keeping everyone in line and pretty much represents the public face and figure of the team. And last but not least, you have the Owner who is making sure that everyone keeps on having something to do. We forgot however one last role which every person in the team should be – a friend.

Huh, that was some crazy analyzing, right? And you thought it was just a game.

‘Till next time and remember – learn to trust people.