Leadership: the induced magic

In the current series of posts I claim that the key to success is asocial behavior with peers. Someone with this approach will be successful in any fields where he has the basic minimum requirements. Two things challenge this approach: at first, many successful organizations are social. Most of the mankind are social without doubt and the mankind is progressing. Also, we can't say that the socials are just useless welfare leech. Most socials are contributing to the progression of mankind.

Secondly people show very different success in different fields. The typical example is the non-graduating no-lifer in the basement. If someone is capable of extended background reading to know his class, the proper talent choices, what stats he needs to the point of "pure SP gem vs SP/haste", and also capable of disciplined farming and wiping, how can the same person fail to do the same things about his real life job or studies.

As a side-note I'd like to mention the "sugar-coated asocials" who are common among highly competitive or technical groups, like a geeky workplace or a hard mode guild. At first they are often outright lying about the frequency and depth of their social encounters, exactly to avoid the "no life loser" image. Secondly while they do have social relationships and they do joke and chat between tries, these are secondary to the goal. I mean while they consider their fellow groupmember a friend, they wouldn't hesitate a second to kick this "friend" if he wouldn't bring the expected results. This post is mostly about ordinary groups and not the most competitive ones, so spare me with "I'm in a 11/12 HM guild and this is bullshit" comments. You are a 0.5% exception, not the rule.

Before the solution for successful sociality, I'd remind you to the obvious mistakes in the social subroutines like people demand welfare to drunkards and ignore starving Africans or outraged when someone is murdered but cheer for wars where millions die. The e-peen thing is also undoubtedly wrong and my tricks can only work if there are loopholes in the system. I doubt if anyone disagree when I say "the social subroutines can be manipulated".

Here comes a special kind of manipulator, the one with the most valued skill in the modern world: the leader. The socials want to be liked, respected and fit to the norms. Being social does not say anything what makes someone liked, respected and what the norms are. Social subroutines are subroutines, program codes. They can run on very different inputs. The kids want to do "something cool" everywhere equally, still in the US they listen to trendy music while in a radical Islamic country they gather to burn US flags. It is the leader who provide the inputs for the socials, he defines what are the norms, what is cool and what is lame, what deserve liking and what deserve hate.

The members of a successful organization can be real socials as long as they are lead by a talented leader. He creates a "proper culture", meaning he makes sure that serving the organization is "cool" in the eyes of his minions. For example the guild leader of fairly successful social raiding guild make the members believe that reading EJ, running spreadsheets and farming the gear "make them l33t" and separate them from the "scrubs". So his minions go and read EJ, run the spreadsheet and farm the gear.

The leadership also explains the "HM 11/12 living in a basement" anomaly. The guy has a talented raid leader who motivates him to do what must be done to be successful. He is made believe that if he gem his gear properly, he'll be respected. His college teacher or boss in the McDonalds is not so talented. He just tells what to do, maybe offer real reward (like salary, diploma) but since the activity is not linked to social rewards, the social can't care less, and spends all time in WoW where he can get the reward he really wants: respect of his leader and peers. If his boss/teacher would be such good leader, the social wouldn't play WoW but spend all his time theorycrafting how to save 0.2 secs "cast time" on placing mustard to the burger or grind pages of textbook instead of heroics.

Please note that if you have any alternative theory for the "success skill" or any combination of skills (intelligence, discipline, self-control or whatever you commented before), you must explain how can the same guy suck terribly in his real life job/study and excel in WoW. I mean if he is intelligent in WoW, he must be intelligent in real life and he is not!

Alternatively, you can claim that WoW needs no "skill" just time. This case you have to explain why does the same guy keep sucking in college instead of finding a "grinding" blue-collar job. You can earn (not stellar but) nice salary being a good grinder. I have an answer: grinding heroics for badges has no social stigma while grinding burgers for dollars does, so a social finds the latter "no fun" while the previous "fun". I'd like to remind you of Farmville where you must click mindlessly a lot and people pay to have this terrible job, since bigger farm has social value among playing peers.


Let's talk about the other social goal: liking, the "group of friends" feeling. The existence of the leader solves that problem too. The members can be helpful and accepting group of friends since it's the leader who makes the "hard decisions", who sits out, who must improve, who must leave. One member does not give more criticism to another in a successful organization than in a complete failure. The leader (and sub-leaders) gives more! Also there is a reason why the word "like" means both "love" and "similar". Since all minions follow the same directions, one is like the other, so one will like the other.

The few who are capable of leadership are very much valued. They earn much-much more than professionals and they deserve every penny. Without them, the team would wither and die. For a short period of time the norms the leader established carry the people, but they slowly deteriorate and replaced by random social behavior. Without the father-figure to gain respect from, the people want to get respect from random peers by being cool, pulling stupid stunts. Without a source of "proper" behavior, they will act differently, they won't be like each other, therefore would stop like each other.

So when you see a "successful social", all you see is a puppet on the hand of a great guy, a peon of a benign dictator. Everything good in him is just borrowed from someone who is really great (and usually a badass, elitist, heartless psychopath).

There are two ways from here:

• Accept that 99% of the population have born to be minions of natural born leaders. If you are an "ordinary guy", all you can do is find such leader. That's exactly what people do when they apply to a more progressed guild: seek a better leader to serve. I openly admit that I have no idea what makes one a good leader. The good news is that you can be successful and social: as a minion!
  
• Try to figure out how can one be successful on his own, without a leader. For that I have a recipe. I don't know what a good leader does, but I know how he does it: by manipulating the social space to make the goal of the organization socially desired by the members. The manipulation always happens in an emotional-social space, along with the harmful manipulation of peers. If someone is asocial, he can no longer be manipulated. If he has a brain he can use it to find success on his own.
  

One more thing: why many great leaders are terrible anti-socials? Because asociality is about independence. I can't be arsed to become a leader, to herd cats. I'm fine with my professional salary, I won't give up my independence for even 10x more! A leader always have to be around as without his constant supervision, his minions would return to the default state: unproductive losers doing ape-grooming and status fights. If I leave a bottle of chemicals in the fridge and go away for a week, I'll find the bottle where I left it. If a guild leader leaves his well organized team for a week, he might find the bank looted and half raid left. This constant "being prepared" state causes serious problems to the managers health. The only exceptions are the blatant anti-socials who find it fun to be the boss. They love herding their cats as it fills them with the feeling of power. They play wicked games with their minions and can't care less if the organization finally fails (financial crisis anyone?).