A guide to become not only a better manager, but a better you.
Over the last five years, I have learned so many things from so many people that have helped me not only in managing and staffing on servers, but has also helped me a lot in my own real life. I have spent thousands of hours learning as much as I can and putting my skills to the test seeing how far I can push myself and learn even more than I would have ever imagined. All the skills I have learned are very useful and have helped me with every problem I have encountered over my years of working on many servers. I feel that I should try and help others by making this document, telling people, and giving tips about how they could also sharpen their management skills, and overall be more confident in the skills that they have. I am by no means the best manager, staff member, or server owner to walk the earth, that’s for sure. But I think some people in the community would appreciate it if I made this document so they can also learn what I have learned.
Whether you are managing a Minecraft server or a service / company there are many things that you will need to learn to do while you are on your way to becoming a better, more efficient, and professional manager. You will be required to complete simple tasks like helping somebody with a question or fixing a small problem. You will also have to do many hard and stressful tasks that will push you to your limit. Managing can be a very stressful thing when you have a lot of things you have to do in short amounts of time. As a manager you need to make sure that you use all of the skills you will learn along the way to make things easier on yourself and make you more efficient at completing day to day tasks that you will need to complete. In this document I will explain some of the skills that I have learned and things that you can do to help yourself, and become a better manager.
While you are on your way to becoming a better manager a huge thing that you will need to master is time management. Managing your time better will allow you to schedule things better and make sure you have enough time to complete each task that is required of you. Using a planner or calendar or some sort can benefit you exponentially. By doing this, you will be able to have everything organized and understandable. With all the things that you will need to do it can become confusing without organization and delicate planning. Even I thought that time management would not make much of a difference until I began to scramble to get multiple things done at once, which ultimately lowered the quality of my work overall and stressed me out even more. Without time management it will become harder and harder to keep track of what you are doing and what needs to get done when. And when it comes to management you need to make sure things are completed before the deadline, and this will effect everyone else on the team if it is not completed.
As a manager you are not only working with the other people on the team, you are leading them. It is very important to not only build a relationship with the people you are leading, but to remain firm and strict when it comes to professionalism. Building a relationship will make it easier to work together and provide a welcoming, professional, and functional environment while also improving communication between each other. As I said before, when you are a manager you are also a leader of the team. So it is your job to help them and guide them on the path that they need to be on in order to make the team successful and functional. While you are showing them how to be a better more functional team, it is very important to be strict so they understand why it is important to do things right. It is important to be strict but it can also come to a point where it is better to relax and let things go sometimes. Being strict is also going to make people not like you sometimes and that is just part of being a manager sometimes. When it comes to doing your job, sometimes you will need to let people go and they will not be very fond of you and it is very important to just let it go and not cause even bigger of a problem as this will happen a lot throughout your management career.
On the topic of working with others, I know you have heard this a million times in your life, but teamwork is really as important as they make it sound in elementary school. You might be able to do things by yourself for a little bit but in the long run it will stress you out and you will become overwhelmed with things required of you. It is very important to remember that asking for help is alright. That is why people are there to help you. Asking for help will also help you build those relationships we talked about as you will get a chance to work with each member individually. This will not only give you a chance to work with them and learn more about them, but it will let them know that they can come to you if they need help with something or have a question. It is also important to remind your peers that it is important to work together and use each other to solve tasks that they need help with. This will create a sense of trust among your peers making them more comfortable with working with each other.
There will be many times throughout your managing days that will not only stress you out, but anger you. Being a manager isn't easy. There are a lot of managers out there, but not a lot who do it as well as they could. Keeping calm and collected is so important I can't stress it enough. By lashing out or getting overly upset, you will show other people that it is ok to do that and it’s not. People will yell, scream, curse, and really piss you off. But you have to get over it as it is going to happen a lot. If you feel like you need to take a break, do it. Everyone needs a break sometimes. Just take a few minute break, get something to drink, and calm down and collect yourself. It is going to happen a lot so this is very important. On the topic of taking breaks, if you feel as a whole, you are becoming overwhelmed with work it is a good idea to talk to ownership and explain to them how you are overwhelmed and create a system that will make it easier on you so you are able to complete tasks more efficiently.
As management is so stressful, it is very common for people to start to lack in the areas they used to thrive in as it gets more stressful and demanding. It is very important to take your time, time management will help with that, and ensure that you are completing your tasks to the best of your ability and not rushing as this will lower the quality of your skills. It is important to constantly refresh yourself on your skills and how things should be done. It is also very important to teach your peers and people you are leading, to make sure they are constantly refreshing themselves on these things to ensure that they are doing the best they possibly can.
Another big part of management, if you are managing a community of some sort whether its a Minecraft network or a service / community, you will be required to have good communication skills. You will have to help people from the community, and the staff team. So it is important that you are able to efficiently communicate with people. Whether you are talking to somebody via voice chat or text chat, it is important to clearly explain what it is you are saying without any confusion. When talking in voice chat you need to have a decently loud clear speaking voice so people can understand you. You will also need to be able to solve problems as you will be helping people from the community or clients of the service you are managing. Organization can help you with problem solving as you will be able to find the things you need to help people with easy access to them. Organizing all your files you will need into a dedicated folder or separate drive will give you quick and easy access allowing you to pull up these things easily to assist people
One thing that has helped me a lot is note taking. As you will be doing a lot of things taking notes and logging things that you might need in the future can help you a lot. Some things that might be important to log are things like warnings that you had to give to your fellow staff members or something that could be useful in the future. Taking notes of bad interactions or “strikes” if you have a strike system could help you to recognize if the person that received the strike is continuing to do the same actions. By knowing these things you will be able to determine if you need to work one on one with people that you previously warned / striked. Logging things can be an extremely useful thing. Even if it’s just logging it in a simple text file.
As a final word I would just like to say, be confident in yourself. You have the skills to do the things you need to do to be a good manager. The more confident you are in yourself the better you will do. You need to believe that this is what you want to do and that you can take up the tasks that you need to do to be a good manager. If you notice that you are starting to slack. Just refresh yourself on what you need to be doing and get back to work. If you don't feel that management is what you want do do. I would recommend that you do not do management. Not that I don’t think you are capable, but if it’s something you don’t want to do you won’t be confident in yourself and other people will recognize that. Management is not for everybody. It is a very hard thing to be able to do efficiently, and bear all the stress at the same time. There are plenty of other things to do and nobody is going to laugh at you for not managing. It is better to understand its not for you then to do it because other people do it.
I hope this little document I decided to type up at 4AM can help somebody out that wants to be a manager. These skills can be moved into real life scenarios and I hope that people give it a chance and read it through and maybe someday use one of these things that I have listed in a real scenario. I will continue to update this and add more things for people to use actively. I never would have thought that I would have gone network to network for years meeting hundreds of people and making what would become some of my best friends to this date. Everybody starts out somewhere, and I hope this can give somebody a place to start. Enjoy.
Yours truly,
Randomizable, aka. Zirum
P.S. If you find a grammar mistake, please let me know.
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