1. Motivation

It may sound obvious, but you need someone who actually wants the job. It’s far better to promote someone who’s excited to help out the guild than someone who is doing it out of obligation or because “no one else wants to.” The former person will have ideas about ways to improve the guild’s systems or policies, will bring a fresh enthusiasm to run guild events, and will be a fervent ambassador for your guild to both potential recruits and other guilds on your realm.

The latter person will reluctantly carry out duties assigned to him or her, and little else.

If you can’t find enthusiastic officers to add to the leadership team, you may want to consider whether continuing with the guild at all is viable or desirable. It’s that critical. Otherwise, eventually, you’ll have to do everything yourself. And that way lies burnout.

2. Reliability

This one is the second most critical. All the motivation in the world won’t help the guild if the motivated person never actually follows through on anything. All guild officers have bigger priorities in their lives than the guild — that’s just life. But at a certain point, things have to get done or everything falls apart.

If your recruiting officer isn’t recruiting, sooner or later that will cause a personnel crisis. If your raid leader isn’t there for raid nights, your team is going to take note and start wondering whether they should bother to show up.

3. Maturity

By maturity I don’t mean a person can’t make the occasional off-color joke — I mean they can take criticism without lashing out. They can manage conflict and drama without losing their cool. They can embrace the diversity of people’s backgrounds and personalities without judgment or discrimination. They don’t humiliate guild members by taking their problems public or screaming at them over guild-wide channels.

They don’t act for selfish reasons or manipulate the guild rules to their advantage. They put the guild before themselves.

They don’t blame the guild members when something goes wrong. They take responsibility for what the guild does as one of its leaders. And if they personally screw up, they don’t make excuses. They admit their mistakes and apologize.

Mature officers set a good example for how you expect all guild members to behave online. If your officers don’t, you’re going to have a lot more drama, and all the headaches that go with it.