Unit leadership

This one is more going to be in the format of story time.  I'm not sure I actually have all the answers when it comes to unit leadership as my attempt to run one eventually smashed on the rocks.  So some of what I can tell you are things NOT to do.  In the end a unit is whatever the people who are a part of it make of it, and at least from my perspective there are no hard answers for what is right or wrong for a unit, just answers for what is right or wrong for a particular unit.

For those who had missed it, I used to run a group called The Blades for something like 8 years.  At it's inception there were 4 of us who gathered around a table at In-and-Out who met to decide that we wanted to organize and become more then just a group of people who trained together.  We sat around and come up with ideas for what the unit should be, how we'd deal with tabards, what our symbol was going to be, etc etc.  After a while it matured somewhat, had a proper symbol, a set of colors, a semi-coordinated set of garb and about 12 people.  I would say that was when it was at it's best and that symbol began to have and carry weight.  Anyone with the blades symbol on their chest was welcome in most camps and treated well by most fighters.  Eventually the unit hit another burst of people and reached up to something around 18 fighters, which is where it started to come apart.  By the time it hit 22 people it was on the rocks, and shortly thereafter that number started to plummet.  Eventually, I made the decision to step away from the unit, leaving it to the fate of anyone who wanted to stick around.  To my knowledge it has officially died out.

In spite of the rocks at the end of it, I loved the experience of the 6-12 man unit that we had created.  There was a clear ethos attached to the unit that was embodied by 4 oaths that each and every member of the unit took.  These were - 1) I will take my hits, 2) I will fight my hardest, 3) I will follow the blademaster's (me/other leaders) instructions 4) I will hold all blades to these oaths.  This caused the group to preach for honor first, and effort second.  It was then, and is now, my belief that anyone can become a good fighter if they're willing to put the time and effort into improving.  That remains true regardless of the shape of the fighter, whether they're naturally advantaged because they're tall and lanky or somewhat disadvantaged because they're either tiny/weak or  out of shape.  The physics of a person's body certainly push them towards certain shots that become easier because of where they start from (short people generally don't throw that many high wraps successfully) but in the end they are no less effective at taking out targets then any other fighter if they've chosen to work at it.  The third point was about having respect for the person teaching them because at the time I had no patience for a person who wanted to learn but then second guessed everything I had to say.  Questions are fine, but telling a person who has years of experience on you that they don't know what they're talking about is counterproductive if you're trying to learn.  At that time I chose to train every member of the unit personally, and instill both a set of basic footwork and basic blade work into each new member of the unit to get them to a point of basic competency.  From there we'd do battles where the person learning was at a disadvantage, so that more often then not they'd fail, or they'd die, only to be pushed by the rest of the group to get back up and try again.  When a person did finally succeed when the odds were against them, there was a sense of euphoria and triumph but that only came from a person who was honorable, as cheating to win would have been meaningless.  The last bit of the oath was about holding everyone up as a peer instead of having a bunch of hierarchy and machinery in order to get things done.  Part of that broke down into having enough respect for each person in the unit that you were willing to talk to them about any issues you had with them, including myself as the leader because being the leader didn't make me any less human and fallible.  That being said in any group you need to have leadership because if that's not something present in your unit they'll mill about on the field and get crushed.  Having numbers only matters if they work together.  If you go in like movie ninja's it doesn't matter how many people you have.  The takeaway from this section is that if you want a unit to be successful then it's my opinion that the first thing that you do is come up with a set of core ideals that define what it means to be a part of that unit.  From my perspective this is giving the unit a heart, something that beats, feels and keeps the unit alive when the inevitable friction occurs from trying to wrangle a bunch of different people.

As a group on the field we mostly used skirmish tactics.  Since most of the people in the unit were accustomed to fighting at REALLY shitty odds the idea of skirmishing suited us well.  Each individual could fight really outnumbered without falling over, either kiting away from enemies or turning them so that another member of the unit could back that group of opponents.  Our motto could have just as easily been "leg 'em and leave 'em" instead of "goblins have no honor, blades have no mercy".  This set of hit and run tactics worked great when the unit was small and consistently outnumbered.  Without having a main group to target opposing teams were stuck trying to pick off relatively strong fighters knowing that if they ever tried to run one of us down they'd very likely wind up getting backed by another member of the unit.  This worked for us for a time when the caliber of each fighter was high enough that they could confidently engage multiple enemies alone, but started to come apart when our formation began to more closely resemble a line, complete with polearms and archers that required protection.  When you outnumber and outgear your enemy flanking quickly becomes irrelevant and all of that stuff begins to fall apart.  The takeaway I think from this is that 1) you need to figure out how the unit is going to fight from the start and 2) your group needs to be comfortable fighting in multiple styles.  Figuring out how the unit is going to fight means that you learn a particular style of combat and focus in on that.  It means that each person you accept into the unit has to train at that particular style of fighting until they're good at it in order for you to succeed.  In the end if your unit has any weak points, that's as strong as you are collectively, because it only takes one person breaking through a line to run an entire units backs.  Now, not every person in your unit is going to be an all star and there's nothing wrong with a team composed of mediocre to average fighters, it just means that you have to learn to fight together, as a team, instead of learning to fight as a set of fast moving individuals.  If you set out with that in mind in the first place, then you can value team fighting over individual skill or flanking, it just means that anyone you absorb into the unit needs to be of the mindset that the goal is to fight together and not for that person to go fight for themselves.  Either composition is valid, you just need to decide on which it is beforehand so you don't wind up in a situation where half your team scatters and the rest of it tries to fight as a line that's outnumbered.  The second bit is that regardless of whether or not you focus on an individuals skill or the skill of a group your team needs to be able to fight in multiple styles/formations.  If your team has an excellent line but has no idea what to do about people flanking your group then that's something that you need to have people work on.  If your team flanks like a boss but has no idea of how a line works then that's also something you need to teach them.

It's my belief that a unit is composed of a group of people who fight together (at least at the outset) which means that if a person is going to belong to a unit they need to be able to gather and fight with the other members of the unit.  A group of people who have decided to make a unit together and don't actually fight, or don't fight with each other, from my perspective is a house and not a unit.  Ideally the group fights together when everyone is in in the same place but this can also happen on smaller scales if people start getting separated by distance.  I am of the belief that if the unit wants to be any kind of real fighting force then they have to actually spend time training together.  As good as any individual of the unit may be in order to be good as a group you have to actually fight together.  This means practicing moving around on a field, having a set of calls that's known to each member of the group, and generally spending time together on and off the field.  Incidentally if you hate the people in your unit and don't want to spend time with them off the field then you probably need to switch units.  Every unit has it's own ideals which creates a sort of odd family from the people who are a part of it.  If you find that those ideals don't sync with your own then that's not a unit you should be a part of.  One thing that the blades did that I thought worked out well was that we each challenged each other towards excellence.  No mercy was ever granted to any member of the unit; when we fought, we fought hard but that didn't mean we were out to hurt each other.  The end goal was to push someone to become more then they were when they first joined the unit, by pushing a person to their limits.  Whenever someone did something awesome the whole group would cheer them on and if a person ever fell short we'd push them to try again.  We kept a watch on each other's backs though and made sure that if a person pushed themselves too hard we pulled them off so that they'd have another chance later.  One of the ways we did this was to encourage constant sparring between unit members.  One of the things that this promotes is an understanding for how your team mates move.  If you fight someone often enough you can sync with them instinctively when they join your team because you know without having to talk to them exactly how they'll move.  So the takeaways being fight together and practice whenever you can.  When you can't do that then fight AGAINST each other so that each member of the unit is familiar with how the other members fight.

As much as fighting and culture are integral to a unit, one of the things that can easily lead to a units downfall is figuring out basic logistics.  The basic logistics of a unit cover things like, who is in charge at any given time (on or off the field), how do people acquire their tabards/membership, how does a new person join the unit, under what circumstances would a person get kicked out of the unit, what happens when a person leaves the unit (voluntarily or otherwise).  Having these things figured out in advance will save you a ton of headache.  Having to figure them out on the fly winds up leading to all sorts of problems.  If you don't know who is running things, whether it's on or off the field then things tend to lead towards chaos.  On the field this means that the group is disorganized and gets run over.  If that's an issue of running the unit and people are confused about what the rules are then they'll get really angry over what should be slight misunderstandings.  This bit me in the ass one year particularly hard because, while the requirements to officially join the group and get a tabard had been printed and on the groups page since something like July, we'd reached January of the next year without a person actually getting a clear understanding of what those requirements were.  Since those requirements included hitting a certain number of events/remote practices in a 3 month period and the individual in question hadn't done that then, from my perspective, they hadn't met the requirements (they'd hit the number of events/remote practices but it had taken them like 6 months).  Unfortunately the person in question hadn't gotten the bit about hitting events in a 3 month period and had just heard the number they had to clear.  When I told them they hadn't met the requirement they basically broke down in tears because they were so frustrated over trying to meet these requirements without actually knowing what they were.  From their perspective the rules had just kept shifting to deny them their tabard when they hadn't actually changed at all.  In the end the group as a whole voted them in and it was put to rest, but had that person had a clear understanding of what those requirements were at the outset then perhaps all of that unpleasantness could have been avoided.  Figuring out the other bits can be just as consequential and lead to similar feelings of frustration, anger, despair or distrust.  So get it figured out ahead of time, and communicate whatever your decisions are the the rest of the group.  Make sure everyone is on the same page all of the time.

To that end, have meetings, and a place to organize.  Now that Facebook is becoming more and more a de facto method of communication it makes a lot of sense to leverage it's tools in order to help everyone stay on the same page.  Having a Facebook page/group I found quite useful.  It gave me a place to put up all the files that covered the answers to the section above; the bylaws for how the unit operated, the oaths for anyone who had forgotten one, as well as things like battle calls and images of the units symbol.  I recommend also starting a group chat in case people have things to discuss but also just to foster hanging out as a group and socializing, (Dunedain do this and it seems to work out well).  Also towards this end I recommend generally getting organized and making people (other then yourself) in charge of various facets of the unit.  Trying to run a unit all by oneself (once it gets to any kind of scale) is exhausting and extremely time consuming.  From the point of inception of your unit try and get help from everyone who joins so that you can offload some of that work onto other people.  In that respect, I failed colossally when it came to running the blades.  The unit was effectively an extension of myself, so when I was doing well the unit flourished, but when I did poorly then the unit decayed because I wasn't able to give it the same amount of energy as when I was doing well.  When I broke my leg 3 years ago that definitely contributed to the unit going down in flames because for 4 months I was effectively a non-entity in the running of the group but I hadn't set up someone else to run the unit while I was down.  When I did finally return to fighting I was almost back to square one and had to re-learn everything, from taking my shots to actually being able to throw wrap shots again.

Hopefully all of this was helpful and you can avoid some of my mistakes and follow some of my examples when things went well.  In the end though each unit is it's own snowflake and it will be up to you to decide what your unit will look like.  Good luck.