Death of Democracy

August was a pretty busy month for me. Olek, Rangers, Cousin Andrew and Cousin Simon and I signed up for a DotA 2 tournament. We got completely smashed in all games except our last which we won! (But they lost a player halfway due to a power outage.)

While our losses had a lot to do with lack of teamwork, I think that what Olek said was correct: our team really lacked a leader - someone who would call all the shots. As the team captain, I guess that should have been my job. I've read a few posts that said the captain should never be the hard carry as they are too emotionally invested in the game. They need to be someone who can see the bigger picture. But they also need to be someone that the team respects. I think that it's a lot like management.

If you have a boss who you think has no clue (which can be common in IT), whenever they ask you to do something, there is always that feeling that you are better than they are, and so you either do what they say and mutter under your breath that they're incompetent, or you go behind their back and do what you want. If you think your boss is competent, then you are more likely to go with something they say, because you trust that there is a good reason behind it.  On the other hand, a good boss should be able to tell their underlings what to do, but also give them enough autonomy and trust that they will do the job correctly, i.e. don't micromanage.

So I think it's the captain's job to know their entire team's strengths and weaknesses so that they can give those kinds of commands, and have faith that people will listen. I know a lot of the failures in our games were due to the fact that we just had no team cohesion as we barely played any games together, but I have played many games with each of the different players individually, and so I think I should have known people's personalities better.

Following from Olek's point that we needed someone to call the shots, I think my personal management style is more democratic. I believe everyone should be able to have a say, and value everyone's input equally. That was a complete disaster. Our picks and bans were a complete mess, and it felt a bit like we just grabbed whichever heroes had some farfetched link with each other. I don't think we're at The International level (hahaha), but I think a lot of the points coL.Fluff says in the first part of his "mistakes" section apply to us also.

Oddly enough, I'm starting to see how bad it is to let everyone have a say. Even though we all had the same end goal (killing the throne), we all had a different idea on how to get there, and each person was pulling the team in a different direction. I think next time I'll pick people who play well together rather than people who play well in general. I also need to build up my own respectability so that people will actually listen to me.