CHAPTER 3 The New Literacy of Voluntary Fear Engagement

LEADERS WHO HAVE THE LITERACY OF VOLUNTARY FEAR can say

■  I am comfortable with and adept at gaming, simulation, improvisation, and role-playing.

■  I am committed to immersive learning to engage with communities where I lead.

■  I practice my leadership skills in low-risk settings.

Gaming, grit, and guilds are three very old concepts that will be re-imagined over the next decade to help leaders prepare for the VUCA world.

Jane McGonigal defines games as “obstacles that we volunteer to overcome” (McGonigal 2011). Gameful engagement with the future can safely immerse you in a world of fear, so you can practice ways to lead. The best response to fear is to engage with it directly, rather than avoid it. Games can give leaders a way to do just that, in realistic but low-risk ways. Good games—like good stories—are characterized by emotionally laden attention. A good game is also a good story, but as a player you get to be in the story—not just read the story.

A gamer’s mantra that I hear often from leadership development experience designers: when people are laughing, they are learning. Experienced game designers recognize a certain kind of laugh and a certain kind of smile that seems to accompany deep learning. In other circles this state of engaged learning is referred to as a state of flow. Activities that are risky, hard to accomplish, and stimulate a sense of discovery often have a natural flow to them (Csíkszentmihályi 1996).

Guilds allow people to play and learn together. They are all about connection, but it is connection in the context of the game and the skills that are necessary to succeed in the game. Guilds go way back in time, when they were associations of craftsmen, tradesmen, or merchants, often with considerable power in their communities. Guild members have always had a shared purpose and a nurtured kinship for mutual benefit. Like the guilds of old, modern guilds allow craftspeople to share their craft and learn from each other. Scott Andrews, a former guild leader for the popular video game World of Warcraft, describes guilds this way:

Guilds bind players together into a social network and enable those players to work in concert for a common purpose: to tackle the incredible group-oriented content designed by game developers. (Andrews 2010)

Video gaming communities, particularly those involved in the massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), have adopted the concept of a guild and many of its ancient practices. In a game like World of Warcraft, almost everyone you encounter is a member of a guild, from characters who are just starting out to those elite players who are battling the world’s greatest evil.

Guilds are a lot like what, earlier in my career, were called communities of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991). The term is still used in some corporations where I work, but it seems to have declined in popularity. The term guilds, a much older term, may replace communities of practice. What’s important is the practice, not what it comes to be called.

At Electronic Arts, there are guilds for analytics, for producers, for development directors, and for quality assurance. Members of guilds learn from each other’s successes and mistakes. Guilds work across studios.

Guilds are about learning, community, and power. They are not necessarily focused on winning the game, or being the best, or being the largest. Some might aspire to those things, but the fundamental purpose of a guild is to make a network that enables players to have a positive experience through social connections. Similarly, in the real world of the future, guilds—or whatever they come to be called—will allow people to learn from each other and learn together.