Staff are the selfless individuals who put hours and hours into DI's success. Their hard work is rewarded with REP, prestige, and awards based on performance. The leadership experience provided by being a staff member is a rare opportunity with real-life implications.
To become an staff member, speak to your Chain of Command (Division/ House/ Order Leader) about open positions.
Staff Members are expected to uphold the Staff's Code - the set of guiding principles that staff members use to make decisions on a day to day basis. These codes are based on many lessons learned over our history, and in what qualities we desire the most among our staff.
Below is a testimony from GreatJackal on why being a staff member can matter in real life:
At some point during your time here, you may have asked (or been asked) "should you be a staff member?". And more often than not you hear all sorts of horror stories about the suffering, hard work, thankless jobs these guys do and you are like "F no". To be fair, if I was a new member and I heard these stories, including one about "some guy's PC literally eating his brain" (wtf?) I would have serious doubt. I mean it really makes you start to wonder if this is this some sort of dystopian society designed to break people to the will of Sauron or worse?
Yeah...Nah...what a load of nonsense (/aussie slang).
Being staff in DI is hard, often thankless and definitely not for everyone. But it's fun AF to see the people, teams, divisions you affected grow and thrive. Not to mention, you gain valuable experience out of it.
Yes you heard me correctly: experience.
Let's revisit why I am still here, after all these years:
I work in corporate America and I can tell you now that people in their 40's have never even had the chance to lead 5 people, never mind 40. Many wont get the chance until they are like senior vice presidents, etc. in their life. And I know, I can already hear you thinking "But GJ you are comparing gamers to employees in a company, surely its not the same?" Yeah once upon a time I thought this too. But then I entered the workforce in RL. It's absolutely false! People are people - this never changes.
The first rule in leadership you will learn is: Never expect people to act or behave rationally. To this day, I still witness this everywhere. The drama or conflict you would have to deal with as a staff member in DI is absolutely NO different to what you would need to handle in the real world. Humans never change, workplaces and companies are often teeming with drama and high school politics, even right up to the most senior levels of a company's leadership.
Why does this matter? Getting exposed to the complex human social environments such as conflict, drama, etc. allows you to develop your leadership skills, especially in areas of conflict resolution, negotiation, reasoning and communication. These skills are crucial to surviving in the real world! I use everything I learned through DI in an almost daily basis at my work, with my family, friends and so on. This benefit alone has accelerated my leadership ability to levels I would not have had if I was not a staff member in DI, and I have overtaken all my peers at work and enjoyed a great, fruitful and high impact career and life to date.
Remember when I said that gamers are hard to organize? Yeah. As a staff member you will organize many things, from events, to tournaments, to teams, divisions and even houses. You will constantly need to juggle multiple pressing tasks, prioritize them and execute them in time. This can be challenging stuff for people not used to it.
But just like in example one, this is absolutely crucial to your development and performance in real life. Need to organize a Birthday Party for your family? Need to organize a big meeting with your bosses at work? Need to organize your co-workers to a team building event? The list goes on. Skills learned in organization within DI is absolutely priceless in the real world. Being "good at life" actually just means "being good a organizing". Juggling multiple priorities from Compliance to Recruiting or Event Hosting develops your ability to think critically about what "needs to be done", but more importantly: "when". You will feel much more confident when your boss one day asks you to "organize the team building event for 200 employees at your work", and you will crush it with perfection because of the valuable skills you learned in organizing here. Trust me, I have done it, and its great.
By far my favorite benefit, strategic thinking may sound like a shitty buzzword you read about in the finance section of your weekly newspaper, but in reality its not about WHAT You think, but rather, HOW you think. Being an RTS player myself (age of empires ftw) - I am constantly strategizing on various initiatives in my personal life, my job, and of course, DI. Being able to change the way you think strategically, allows you to quickly realize a vision and a way to get there. Guys I cannot emphasize enough how important this is as a leader. VISION. The gods once told me in my dreams "if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there" and wow, this is so true! Just spend a minute thinking about that for a moment and how that applies to your life. Do you know where you are going and how you are going to get there?
Mastering strategy means mastering the game of life. Want a good job after college? You need a strategy. Want to be promoted at your job? You need a strategy. All straight forward stuff, right? But what about more complex problems? Like, want to build a company of your own? Want to lead an entire division of employees at a big company one day? Want to influence others to do something they don't want to do but need to? IT ALL requires a strategy.
Strategic thinking is like running through a game of chess in your head. You make a move, and you play out the results in your head based on SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE that you have gained in your life. Note the "skills and experience" part I just stated. Your strategic thinking ability is not going to be great if you never trained and exercised it or don't have a lot of experience.
And that brings us back to being a staff member in DI. Want your team to win the next Valhalla League? Want your Division to grow big and be successful? Want to win the next Community Competition? Yeah you bet - you need a strategy for this.
Learning to strategize effectively will help you crush in life, being a staff member will throw these challenges at you and force you to think of ways to influence and change outcomes that are both in and out of your control, all for an end goal (which hopefully isn't evil!).
Everyone's favorite no doubt. How good are you with standing up in front of a room full of people and talking to them, in a confident, concise and clear tone? No mumbling or being nervous? Yeah - for those who are shy this is hard, and you probably hate it. I don't blame you. I was shy once too.
But communication isn't just about being confident or being able to speak to a group of people. Its HOW you speak to people. There is an old saying "how you say something is actually more important than what you say", and this is true everywhere. When you are speaking to someone (or a group of people) in the real world, there is an art to saying exactly what you need to say in the most effective manner you need to say, to get the desired effect you want. Whether this is getting them to do something, buy a product you are selling, or even just keeping them entertained with humor - you need to know how to do this to be effective.
The good news is, you can. Anyone can, and DI can help you in this through our staffing program. Having to communicate regularly with your team/division/house, etc. you are learning what to say (and what not to say) to achieve the desired effect you are trying to achieve. Communication is a priceless skill that is hard to master because it requires so much practice, its why many people still suck at it later in life. You can get good at this, and it will help you succeed at life.
Alright so I have covered a lot. I have not even begun to touch some of the other benefits you get through being a staff member. But yes, they all involve your own professional development as a leader. Skills that are highly valuable in the real world, yet so few possess.
I am not going to lie and sugarcoat how "easy it is to be staff" in DI. It isn't. It is hard, it is challenging, you will have to get through difficult challenges in very demanding timelines, especially if you have never held proper responsibility before. But you will emerge stronger, more confident and skilled at leadership after doing it. Dealing with responsibility, being accountable for your performance and actions, and dealing with adversity are skills that will make you more resilient as a person. When something bad happens, like your key player on your team quits, or your one of your best staff members quits, you will eventually get to the point where it isn't a big deal because you know exactly how to handle it in a cool, calm and collected manner. Mannerisms and resilience that will prove priceless later in life when you are dealing with conflict, turbulence, tragedy or drama in your life.
I am by no means the "perfect leader" and anyone claiming that are probably bad at leading. But I continue to lead because I enjoy it. I enjoy learning things from it and building great things from it. Humans are complex beings, getting a deeper perspective of how we think and work develops me and other staff members further as leaders.
The next time someone tells you "being a staff member isn't worth it", treat them like you would anyone else in your life who is trying to drag you down. Don't let others stop you from being successful in life, whether that is someone telling you not to pursue your career of interest because they failed at theirs, or someone telling you "you can't do something" because they themselves failed at it. You are not them. You are you. Grab this world by the balls, and don't let people pull you down.
I will close with another valuable statement that the gods told me in my dreams:
"The higher you climb up the tree of life, the more people will try to pull you down". Remember this. Success breeds envy and jealousy. And use your Strategic Thinking to see through this negativity from someone who tells you "they are just trying to help you", and go crush!
GJ