How You Fight Tells Me Who You Are
A lot of your personality is revealed when you take up arms against someone else, whether in self defense or aggression. How you fight, your particular fighting style, reveals your traits – strengths, weaknesses, identity. After all, in a fight, you’re tapping into your most primal traits. Do you flee? Do you stand your ground? Does ego get the better of you? A fight is also incredibly stressful – how you react under intense stress tells a great deal about you.
That said, very few people get into fights frequently, which is a good thing. We like for our friends’ lives to be safe and free of violence.
Enter virtual worlds like World of Warcraft. Here, in a safe environment where players incur no true physical harm or injury, their skills, strategies, and temperaments are tested in ever increasingly difficult forms of virtual combat, from dealing with single encounters to fighting entire armies.
How a person behaves in a virtual fight is, of course, different than a real world fight – the risk to life and limb alters the equation, as it should. That said, you still gain a great deal of insight about how someone behaves under pressure:
– Does their temper get the better of them? Can they be goaded into making unwise choices?
– Does their ego hook them, forcing them into situations that grow ever worse for them the harder they struggle to reconcile desire and reality?
– Do they lack patience, rushing into unknown or known dangers foolishly?
– Do they have maturity, knowing how to lose gracefully and win even more gracefully?
All of this comes out in virtual combat, just as it does in real life combat. So what’s the point? What does this mean for you, especially if you don’t participate in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft?
Simply this – if you’re an employer, one of the most novel ways you could find a new employee would be in a virtual world, in virtual combat. Are you looking for a certain personality fit for your team? Do you want someone a little headstrong but willing to be bold? Does your corporate culture dictate a cool, calm, conservative demeanor, even at the expense of aggressive progress?
Very few things offer insight into your personality like the stress of combat, whether virtual or real. While I wouldn’t suggest that an employee interview involve leveling a character 10 times in Warcraft, I would suggest that if you find people socially in the realms where you play that have the skills you need, consider them as more than just players of a game.
They might be the best addition to your corporate team you’ve ever made.
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