What Is It REALLY Like Leading An Army?

ALASKA, CP Army Hub Headquarters – Becoming a successful and much-loved leader is the ultimate dream for many community members, but is it as straight-forward as it appears to be? What is it REALLY like to lead an army?

Being an army leader has both its benefits and its drawbacks. On one hand, you have the opportunity to have a lasting effect on an army and community as a whole, make history within that organisation and be known for generations to come. Furthermore, good leaders receive considerably more recognition for their work in comparison to the staff and soldiers, such as community award nominations.

Having said that, is it always this glamorous? Leading an army can be very stressful at times and may have a harmful effect on one’s mental health and thus interfering with their personal lives. The leaders may have to face the repercussions for their army’s misconduct which could would only further worsen said leaders mental health. Similarly, leaders can easily become overworked if they do not delegate responsibilities or have a strong, supportive staff team. This would reflect negatively in the army’s performance.

With this in mind, the Army Hub staff contacted six prominent leaders in the community to gain a better understanding of what their role is really like.

Alexandra, Ice Warriors’ Leader:

I look at being an army leader as a very rewarding experience. It gives you the opportunity to help shape the history of your army, and make an impact on the CPA community as a whole through your actions. It also presents the unique opportunity to help mentor and train HCOM, Staff and Troops to be the best that they can be! I also really enjoy being able to collaborate with the HCOM and leadership team and learning from them each day. (Winning wars, battles, and maxing high numbers are also pretty dang cool too.) It is a great feeling to see your hard work paying off.
As far as challenges, I think all army leaders face a similar set: always competing to be at the top, managing relations with other armies, and now avoiding a large drop in sizes as we move into the school year. I think the most important way to approach being a leader is being adaptable when situations get tough. We lost our main CPPS early this summer, which also served as our recruiting hub. We had to adapt and change in order to remain in our position. You always needs to remain two steps ahead. With all of that being said, I love being a leader and I definitely think its worth all of the work that goes into it!

Honda, Red Ravagers’ Leader:

Leading an army is something that takes a good amount of patience and time. Of course anyone can start an army, do a few events, and be claimed a leader sure, but to get anywhere with your leadership you need to prove that you’re worthy of the title “Leader”. My experience as an army leader has been a little bumpy through the beginning part but is leveled out as of recent times. You receive a lot of criticism as a leader from not only your own army but the army community, you can’t lead an army if you can’t take getting thrashed. That’s a thing you need to remember. One thing you need is a good reliable Hcom to back you up if you’re absent. Another is that you shouldn’t lead alone, always take feedback from your peers in the community to make sure you’re doing the best you can. In the end, is leading worth it? If you have the time, yes 100% its always fun to be a leader as you can build your own community and make a good name for yourself.

Tsanami, Crimson Guardians’ Leader:

I would say that some of the good things about being an army leader include having the freedom to try to implement new ideas for keeping the army and community both fun and active for everyone, along with getting to meet different types of people often. There are definitely some more challenging aspects though, such as keeping a busy schedule for the army each week (especially while trying to be mindful of everyone’s different time zones and availability), working with individuals you may not be able to understand as well as others, balancing armies with real life priorities, etc. However, I would definitely say that it is worth it. The sense of community you feel if you stick around and do your absolute best ends up making all the effort worthwhile as long as you don’t stress yourself out too much over it all.

Snork, Pizza Federation’s Leader:

I’ve been leading armies since January of 2019, leading 3 armies from then until now, where I’ve been leading Pizza Federation for around 4 months. Leading armies successfully is definitely difficult, and I think people underestimate how much stuff goes into it. Recruiting is probably the most challenging thing for me in armies. It isn’t just about getting someone to join the server, which is difficult enough considering usual methods are being clamped down on (CPR Recruiting). We also need to make sure that troops stay in the server and be active.

Maintaining relations with other armies is also difficult, but I have help from PZF’s other leader, Retro, and the rest of HCom.

The best part of leading an army is definitely managing stuff in our server, I love interacting with troops and the wider cpa community. We have a lovely atmosphere in PZF and it’s great to do fun events and parties inbetween training and battles. It’s all about balancing stuff when leading, it’s easy to become stressed out and overworked by it, so the best advice I can give to those wanting to lead is to just balance stuff. Don’t force yourself into a bunch of wars and activities or you’ll get burned out by it.

I do think it’s worth it, leading an army is just another hobby for me now and I have a ton of fun doing it!

Crazzy, Rebel Penguin Federation’s Leader:

I definitely think leading an army has more responsibilities than people expect. When I first got promoted to Rebel Commander I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with RPF’s major involvements; like I had pretty big shoes to fill compared to former Rebel Commanders. Over the past handful of months, I started to realize that I really enjoy leading RPF and handling important affairs. Every week I make sure I’m up to date on army news and what’s going on in the community. Along with checking in on my allies, even if it’s a casual conversation at some point during the week. Aside from other armies’ business, I make sure to keep myself up to date on everything RPF is doing. Whether it’s handling server wide promotions, dealing with drama/nuisances, scheduling events for the week, planning important content for the future (about size goals, retention rates, etc), pushing the recruiting goals, mentoring staff, leading battles, or even chatting with my staff and troops, I’m always engaged with my army’s community. My co leader Cosmo and I always put RPF first when making important decisions and what will keep this community running at the top of its game, 24/7. I’m pretty good with time management and being aware of what’s going on around the community, so I’d like to think we’re in a good spot now.

But the only downsides of leading I think are: feeling frazzled and overworked, having to adapt quickly to an unforeseen circumstance, and becoming susceptible to being irritated easily. Like I said before, time management is a huge key to becoming successful here. Anyone can lead, but great leaders can translate their creative intuitions into reality.

I think leading is worth it but to an extent. Mental health is extremely important and gets overlooked in day-to-day tasks very easily. If you’re beginning to struggle on an emotional level and the army community is becoming more of a burden than a fun hobby, then it’s time to reconsider your place here.

CSY, Army Of Club Penguin’s Leader:

Being an army leader is pretty multi-faceted – on one hand, its quite rewarding when your army does well, or when a troop DMs you out of the blue with words of encouragement – on the other, what we deem “penguin politics” is often not the most fun to deal with, especially when you’re the face of the army and thus have to take responsibility (and at points, take the brunt of hatred) for things associated with your troops/army. That being said, at the end of the day, we’re all here for a bit of fun – and when you see your entire community hyped for a battle, or read the submissions for a community post, or even just chill in main chat with troops – knowing that you played a part in building this community makes all the drama worth it

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It is clear from the responses that a significant advantage of leading is the fact that you got to help shape the history of your army and possibly set a precedent for all future leaders to look up to. This would encourage future leaders to work harder to reach that goal set by you, and possibly even set a higher precedent for the leaders after them. At the same time, however, if future leaders are unable to reach this set goal, then they might feel useless or worthless and this could seriously demoralize them.

However, the leaders above also stated an array of disadvantages. Leaders may get attacked, or face the full brunt of hatred for something that a troop in their army did – this could greatly discourage and demoralize them and possibly even lead to their retirement and departure from the community. Likewise, leaders could grow to become very easily irritable and this would not only affect their leadership, but it could also cause problems in their day to day life with friends or family.

There is absolutely no doubt that leading an army can be very stressful at times. Being an army leader also requires tremendous amounts of dedication, hard work, perseverance, and most importantly time. However, it seems to be a unanimous opinion that leading an army is worth all the hard work, sweat and tears.

What do YOU think it means to be an army leader? Let us know in the comments down below!

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