Motivating Raiders: Part 3 - Respect

This is the third (and for now final) part of my series on Fear, Love, and Respect. Check out parts one and two as well as the original article if you like.
Today we will talk about what I consider the most important tool of a raid leader, respect, and how to achieve it.

Motivating Raiders: Part 2 - Love

Welcome to the second follow-up to my Fear, Love, Respect post. Since the first instalment was about fear, it should be quite obvious that today I'm going to to talk about love. There are many definitions of love, but I will only refer to a very specific subset here. But don't worry, the post is still longer than anyone would like it to be.

Motivating Raiders: Part 1 - Fear

I got feedback from a few people that they enjoyed my Fear, Love, Respect post but missed a part about practical application. The following sequels will attempt to remedy that by detailing ways in which you can achieve each of the three and what consequences that may have. I originally meant for it to be only one sequel but well, it got somewhat big, so we are only dealing with fear today. Love and respect will follow.
If you haven't read the post I linked above, please do that or wait for the other parts of this series before you imply that I suggest ruling by fear alone - I don't.

Fear, Love, Respect

Some of you may be familiar with the works of Italian philosopher Machiavelli and others will at least have heard of him. I'm not going to argue for or against machiavellianism here, but his below quote will get us started on the discussion of how a raid (or guild) leader will get her raiders to do as she says. This is a similar topic to the one I tackled in 7 Different Shades of Stupid but this time I'm approaching it more from a philosophical point of view than a hands-on one.

Second-guessing Yourself

Matt, over at World of Matticus, tells us the following:

"You never, ever, ever second guess yourself when you’re the boss. You can’t afford to."

- Matt

To which I say "Nay!"
If you don't have someone to second-guess you, you will make the same mistakes over and over again. Yes it is important to stand to your decisions as a guild or raid leader, otherwise people will lose all respect for you. But you can't do everything right. As much as you think decisions through beforehand, you have to accept the fact that you will make mistakes. Making mistakes is human and isn't a problem at all, the problem is when people don't learn from their mistakes. But how would you ever notice your mistakes without being second-guessed? You can't.

Summer Raiding And You

If you've been in a raiding guild at all you've probably seen this. Everything goes great, your guild is progressing, people are attending, everything is fine.

And then it gets warm outside.

All of a sudden your attendance rates drop, raids don't happen and raids that do happen get worse. People start coming late or leaving early while others go AWOL for two weeks. Congratulations, summer got you and you're thoroughly screwed.
Or are you? In the following I'll discuss why raiding is so difficult during summer and solutions to keep your guild together. If you have more, by all means leave a comment!