Leader Experience

[Jim]

Hi, all. I'm a bit confused about leadership experience and how to level them up.

So, I have been seeing some job applicants who have the born leader trait, but they have no leadership skill or specializations. Can such a candidate be trained as a leader? What can a zero specialization leader do? If they can't do tasks, how can then gain experience?

Does anyone know how experience works for leaders or what they do when they don't have specialization points to unlock tasks?

-Jim

P.S. I was thinking about having some of my lower rank leaders start doing HR tasks just to have them doing more things that could potentially earn XP faster. Is this a good idea, or is pointless?

[nosedigger]

Employees are unable to do job if they do not have at least 1 skill point assigned in the specialization, regardless of their traits.

So, Born leaders without a single skill point in any of Leadership skills, can not be trained or learn the skill.

As far as experience goes, leaders can be Team leaders (HR+Soc+Multi), or Project managers (Automation). If they have skill points in those areas, assign them as Leaders and they will start acquiring exp overtime. Remember that difficulty plays a role, so if you are playing on Hard or Really Hard (new), it will take employee at least a year or more to get a single skill point.

[Jim]

I was afraid of that. I don't want to sound whiny, but it seems like a pretty big design oversight if there is no task that a leader without points can do. How did they learn in the first place?

As for the Team leads doing HR, I just want to be sure I understand. Doing more tasks means more experience, right? So, I should have the team leads do HR when they can. That way they get more experience. That means I should spread out their points a bit (at least in the beginning) to give them more to do.

It's a little bit strange because I've found the opposite to be true for my service teams. If I have them all work in all the services (support, marketing, legal, and accounting), then I quickly overwhelm my teams with too many tasks, and their efficiency drops through the floor. I found that out by accident when the game kept telling me I needed two accountants and I had five (plus my founder) and still couldn't get my taxes filed on time.

Thanks for your response.
-Jim

[freelancer909]

I always laugh win I see some one with Born Leader trait and they don't have one star in Leadership. I have in the past made plenty of peeps team leaders who had no star in leader ship but they did get the skills eventually. Like a programmer with zero design stars will eventually get one if they do design. Unless that has changed its been awhile since I tried it. Employees with zero stars in design can work on contracts that say any designer etc, They will be horrible at it but they will work on it. Team Leads do HR while they work. They just do less work on the project. I always make my best looking girl the lead with the least skills, just like in real life.

[nosedigger]

Originally posted by Jim:

I was afraid of that. I don't want to sound whiny, but it seems like a pretty big design oversight if there is no task that a leader without points can do. How did they learn in the first place?

Being Born Leader doesn't mean they must have skills in Leadership. Like in real life, maybe they didn't have a job/opportunity to learn leadership skills. However, I agree that there should be some form of training, allowing Employees to acquire 1 skill point in desired Specialization, but this depends on the Dev and his vision for the game.

Originally posted by Jim:

As for the Team leads doing HR, I just want to be sure I understand. Doing more tasks means more experience, right? So, I should have the team leads do HR when they can. That way they get more experience. That means I should spread out their points a bit (at least in the beginning) to give them more to do.

Automation and Socialization are in my perspective "active" skills. So doing HR, talking with team members, and most importantly holding meetings (Soc 3*) will give Leader exp, on the other hand, PM doing projects/support/marketing will also regularly gain exp via Automation. Multitasking is a passive bonus, so I do not know if Leaders with only that Spec gain as much as other two.

For me, Leader ends his upgrades when they reach 3* in Soc, 3* in Multi and 1* in HR.
I do not need them for hiring, nor training, so they are able to maximize team bond, do meetings and give bonus via Multi.

[Jim]

That makes sense.

By the way, just for a lark (and because I needed a body to fill a legal seat while I file for a patent), I went ahead threw that zero specialization born leader onto my team and gave her the helm. She is gaining experience. It's very slow, but she is gaining it. I can't really compare the rate to any of my other leaders because they are so much further along than she is, though.

[nosedigger]

I forgot to mention, that all employees gain experience in all Specializations, regardless if they are dong them or not. However, this is really minimalistic gain, but it is existant.

Usually when I finish the game around 2015, my Founders will gain in Leadership, Support skill points, even though they never had a task or role assigned to them. Researching team which does only research and Design Deals with finish with programming, art, support, which really doesn't make any sense.

However, track the progress and see when you hired that Born Leader, and when they got their first skill point in Leadership

[Jim]

Ah, I did not know that. I did know that some of my people had picked up points in skills they weren't doing, but I thought it was because my founder, who had been leading the team for several years, was imparting the skills to them during meetings.

I might actually take up your challenge, just for kicks. I was thinking about starting a new play through anyway, so I feel like I have some freedom to play around with the tail end of this one. I've been exploring game mechanics I never used before like printing my own copies and doing research and patenting. I'm even playing around with project management, but I'm not really enjoying that very much. I might as well leave my pitiful little leader in her position and see what she does.

[Jim]

Okay, so I ran a brief test (less than a year). Only those of my people who are assigned to leadership roles are getting leadership experience (according to their details window).

I hired two lawyer leaders for my day and night shift legal teams on the same month. The day leader was my born leader with no specializations. The night leader had one star in each category and was tasked with HR duties. After four or five months, my born leader had gone from no experience to having her bar filled to just the beginning of the x character in the word Next above her experience bar. The night shift leader had hers filled to the beginning of the T character. So it looks like having more specializations may have caused her to learn faster, but not by much.

After that they completed my patent, and I had to send them all on an extended vacation so they wouldn't stress out about having nothing to do. During that time, neither character gained any more experience. So, they have to be there and assigned to the leadership role to gain experience, but they gain it even if they don't have the specializations to unlock any functions. It's just not quite as fast.