Standing still is going backwards?

Our guild has reached a speedbump in the road; a boss which stops progress untill you defeat him... there are ofcourse more bosses like this, mostly in more linear instances, but i'm talking about what some call Guild breakers.
These Guild breakers are harder to master bosses and sometimes it takes a guild too long and they fall apart, teared apart by frustration.. pre-TBC Vaelstraz was such an example.
Since we stepped into the Outlands the instances are less linear; there are more choices, more ways to go in an instance most of the time.
Take SSC and TK for example, except for the final bosses you can choose which other boss you take on first. Karazhan has multiple choices aswell once you've done a few required bosses (Moroes, Opera and Curator).

When we were learning Vashj we still had the oppertunity to go do TK if we wanted to but at this point we are focusing on the TK final boss: Kael'thas.
There is no need to go do SSC at the moment as we got most of our players the needed quest item from Vashj, once we killed Kael we will need a couple more runs to get the rest this item but that should be doable in a few days. However at this point we have no other ways to experience new content as long as we didn't kill the Bloodelf Prince, one of the hardest bosses in the Outlands!
It's this guy who drops the second quest item and with both you will be attuned to Mount Hyjal. Once we downed the first boss (which is supposed to be a pushover) in there we are ready to enter the Black Temple.. the big boys raidinstance :)

However our current obstacle is still this Tempest Keep boss which we've only be trying for 2,5 weeks now and we are making good progress on him.
I have no doubt we can down him soon, if our member can just hold on and keep giving 100%. Wiping weeks in a row on the same boss over and over can break people's spirit and can result a guild to end up in a downwards spiral. Some people start skipping raids due to which the raid might not at its most ideal composition, resulting in more wipes... more people won't bother to show for raids and so it gets worse each time.
We've have been in such a spiral with one foot before but somehow we managed to motivate enough people to kill the next boss on the list and get the train back on tracks. This is a returning phenomenon and we have to be aware to spot it on time and change our approuch to raiding to avoid this.

Last Friday was a wipe night, i knew that in advance. But wiping aint bad if you at least are making some progress... sure we had some stupid wipes aswell (someone's mouse got stuck and ran straight into Kael when we were still rezzing for example) but most importantly we had fun.
I have full confidence this guild breaker won't break us, just a week or 2 at the max and we get to step foot in new content. I can hardly wait!