You’re talking to a new hire, a new staff member. Training, teaching, onboarding … whatever you want to call it.
You go through a complicated section on your trusty power point … the one you have used many times. You look up to see how your talk is being received. The young new exited staff member smiles and slowly nods along….
You don’t want the nod …
You really want a frown.
Most people don’t learn by watching, they often dont even learn by reading.
Most people learn by doing….
and
They really learn by doing things WRONG.
They learn by making mistakes.
Think of all progression and learning for refs and umps as a simple framework.
How do you define a successful staff –
A staff that makes good and correct calls
How do you teach good calls … ?
You cant really teach them you need to learn by doing
How do you gain the best experience on good calls ?
You make the wrong calls enough times to learn what the right ones are.
That’s all there is….
Mistakes are lessons.
They teach you what is wrong and what is right, in life, in business and in reffing and umping.
But with refs and umps we are AFRAID to let umps and refs make the wrong calls … its bad … its a sign of weakness !
We stand over their shoulder and whisper in their ear during the first few “training shifts”
This does not work… really it has never worked … even if people we did it with eventually succeeded.
We cram their heads with how to make the right calls in a classroom when they are sitting down watching you drone on about a power point and “nodding” their head.
Then you ask a silly leading question like
“Know what I mean …”
or
“Get what I’m saying…”
or
“Any questions so far ?”
This is “leading the witness” – want to make sure you get less questions ?
Ask a group of people if …. they have any questions !
You would be better off asking the new staff member how they feel, or even asking them to display what you just taught in a mock situation.
Good leagues, and good companies, do not fear mistakes….
They simply choose WHERE and WHEN they want their staff and their NEW staff to make them.
We want our staff making mistakes in their first few shifts on the big stuff that matters.
We want them messing up the game info, getting caught out of position, forgetting a score, getting run over by a player, tripping over a cone, fumbling with a stop watch, and yes …. even blowing that in-advertent whistle …
We want them doing all of this because this is how you actually learn and get experience, because mistakes are lessons.
What do most sports league programs do?
1) They fall in love with the nod – especially in the classroom session. People will retain maybe 10% of what you teach them outside of actually doing the thing you are teaching them.
2) They lead the witness – “Everything I’m saying make sense so far?” …. it takes a very very confident person to say NOPE!
3) They let new people coast … instead of making mistakes – They notice that a new staff member is mostly correct about the outs and the downs and the score (game information), but they seldom realize that they are just repeating back what someone has already shown and already said. They are coasting by mirroring info …
4) They try and teach by osmosis – Just hang around me and watch me ref and you will get better – This seldom works. People can steal methods but they cant learn habits and learn better decisions via mistakes just by copying someone else’s decisions.
You gain the wisdom to make good decisions … by making lots of bad decisions … by making lots of mistakes.
If you want a good program, then you need to avoid the idea where you get a great report after great report about a new staff member – and then all of the sudden in shift 7, 8 or 9 they fall to pieces. Something crazy happens and things go off the rails … maybe you think you need to “re-train” them, maybe they lose all their confidence, maybe they even quit, or just stop picking up the phone when you call.
You think “man that stupid team ruined them on Tuesday night …”
Like some kind of super-hero movie … your new ref (Batman) met up with Bane in the sewer system and they got pushed too far and they broke … or got ruined …. because they weren’t experienced enough … maybe because you didn’t spend enough time with them or didn’t teach them enough ?
Nope … They were ruined a long time ago when you started the process, when you fell in love with the Nod, instead of THEIR answers, and you let them coast and led them along their first few shifts because you were terrified to let them make any mistake.
You wanted to teach your kid how to ride a bike, but you also didn’t want to let them fall.
You kept giving them warning after warning about running next to the pool, but you never let them fall and skin their knee because they were running around the pool.
Mistakes are lessons … they may be embarrassing, they may even hurt, but it’s the way people learn, and its the way refs and umps learn.
Find the right place and right time to let your new staff members make the mistakes that ALL new staff members make so that they can get the experience to make good calls and decisions for your league long beyond your intro teaching and education phase.