Sharing feedback with your peers
It is so easy to catch poor mechanics on your partner’s part, but not at all easy to detect your own deficiencies. Because I want so much for all umpires to give their very best to the game, I always ask my partner for some feedback on areas where I need to work. With luck he’ll give me some good morsels on which to chew. Hopefully, he’ll ask me the same question so that I can share with him what I saw him do and ask him why he did it that way. Maybe he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, or perhaps he has a good reason for doing it that way. If we can get a discussion going, great! We can both learn from that.
But what if he doesn’t open the door to a discussion about his performance that day, either good or bad? What if he tells me he has nothing for me and that he thinks he had a great game? I’ve tried the approach, “Would you like to know what I saw out there today?” and when he responds with, “Not really”, I bemoan the fact that a learning opportunity has just gone out the window.
When you work with an association that has no formal evaluation process where an evaluator sees you once or twice a season and provides you with written feedback at the conclusion of the game, the only way you are going to get feedback is from your partner after the game or perhaps from a peer who happened to take in your game from the stands because he was there to watch a relative or a neighbor’s kid play ball. On those occasions where I have been the peer in the stands, I have had the overwhelming desire to share all my observations, both the strengths and opportunities, with the crew after the game. I think that is my part of my responsibility to make my association as competent as it can be.
Human nature being what it is, though, when I have offered my observations, sometimes the crew isn’t interested. I want to believe that they were rejecting my approach, but not the content. By that I mean, had I approached them differently, they might have wanted to listen to what I had seen from outside the foul lines.
Can any of you give me some help here? Do I just butt out when I see something that needs correcting, or is there a way I can slide the information in without appearing to be the almighty know-it-all? There are just so few opportunities to get constructive feedback that I want to maximize every one of those opportunities. How do you get through to someone who, in essence, is saying “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”?
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Steve,
Be direct there’s always one or two plays in a game that you can talk about. “Remember that play where………..” Gets them talking and they’ll give you the information that you’re looking for without even knowing it.
As you know I’m big on post games, and sometimes you’ll run into some one who is in their car and halfway home by the time I’m done calling the third out. Not much you can do with those people.
Much research supports that reflection is the most effective learning strategy whether it is school learning, looking back over family decisions, better understanding life situations, or reflecting on a game just completed. Umpires that care enough to reflect on games and situations learn from the experiences and become better officials. When your reflection includes your partner(s), this learning has much more potential.
To optimize this potential, we must build a culture where we all wish to learn/improve no matter what age we are or which level we are working. We must ask our partner(s) about situations that concern us during our games. However, until we accept and strictly practice suggested mechanics (declaring different coverages in the pre-game discussion), it will be difficult to have truly open and honest discussions. How can dedicated “X and o” umpires talk about the very important little things when their partner neither communicates nor goes out on a fly ball nor covers third?
Hindsight can be 20/20 in our current world of sound bites, experts, and instant replay. Unfortunataely, post-game discussions often raise as many questions as solutions. Lifelong learners keep these challenging situations in their minds always looking for answers. Contact fellow officials and turn to other sources to answer your questions. To this end, for your benefit, this Umpire Learning Blog and the Basketball Officials Learning Blog (http://iaabo.wordpress.com) were created.
Happy Blogging!