This guide should help you identify and prepare your Exemplar nominations.
- Be specific, direct, and concise. A good recognition can typically fall between 50-150 words. While you are allowed as much space as you need this is not a review. A recognition should, however, include enough detail so that a person reading it can recognize the positive behavior.
- Be honest and make it count. These are intended to be published within the program, and others will see what you write. Be sure the recognition is something you wish to hold up to the community as something to emulate.
- Be personal. This will mean something to the person receiving it. Write as though you are addressing this Judge directly. Consider how you’d feel if you received it. Would you be inspired to do more? Would you understand why you were identified as an exemplar?
- Be Relevant. These nominations are for judges, by judges, and nominated behaviors and actions should be of a relevant benefit to judges or the judge program.
Nominations will be evaluated based on Four criteria points
- Is the recognition specific? – We need to be able to tell what was actually done. Saying someone did a ‘great job’ and are a ‘joy to work with’ are wonderful things to read, but they don’t explain why the job was great or how they brought joy to the task.
- Is the recognized behavior praiseworthy? – The action needs to be something that should be emulated by other judges or aspired to. Solving problems, mentoring, innovating tournament procedures, masterfully handling difficult players are all praiseworthy things. However merely attending events or travelling far is something that judges just *do* as a part of judging.
- Is the recognition relevant? – It needs to be directly related to judging/running events. Judging is part professional certifications, and part social club. Judges form friend circles with other judges, and often times things we do as judges and things we do as friends blend together. This criteria is to ensure that behaviors being recognized are “judge things” and not solely “friend things” where the friend happens to be a judge.
- Is the recognition Representative? – It needs to reflect positively on Judges or the program. This is a catchall for things like bad words or backhanded compliments.
Below are a few examples to help you understand what makes a good recognition.
Recognizing Event Performance
Some judges are awesome at events. They don’t only participate in making the events run, they make it run smoother! These are definitely behaviors worth recognition.
Judges, by their very definition, judge events. At every event, big or small, there are opportunities for a judge to do something special, something that sets their actions apart from other judges.
Here is an example of a good recognition:
- Bob, Thanks for stepping up at RCQ [X]. The store got a lot more players than expected, You were proactive in managing your space constraints and communicated clearly to the TO what the consequences of continuing registration would be (no space for the Star Wars event later that day), and that the shop would probably have to be open an hour later) and you created a fair way for promos to be distributed now that you didn’t have enough for everyone and made sure the players understood why things were delayed, and how the promos would be distributed.
In the sample recognition, we have a judge detecting a problem before it becomes an issue, notifying the proper people, and creating a plan to address the issue, and then communicating to players to set expectations. The nomination is specific, relevant, and demonstrates praiseworthy behavior
An example of a bad recognition would be:
- It was great working with you at the RCQ. I’ve been impressed with how you’ve improved over the last 6 months. Keep up the good work.
In this recognition we don’t actually know what the judge did that was great or impressive. We know what they improved, but we don’t know in what ways, or what they did to improve. In this case, this recognition and the sample good recognition are for the same actions at the same event. However, when reading the second recognition, there is no way to infer any of the praiseworthy items in the first recognition.
Recognizing Leadership
Being a Team Lead is not extraordinary by itself. At an RC or Spotlight series event, it just means that the judge was selected for that role, and that’s it. However, if your Team Leader did make your day better than you expected, speak up!
A good nomination for event leadership:
- Our shift started close enough to the start of the event where we didn’t have time to have a proper team meeting at the start. But I do like how you set up a time at the bottom of round 1, where we could tag up and let us know how the rest of the day would go. I particularly like how you made efforts to check in with each of us at least once a round. And when I got sent off to help in the CommandZone that my breaks and shift end were not forgotten about, even coming off the floor of the main to bring me water.
A good leader takes care of their people. They make them feel seen and ensure their needs are taken care of. Reminding folks to drink water is great, but bringing water to a judge who may feel exiled and separated from their team, is a demonstrable way to foster a sense of belonging.
A bad nomination for event leadership might be:
- Thanks for being my team lead on deck checks. We got all our checks done and you helped ensure that floor coverage didn’t suffer. Look forward to working with you again.
In this nomination, we don’t really have a sense of what leadership was demonstrated. We know the recipient was the lead of a team that accomplished their tasks, but we don’t have any insight into what the leadership was.
Recognizing Mentoring
Events aren’t the only place that excellence can happen. While certain things can only happen at events, mentoring can happen anywhere; On Discord, on the phone, over dinner, in a car ride, and yes, even at events.
An example of a good recognition for mentorship might be:
- Thanks for taking time to go over the altered card policy with me. It’s difficult to understand why some alters are fine and some aren’t, and players always seem to try and stretch the boundaries. I really appreciated you going over the “why” with me and I now feel confident in my ability to respond to some of the more assertive/trollish members of my community. Also the bit about strategic advice on card art always seemed odd to me, so I appreciate you clarifying that and how some of the philosophy applies to OA.
The altered art policy can trip up a lot of judges. It is both clear and opaque at the same time. Taking the time to explain it to the point where a judge feels they can explain to others is pretty awesome.
Recognizing Community Leading
Judging is not only about events. Many judges are community leaders and help a lot in stores or in online settings. Some of them are excellent at managing players and judges, as well as leading discussions, moderating tense topics, and making sure that recent information is visible.
Here is an example of a good recognition:
- Sarah, Your involvement in managing players’ reactions to the recent saga rules change announcement has been awesome. You handled the constant stream of repetitive and corner-casey questions with unparalleled patience. I particularly liked how you changed your tone and level of description to match the perceived level of the players’ understanding of the more technical aspects.
This is a great nomination because it shows a judge being a source of information for their community, helping people understand what’s coming up. As well as being able to withstand the deluge of the same types of questions over and over again. Also recognizing the place people are coming from in asking questions allows you to craft your responses in order to increase understanding.
An example of a bad recognition:
- Thanks for testing me for L1. You know so much and it was great learning from you.
In this nomination, we don’t actually know what was done. There was learning, but we don’t know what it was, or what was excellent about the instruction. The only concrete bit of information is that the recipient of the recognition tested the giver. This very much seems to be a “thank you for testing me” nomination, which feels odd as something to hold up for other judges as a good example.
Recognizing Failures
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” – Vince Lombardi
Sometimes we don’t succeed. We try a new process for product distribution, or we propose a policy change and it doesn’t work. There is still value in the attempt. The critical thinking, the attempt to make things better are behaviors that Exemplar is designed to reward. In these cases, the outcome is less important than the thought and process that went into attempting it.
There is another side of failure. The times we don’t put thought into things and we screw up. In those instances, how you handle the situation can be something praiseworthy. Do you run and hide and let someone else clean up the problem you made and avoid the uncomfortable conversations that come from the mistake, or do you roll your sleeves up, learn what you did wrong and work to redress the issues and problems. We all make mistakes, but we can redeem ourselves in what we do next.
