At the end of Saturday at SCG Baltimore, I reviewed my notebook in amazement at the number of complex calls I had taken. Calls that made me wonder about the motivations of players who shuffled an opponent’s library when counting how many cards remained in the library. Played an through their own on 1. Used a to find a . Twice. The event felt like a series of one investigation after another. Where did they all come from? In GP Richmond a few weeks earlier, calls seemed much simpler. Were
Greetings all! I am Rob McKenzie, Level 3 judge and Regional Coordinator of the USA-North region. I’m here today to talk about a nifty item I’ve used at a couple events, Flash Feedback Cards. If you have been at a recent show with me, you have probably run across these - I’ve given them out to judges to distribute at GP Indy, GP Milwaukee, the most recent Minnesota RPTQ, and the SCG Open in Indy. I’ve also used them to provide feedback at several different shows where I did not give them
When I was a kid, I loved to read. One series that I grew to love was the Choose Your Own Adventure series. The fun in these books was the feeling of choice. You had power to decide how the story turned out. Similarly, participation in the judge program is choosing an adventure. Not every judge’s story will (or should!) look the same. As I’ve said from the beginning of this series, we must understand where people are and where they want to go to give them the best feedback possible. Once
Grand Prix Milwaukee, my last major event of the year, is in the books. 2016 was a big year for me as a judge – I worked 13 Grand Prix, 5 Opens, 2 Regional Championships, and 5 PPTQs. I served as a Head Judge for my biggest event to date, coordinated about 350 PPTQs in the Mid-Atlantic Region, took headshots for about 200 judges, and presented at 4 judge conferences. And I was promoted to Level 3, the culmination of hundreds of hours of effort by a lot of people, some of whom I’ve never met in
Advancement reviews are some of the most important reviews that we give judges, and they often serve as an introduction to the peer review process itself. They not only remind judges of what happened during the interview and exam portion of the advancement process but also provide tools for success at their new level. With a failed advancement review, these benefits are even more crucial. The judge needs more than a handful of study tips. The failed advancement review can connect the judge to
Quick: Think of a time you’ve failed. That’s precisely the challenge I posed to about 20 judges at the Northeast Judge Conference earlier this month. My workshop, “Practicing Radical Candor,” was an exploration of our experiences with failure -- and how we can grow from them. I’ll start this article the same way I began my seminar: by explaining what radical candor is. Radical candor means nothing more than “say what you think.” But this seemingly simple concept is actually
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Feedbag! Last month, we discussed how to encourage judges on your team to review each other. This time, we’ll look at managing teams from another angle, with our question coming courtesy of : I recently was Head Judge of a large event that had teams of judges. One of my goals of the event was to be able to provide a useful review to each team lead as well as several staff, but as the event began and issues began to manifest, I found myself pulled
I’m not sure how many of you out there have been called a superhero. For those of you who haven’t, let me tell you: It definitely gets your attention. A little over a year ago I received a review from that I refer to as the “Spiderman Review.” This review was eye opening; it helped me realize that I had been living the “great power, great responsibility” mantra Spidey has become known for. The scope of the work I was doing at events and back home in Richmond was above the expectations
A lot of great stuff has been written about the feedback process, especially how to deliver it: Talk to the person first. Send a draft of the review in e-mail form. Balance the positive and negative feedback. Here’s the problem: these points are all centered on sparing the feelings of the person receiving the feedback. We spend no time discussing the feelings of the person giving the feedback. Have you ever given feedback to someone only to have them react defensively? Maybe you felt like
You know how excited parents celebrate their children’s first tottering attempts at walking? How they ooh and ah and cheer and gasp and take dozens of pictures to post on social media? When I visited my parents recently, they did not cheer even though I walked quite well. Obviously my parents love me, but they no longer celebrate when I walk across a room without falling. Why not? They now expect me to walk proficiently. While I may have been clumsy as a teenager, with a pair of designated