By Espen S. K. Olsen, L2, Norway

Mentoring judges on competitive REL 

This weekend I stepped in to a new role, the role as the head judge and mentor for other judges. I head judged my local PPTQ in Mosjøen, and travelled to Trondheim to help them head judge their PPTQ. At my local PPTQ I had two fresh L1 judges that I were going to mentor and in Trondheim I had two experiences L1s that were going for L2 to mentor. This made me reflect a bit on how to mentor both fresh judges on Competitive REL and what techniques I like to use. So instead of writing a tournament report on rulings, situations and that kind of stuff, I’ve written this reflection about mentoring.

Set goals

When you’re mentoring someone, it’s always useful to have a goal. This can be a goal you’ve set yourself, but usually the best is to set a goal together with the one you’re going to mentor. For fresh L1s my goal is to give them on hands experience with the stuff you would have a bad time trying to read yourself to, and thats everything with decklists and deck checks, delivering and registering rulings and the observation of the tables that are most likely to have problems with bribery at the end of the swiss.

When mentoring experienced judges you have to know what that judge feels he or she needs mentoring on. Mentoring a deck check veteran on how to do deck checks isn’t the best use of your time. This weekend I had talked with one of the judges in Trondheim and set a plan for him to take the reigns on the tournament, with me shadowing him, being there as a resource for him to use, and to give him feedback.

Hands on

Do you want to mentor someone on how to do a deck check? Do it with them, and have them do it. Go through the motions and explain why you do what you do. “First I check through the deck as is to check for marked cards or a stacked deck, then I..”. And if possible, let them have a go at it without you helping them at the same time after the initial run through.

I use the same process with mentoring on delivering rulings. Any judge I would be comfortable mentoring at competitive REL has taken judge calls before, only at Regular. So I have them take the judge calls, and observe how they handle it. How do they interact with the players? Do they do some actions like crouching down when listening? How do they deliver the actual ruling? And if they’re unsure on what to rule, how do they handle that?

Instant feedback

After doing an observation I recommend giving any very positive feedback at once. “The way you calmly delivered the ruling and explained what the infraction and fix was, was very positive. You had a calm and inviting body language, and calmed down the whole situation.” Any tips on improvement can also be given immediately, if you feel the candidate could take use of the tips immediately.

If the ruling was a judgement call, where policy supported two ways of fixing the situation, I use to ask them “Why did you rule as you did?”. Then listen to their reasoning, without interjecting with my own opinions, and when they’re done I’ll tell them that thanks for sharing their reasoning, and I’ll share my opinion by telling “In this situation I would have”, not “In this situation you should have”, and thereby sharing what I would have done, instead of telling them that they were wrong.

In situations where the judge did get something wrong I’ll still start by asking about their reasoning behind the call. After listening I’ll try to set my self in their situations and try to figure out where they got it wrong. If they assessed the situation as the wrong type of infraction, if they had misunderstood the infraction

Learn something yourself

All judges have areas of improvement, and my biggest is the actual rules of the game. I’ve not played for two years yet, and I haven’t been a judge for a full year yet, and some parts of the rules still elude me. I knew that one of the judges I was going to mentor this time had a much better understanding of the rules than myself, so I used the opportunity to get him to explain rules interactions I didn’t have full grasp on. This gave him an opportunity to practice mentorship on rules, and left me learning more about rules I was unsure of.

Debrief

When a tournament is done, most judges will have  a desire to get home to unwind as soon as possible. I had a 5,5 hour drive home after the last tournament, and a desire to get home in time to get much needed sleep before work on monday. Forcing yourself to sit down with the other judges after the tournament is done, and sharing your experiences is a very good. Let the other judges have the opportunity to share what they felt went good, and what they felt could be improved, both with the tournament, themselves and the other judges.

If none of the judges have a rush to get home after the tournament, a shared dinner or evening meal could be a great way to unwind after the tournament, do a debrief and go into depths on difficult situations that arose. It could also help build the judge community by getting an opportunity to get to know the judges you’ve worked with in a situation outside of a tournament.

Reviews

When you’ve already assessed strengths and areas of improvements of other judges, writing them into a review is a snap. Taking the feedback you’ve already given, and putting it into written form will serve as a reminder for the judge you’ve mentored, and help create a good environment for writing reviews to each other. If you’ve never written a review before, take a look at the “My first review”-project on the wiki. ”