Let’s get down to business – risk stagnation or create greater customer satisfaction?

The guest speaker for our October monthly meeting was our own President Brian Wratten, who addressed a topic that he could never remember any of our speakers tackling before – Self Evaluation.

Brain started by considering that the benefits of self evaluation can stimulate awareness, increase self assurance, identify strengths, reveal opportunities, allow for setting goals, permits progress measures, complements assessments, and essentially provides a platform for improvement.

Aren’t we all self-employed?
We are professionals aren’t we? We get paid for what we do; offering what should be a top quality service providing customer satisfaction. And Brian said he hoped we were taking pride in our achievements but still wanting to improve. We are running a business so are we content to drift along and risk stagnating.

Design a Poster
Brian asked members to design a poster to promote our business (as a referee). Sadly it was obvious that we had no marketing practitioners amongst the members present. But taking his theme of running a business Brian said we needed to think of performance measurement criteria. He then listed twelve aspects of refereeing which he asked members to discuss and prioritise.

Referee Performance Measurement
After discussing each group’s priorities, Brian produced a graph with these twelve aspects, Communicating with players, Appearance, Applying Laws, Pre-match Activities, Managing Stoppages, Use of Advantage, Match Control, Positioning and Movement, Alertness and Awareness, Attitude, Administration and Reporting (or you could use others if you felt them more applicable). The graph was intended for you to mark yourself out of ten for each of the twelve aspects on a regular basis to see how you are progressing. To be beneficial, you must be open and honest.

Business Management
Treating yourself like a business means having a long term strategic plan. Where do you want to go and how do you get there.

Our thanks to Brian for something entirely different, but a way of improving your performance if you are really serious about your refereeing.