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Mastery Approach For Officials During Competitions

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Sports officials stand to benefit from taking a mastery approach into competitions. This will allow you to focus on things you can control: your effort, your willingness to learn new things and your reaction when you think you might have made a mistake. When you have control, your anxiety goes down and your self-confidence goes up. Once competition begins, your effort and ability to bounce back from mistakes become important parts of your job.

There are two main strategies to maintain a mastery approach as an official during competition. The first is to project confidence. An official that weakly blows the whistle or doesn’t project the calls might cause the parents, coaches and athletes to question his or her authority. This is the E in the ELM tree of mastery, which stands for Effort. Give it your best, and do it confidently!

The second strategy is to bounce back after questionable calls. Mistakes happen, and officials aren’t immune to making bad calls. Officials are certainly not immune to making uncertain calls, that’s part of the game! It’s crucial that you develop a routine to deal with recovering from these close calls so that you can always be focused on the play at hand instead of dwelling on the past. Parent, coaches and athletes might make this difficult (if they protest a call), but it’s in your control to focus forward.

See the PDF below for more details on how you can take a mastery approach into your officiating during competition.

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