Level 3 - Lesson 3
Reviews and Endorsements
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Hello there!
Welcome back to the level three lessons for the Star Wars™: Unlimited Judge Program!
As always, I’m your host Jonah, and today I’ll be talking about writing Reviews and Endorsements. Reviews are already covered pretty extensively in L2 lesson 29, so some of what we talk about today may sound familiar, but we’re going to take some slightly different angles and clear up some ideas about reviews in this lesson.
Let’s dive in!
Who Can Write Reviews?
Let’s start with an easy question - who can write reviews? Short answer: anyone!
There are certainly roles that are required for reviews that have functions within the program, but any can give anyone else feedback in the form of review.
There’s no minimum level or experience to share your perspective. It’s also something that I want to encourage you to start practicing sooner rather than later. Giving feedback can be tricky, and you’re not going to get better if you don’t try.
You may feel like you’re not experienced enough to give good feedback, but even if you’re newer to judging, you still have your instincts about what feels right and what doesn’t. Reviews also don’t have to be the whole of the feedback, and in fact, generally shouldn’t be. You can highlight something that you think was impressive, or underwhelming, or confusing, and share your perspective. While having actionable feedback and providing a path for growth is ideal, you’re not always going to be able to find a straightforward resolution, and frequently you’re not going to have a mix of both praise and constructive criticism.
The review doesn’t have to encompass everything you saw or all of your thoughts of a candidate - it can be more focused, there are other ways to provide good feedback.
What’s the Appropriate Context?
In fact, the best place for a review is between two other feedback sessions - after working an event or several events with someone, talk to them, share your insight, and then write it down as a review. After submitting the review, and possibly after working with them again, return to your feedback session to talk things over more - this gives the subject time to process and adapt to the feedback you’ve given, as well as share their perspective.
Something that can be very disconcerting is getting a notification that you’ve gotten a review from someone you didn’t even know was paying attention to your performance.
Who Should Be Reviewed
Next in our queue of questions about reviews is who the subjects should be - again, like with the previous question, the answer is simple and straightforward - anyone!
Again, there are some times where you expect a review, but you can review anyone in the event hierarchy - whether they’re a floor judge, a team lead, head judge or even the tournament organizer. Note that some people in non-judging roles won’t have profiles, and so you won’t be able to submit a review, but you can still send them feedback!
However, the real emphasis here is that you shouldn’t expect to review only one subset of judges. Again, like what I just said, you may feel like your perspective isn’t valuable, especially when reviewing up in the hierarchy, and it may be you give them feedback that they’re already aware of. On the other hand, because of that concern, folks in positions of leadership receive dramatically less feedback than others, and consequently may not have that external perspective.
Just because someone is running an event (or a judge program) and doing so with confidence, it doesn’t mean that they have everything figured out.
Reviewing Up
It can feel daunting to review your direct supervisor for an event (or even more daunting - their supervisor), but it can also be rewarding.
While I talked a bit about the perspective, it also shows that you’re keeping an eye on the broader event and that you’re striving to get a better understanding of the event as a whole. Even if the Head Judge of your event has already considered the feedback you give, finding out that you saw the same issue as the Head Judge is something that could beneficial for you! Plus, they may talk to you about why they made the decision that they did and show you something that you hadn’t had the opportunity to see before or perhaps highlight a new consideration.
However, that doesn’t make it any less intimidating - people in leadership position have influence on the community, and while the program strives towards rewarding skill and merit, there will always be social considerations - and telling your boss that you think they’re bad has risks (as does endless flattery).
I strongly encourage you to talk to folks in leadership positions - even the most experienced of judges are just people who really like TCGs. They’ll be happy for the conversation and the feedback. The biggest piece of advice is the same piece of advice that I give for any review or feedback - you have to care about the subject for them to feel like you care.
If you’re giving feedback to your team lead or head judge to prove how smart you are and impress them, they’ll pick up on that. If you’re giving the feedback in order to cut someone down to size, that will also be caught.
Why Are You Writing a Review?
That ties into the next question - why are you writing a review? The answer should be singular - for the subject.
There are several pretty severe misconceptions and traps people fall into here, and I’d like to take a minute to address them.
- Reviews are for the subject - not for the Program or TOs to learn about them
- Reviews are for the subject - not for making the program as a whole better
- Reviews are for the subject - not for your own checklist
Reviews are not for the Program
First, reviews are not for the program or tournament organizers to learn about them. Nobody other than the author and the subject of the review will see the review unless one of them shares it. This means that when you write your review, write the review to the person you’re writing the review for. One of the things I see most frequently is something along the lines of “Anakin, while powerful in the ways of the Force, is often moody. This means that he sometimes isn’t as attentive to his tasks as he should be.”
This reads much more clinically and detached than writing to the candidate. “Anakin, while you’re powerful in the ways of the force, you’re often moody - and this means that sometimes you’re not as attentive to your tasks as you should be.”
When you write to a third party, it feels like it’s a very formal work evaluation, and makes it more intimidating - even receiving positive feedback can be scary, and so making it more personable is important.
Reviews Should Care About the Subject
Second, you should be writing the review for the benefit of the subject. You’ll be tempted to write a review at some point, or to deliver critical feedback, because somebody screwed something up, and you don’t want it to happen again. However, if your desire is “I want the program to be better” or “I want the event to be better”, and not “I want the subject to learn and grow”, it’s going to undermine the sincerity of your feedback - and it’s easier to misread your own words if you believe you have a generally altruistic motive.
I’ve definitely been caught by “I want to tell this person that they’re bad, because it will get them to stop being bad,” and while that can have a very similar mechanical outcome as “I want to help this person become better, because I want them to succeed”, they have very different tones.
Reviews Are Not For Your Own Benefit
Third, writing and submitting a review shouldn’t be just because you need to check an item off a list for your own progression. This one is the most common, but that’s because as you advance, you’re going to need to write a review - this is also one of the reasons I encourage you to regularly write reviews! If you have many done, when you come to a requirement that you write one, you can submit one that you’ve already written.
Like with the other pitfalls, writing to just fulfill a checklist makes it very easy to lose sincerity, and in feedback, that genuine sense of care and investment is critical for success.
Leveling Up Your Reviews
One of the pieces of feedback I give on feedback most frequently is that the review can and should be more specific.
Compare these two pieces of feedback:
“Your rules knowledge is really impressive.” vs.
“Your rules knowledge is really impressive - there was that weird call with Corvus and Fives, and we had to talk it over pretty extensively, but you were able to not only convince me, but also explain to the players why Fives would be able to attach a pilot to himself. Your explanation that Corvus doesn’t have any additional attachment restrictions really helped clarify it to me.”
The latter doesn’t just highlight the area of praise, but it also calls out a specific incident and, within that incident, calls out the exact behavior that was impressive. This means that the candidate knows exactly what you are talking about and can learn from your example.
Evaluating Your Own Reviews
It can be difficult to determine if your reviews are helpful - you wouldn’t have written it if you didn’t think it could be - but there are a few tricks and approaches that can help you find success.
First, check in with a mentor or a peer - share the review with someone other than the subject and ask for their feedback. If it’s particularly sensitive or critical feedback, you can anonymize it by removing the name - but you can still get insight if things are worded too harshly or perhaps too vague.
Second, check in with the subject! After you give them the feedback and have the review submitted, talk to them about it! It’s best practice to have that conversation, to make sure everything makes sense, and to help provide context and clarification on anything that you may not have written clearly. You don’t even have to explicitly ask for feedback here - just the things they ask questions about or how they respond can tell you a lot.
Third, take some time away from the review and read it yourself. How would you feel if you received this review? Would you be frustrated with the author? Disappointed or proud of yourself? Would you feel kind of apathetic about the whole thing? Did you get a useful takeaway or does it just feel like someone filling out a form and not providing feedback for you.
Ask yourself - if this were for me, what would I learn from it?
Sometimes the answer will be “nothing, but it’s nice to hear I did a good job from someone else”, but most frequently there should be something that the candidate learns. While I want to avoid the attitude of “not growing is falling behind” (because boy howdy is that toxic), I do want to strive to encourage a culture of self-improvement and reflection.
That’s all we have for this lesson! If you’re writing a review for the L2 Mentor Certification as part of the L3 advancement process, be sure to check out the Review Rubric to make sure you’re getting what you need in your document. Otherwise, come back next time as we begin to discuss leadership at events!
If you’re watching this on YouTube, and you want more level three lessons in your feed, go ahead and subscribe. Join us on twitch.tv/swu_judges for live broadcasts covering the content of these lessons as they are released, and join the Star Wars: Unlimited Judge Program Discord to join the community in discussion of this and much, much more.
As always, good luck, and have fun!