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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 getting started with leadership and directing judges. There’s an introduction to leadership in L2 lesson 22, but that’s mostly a broad level and philosophical overview. This time, we’re going to get a bit more into the details of what practical steps you can take as a leader.
This lesson is aimed at folks who are leading between one and four other judges. There’s going to be a difference in management with one person versus several, as you’re going to either be spending more time doing the work or more time delegating, depending on the scale of your team, and the amount of guidance and mentorship that can be provided will also change.
Let’s dive in!
Briefing and Communication
The beginning of any journey in leadership is your communication with the team. People aren’t going to know what you want them to do unless you tell them, and won’t know how you want them to do it unless, again, you tell them.
Having some pre-event communication is ideal - but usually this is going to be a very wide overview. Like how not all players listen attentively to every announcement, not all judges read everything in a briefing that they’re sent - and the more experienced they are, the more likely they are to skim things and miss a critical piece of information.
Furthermore, while it’s possible to have back-and-forth discussions before events through email or Discord messages, it’s harder for folks to respond to a wall of text than to have a conversation in person. To that end, a lot of people are less likely to ask for clarification, and so relying on digital communication solely is going to have consequences. However, it’s great for preparing your team and making sure that they have a general idea of what to expect, as well as to potentially raise concerns that will be harder to address at the event.
Consequently, it’s a best practice to contact your team with a very general message. Introduce yourself, cover the basics of the event or tasks, and quick assignments - things that people know to start their day, as well as the general structure of the day, so that if there are any fundamental issues (like you have somebody assigned to stay late who needs to leave when the Swiss rounds end), before the day begins.
It’s possible to take some shortcuts when you have a more robust judge program, as folks will have shared knowledge or experiences, and so you can lean on that, but before you can rely on those shortcuts, you need to establish what knowledge level your team has.
Establishing Connections
Before you begin your event, it’s important to know who you’re working with - this not only lets you get to know the rest of your team better as people (and they are people, not just rules robots), but also to get to know what resources you have at hand. What information do you think is important for you to understand? What questions would you ask your team members to answer during your morning briefing?
While you’re thinking about that, also consider what information it is important to confer upon your team in your introduction. While handling these introductions, it is exceptionally easy to fall into two specific traps.
First, it’s often very easy for “let me talk about my experience” to turn into “let me brag about how awesome I am”. Someone’s certification level or how long they’ve been judging can often be found out from applications or asking someone higher in the hierarchy. Having three people introduce themselves as long-time judges who have done a dozen events like this onecan make someone at their first event feel unwelcome or unprepared. Additionally, as a leader, you’re often in a position of experience - a way to help mitigate this is by highlighting something that is new to you, or a relative weakness. For example, “this is my first time leading deck checks” or “this is my first major event since rotation”. These both give folks some context, and imply more experience, but also admits that you’re not quite perfect.
Second, “let’s get to know each other” can turn into “kinda awkward workplace forced socializing icebreaker task”. While with the right group asking folks what color lightsaber they would wield, or with a very specific group who their favorite member of Wraith Squadron you’ll find exceptional success, it’s very easy for more specific questions to end up falling flat. Some folks who judge the game won’t play as much or won’t be as invested in the IP, so even questions that feel general like “who’s your favorite character from the latest set” may result in folks not having answers. Furthermore, a more narrow question will give you less to know about a person. Knowing somebody would like a yellow lightsaber doesn’t necessarily confer a lot of information.
So what questions should you ask? I break it down into three broad categories.
First - anything we need to know to communicate with or about you. This can include name, nickname, pronunciation, pronouns, anything along those lines. This is relatively open, and I don’t force anyone to share anything that they’re not comfortable sharing, but it is an important step, especially with people you don’t know as well.
Second - anything we can do to make your event a success for you. This can include both short and long term goals as a judge, so that both I as a leader, or other members of the team can provide feedback. Insight on particular elements of judging, particular tasks you’re interested in or just aren’t clicking with you right now. It can also include medical or health concerns, or what you’re trying to get out of the event. Knowing that someone is pursuing their L2 endorsement is great to know at the beginning of the event rather than the end. Not only does it allow me (or other members of the team) to provide better feedback, but it also lets us know the candidate’s experience levels in a way that feels more aspirational, “this is what I’m trying to accomplish” as opposed to a more prescriptive “I am an L1 judge”.
Third - anything that you like to talk about! It can be related to the game, to judging, or not related to either at all! This is my “I want to get to know you better”, which is very open-ended, and is also one that I don’t push if someone doesn’t have an answer. Very frequently, someone shares something that happens to be a niche interest or an experience that another member of the team has in common, and didn’t know about.
Establish Expectations
Now that you know your team, it’s important that they know what their job is.
This is the time to go over the detailed portion of your briefing. Being able to keep your team meeting to 5-10 minutes is ideal, no matter what event you’re doing or what task you’re handling. You’ll sometimes get more time, but you’ll often not get more time. Plus, given how long the day is, you don’t want to force people to get up too early, and so keeping your explanation concise and focused is a good goal.
How you introduce your task depends on the task itself. If it’s a task that evolves throughout the day (such as running a whole PQ), going through chronologically makes sense. If it’s a task that has several sub-tasks that repeat (like managing end of round), going through task by task is generally the best practice. As we go deeper in the L3 lessons and talk abou the logistics of various tasks, we’ll cover more specifics about how to introduce various responsibilities and the approaches and best practices associated with them.
Provide Structure
This is also the time to figure out how detailed you’re going to be in your instruction. As we mentioned above, you can use some generic advice of “we’re going to do deck checks”, but that sometimes means people will handle things differently than you’ll expect. While there’s general guidance on not starting mid-round deck checks later than twenty minutes after the round started, some head judges may be more conservative or cautious than others, and so you may want to be explicit with it.
If you’re using any software or tools to assist with any given tasks, such as feature matches or end-of-round, again, discussing exactly what the tool is and how you’re going to use it is key - otherwise people will give you their best shot, which may not match up with your expectations.
You also want to cover broad strokes vision for the day - when are people going to be on given tasks, when do judges get breaks, do players get breaks, will you have regular team meetings throughout the day to catch people up and check in on folks, will you have an end-of-day debrief, what time can people expect to go home? There are many questions that need answers, and while you or your team can sometimes make assumptions, and often many are answered through your pre-event briefing, and you won’t need to repeat them. Sometimes, the answers aren’t ready as the day starts, and it’s something you’ll have to discover as the event progresses.
Execute on the Plan
Once you’ve given folks the plan, it’s time to execute on it. At your start of day briefing, if you’re done before you need to be ready for your next task, you can release judges to finish any last minute prep (getting a coffee, using the restroom, putting on judge uniform) that they weren’t able to accomplish before the briefing. However, you want to make sure everybody is back in time before your next responsibility requires you, and any time you have spare judges, they can be helpful in answering player questions - especially before the event begins.
Once you get the event started, just help keep things on track. The thread of communication that started this lesson continues. You’re going to want to check in with folks regularly to make sure everything is happening as expected.
As someone leading team (whether your title is Team Lead or not), you should be checking in with everyone on your team at least twice a round. If you’re the sort of person with a large expansive personality and like having team meetings, and event logistics cooperate, gathering everyone for a quick “let’s talk about how the round went, and how next round will go” between rounds is great! If you’re quieter or prefer more individualized leadership, just check in on folks one by one as the round passes. This requires more dedication, but can be easier for more introverted types.
You also want to check in with the rest of the event leadership team at least once per round. If you’re a team lead, check in with the other leads and the Head Judge. If you’re a Head Judge, check in with the leads and the Tournament Organizer.
This check-ins can be very quick - “everything good? Great!” However, you can also take some time to share observations “Last round we were a little light on the floor during deck checks - maybe we skip them during next round because we have more people on break?” If you have an excess of resources, you can also offer to share, or to ask for resources that other leaders may have.
Now, these guidelines are aspirational. I don’t expect you to actually hit these milestones with consistency - I never do. However, if I aim for them, I usually hit a more meaningful goal of checking in with everyone on my team once each round, and with other leadership every other round. However, over-communicating is much better than under-communicating, so I’d say to shoot for the stars!
Mentorship and Guidance
Leadership isn’t just about task completion and delegation; it’s about helping grow your team. How this looks varies dramatically, and there will definitely be dedicated lessons to mentorship and guidance, but we can get you started with some general direction.
First, figure out who can be providing direct mentorship and education to who. Often times, there will be a lot of symbiotic relationships where two people can learn from eachother, but there are also plenty of times where one person will have dramatically more experience than others. It’s also important to understand your position within the group - the person in charge isn’t always the most experienced. We like to incentivize growth and the development of judges, and so you may be leading someone who has more experience than you.
Something that I see frequently is new leaders taking the opportunity to support other judges taking their rookie steps in new roles. This is great, but comes with significant peril - if you’re new to the job, and your support structure is also new to the job, it means that your overall framework is less robust. Having some rocks in your structure, and taking advantage of the opportunity to have those more experienced judges focus on you is not abusing your role, but instead respecting the limited time in which you can get that direct and specific feedback.
Pairing judges up, as we’ve mentioned several times, helps folks get focused mentorship, but rotating them also allows for them to get a breadth of perspective. Of course, you can also just be a little bit less hands on with directing the mentorship of others, and let the members of your team find each other, without your meddling. If you do that, just take some extra time yourself to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to get some mentorship and guidance from you, if not the rest of the team.
Sometimes your feedback is going to be very mechanical - “this is how I want the task done”. Sometimes that feedback is going to come from your observations, but other times someone else will be delivering that feedback and you’ll simply be the conduit. This is often the easiest feedback to deliver, because it is relatively objective. However, when you’re working with a team all day, and you know their goals and experience level from the introductions at the start of the day, you can spend more time observing them and providing more comprehensive feedback on their performance and potentially some more subjective feedback on what may be leading to that performance.
That’s all we have for this lesson! Join us next time as we continue to discuss leadership, particularly the distinctions between management and leadership.
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!