What Aren't We Teaching People Skills? Here Are Our Recommendations.

Now that the new USTA tests are about to become required reading and history on October 1, 2016, its time to take a long hard look at how we are training, teaching, and testing our officials.  While the new exams are a fantastic improvement over the old school methods, there is still a huge gap staring us in the face--teaching people skills--and we need to figure out what we are going to do about it.

All of us have seen officials (both new and older) come and go and its usually not because of a lack of knowledge of the rules of tennis.  Its usually because of their lack or misuse of their personal skills.  Officials without a good understanding of their own personal skills will usually react in one of two ways.  They will either become overly aggressive or hide themselves in a shell.  Its time to help them move on to a better grasp of their own lives and how to deal with others.  Check the picture below to see how important people skills are in our futures and you will begin to grasp how important it is for us to begin to teach people skills and constantly affirm their importance.

Teaching people skills is not nearly as easy as teaching the fundamentals of a rule book.  It requires personal knowledge and grasp of the skills, experience in utilizing them, and a willing and attentive audience.  Usually when a person is lacking in an area of personal skills it will be MAGNIFIED the moment they arrive at a site to begin officiating.

Maybe its time to take some of that accumulated USTA money and hire some experienced (and good) personal skills teachers and make them readily available to our officials.  This can be done in a classroom setting or letting the instructors roam the courts of some of our tournaments and help our officials as they are involved in the heat of the battle.

An official has to have the personal maturity, patience, and skills to deal with an abusive player--and this occurs at all levels.  Some of the most difficult challenges we face are in the super-championship boys 12's division.  A wise instructor can teach an official how to deal with this situation and these abusive players--and their parents.

An irate parent poses an even greater challenge because they are adults and have personal skills (or lack thereof) of their own.  They come from every walk of life and every income level so they offer one of life's greatest challenges.  We need to offer training in dealing with abusive parents or we're going to be losing officials by even greater numbers.

And there is everyone's nemesis--the abusive coach.  If you don't have some fairly well-developed personal skills they are going to eat you alive.  They are masters of how to manipulate and dominate and we offer nothing in our own defense.  Officials should be begging on some teaching to help them with their greatest challenges.

Tournament sites (both on and off the court) are going to feature everyone from adults to children who are creating havoc with their personal relationships and with those around them.  A well-trained official will know how to deal with them in the proper manner--and then everyone can go about enjoying their tournament.  Problem is--we aren't offering any of that training...

The truth of the matter is that adults (and kids) don't always get along.  Its their nature--and we can't change it.  But we can (and should) learn how to deal with it.  An untrained official will ignorantly jump into a volatile situation or run and hide if they have no training and teaching.  We are being asked to send sheep into the wolves' den without proper training and that needs to stop.  We can and should be teaching and equipping in the area of personal skills...

Learning to diffuse a difficult situation or person is an art--but one that can be learned.  Older officials usually have learned this art by trial and error (lots of them) but we need to train and re-train our officials on how to deal with difficult situations.  People don't care if we can make a 100 on our rules exams if we can't handle the situations in our everyday tournaments.  Let's get to work and start some real and valid training...

A few years ago there was a seminar offered for officials in the DFW Metroplex--and I immediately got car sick because I thought I was going to be forced to sit through yet another boring class about a bunch of nothing.  However, when we got there we were introduced to our speaker--a psychologist!  We didn't hear a word about rules and regulations but we heard a lot about people skills and how to utilize them as a tennis official.  IT WAS GREAT!  But, I've never seen or heard of it again...

HERE ARE OUR RECOMMENDATIONS:
*  Find and employ instructors who know how to teach personal skills.
*  Be more attentive to those officials who have difficulties in this area and take steps to remedy the problem.
*  Offer localized seminars with good instructors.  This can be a requirement or optional as long as its done.
*  Have the instructors work at tournaments and dual matches.  Pay them enough to let them branch out with their teaching methods.
*  Develop some quality materials on personal skills and make them available to all officials--free of charge.  Its worth the investment and someone who is lacking in personal skills probably won't pay for materials that will help them out of their situation.
*  Develop comprehensive exams that deal with personal skills and all aspects thereof--and then make it part of the requirements for an official.  In the long run, you will see some great results!

Its time to build on what we already have.  We have a great foundation for teaching rules and regulations--now we need to teach officials how to use everything they learned with their new-found people skills!

Don't leave your latest tournament feeling like the guy below...