Walk Personality, Talk Personality: How Do You Come Across in Your Match?

By Josef Zeevi

Do you have a winning personality? If you have all the other skills of a great official, does it matter how you come across to others on the field?

Many factors go into improving your refereeing. You need to know the rules. As a result, you need to hit the books or have rules discussions with instructors and fellow referees.

And you need to understand how to implement the rules. You know, “What if it’s Thursday and a player from a visiting team on a field that is small (but approved by prior written consent) has a cast on her wrist? …” That’s just one of a variety of scenarios that could happen in your match. Whatever your level, you need to have the rules discussions and work through the plays.

You must also have good foul recognition and the ability to adjust to varying levels of play. That means all kinds of refereeing. Work the “easy” games, the “hard” games, the games with teams of different skills, backgrounds, styles of play, and hopefully you will have someone there to watch and provide feedback about your performance.

Did I mention fitness? Off to the track for training and improvement. Run laps, laps and more laps for endurance and cardio and then do sprints for speed and strength improvements until you drop. Run up and down hills, too.

Those are necessary steps in becoming better, but there is still that one factor that most referees fail to consider: their personality. Yes, we’re all angels, and the best at everything we try. We never have bad days — I know. Cough. However difficult, our personality is one of those things that each of us should understand about ourselves in order to become better.

It’s not necessary to relay how we may have gotten our personalities and what some of the basic tools of psychoanalysis might yield. But we can look at a few personality factors: how we present ourselves to players, coaches and other officials, and how to use our personality effectively to help manage players.

Personality close-up. One local referee I know is often described as bright, friendly, very rules-knowledgeable, extremely ethical but also somewhat inflexible and, at times, a slave to the rules. Fellow officials enjoy his company, but his humor occasionally causes slight tension. Assigners will put him on just about any game but it took a long time for him to get there.

After years of not understanding why things weren’t moving along as rapidly as he’d like, this referee (call him Bob) had a chance to talk with a referee he’d known for years (Tom) —  one he respected and with whom he had an open relationship. The talk was difficult, but eye-opening.

Bob asked Tom for thoughts on why Bob’s refereeing seemed to have reached a plateau. Tom indicated that Bob’s strong moral position about right and wrong may be a factor. Tom gave an example: When you referee, and you see B7 wearing jewelry, you ask B7 to take it off. Bob replied, “Of course, it’s in the rules and it certainly makes sense from a safety point of view.” Tom inquired about how that conversation went. Bob said, “I simply asked B7 to remove the jewelry, since the rules didn’t allow it.” Tom responded: “Ah, so one of the first contacts you have with B7 sets up a right-wrong rule presentation.”

Tom continued, “So let’s assume that five minutes into the game B7 gets fouled, but you allow play to continue as it’s either trifling or you allow advantage. B7 comes back to you, telling you to call those things!” “But Tom,” said Bob, “there’s no point in calling those little things. You know that!” “Yes, I do,” said Tom, “but because you set out a fairly black-and-white rule situation before the game, it’s likely B7 figured you were going to be fairly straight up and down about what is or isn’t a foul.”

Bob had a revelation. Maybe he was setting himself up to fail during the game by the way he dealt with things that came up before the game. He spent time figuring out different ways to handle the “black-and-white” issues and came up with a way to soften his pregame approach.

Tom pointed out that Bob had developed a very sharp wit that often worked against him. Not everyone responds well to sarcasm, said Tom. You’re in your late 30s, so it’s going to be hard for you to change your basic personality. Your strong drive to distinguish between right and wrong and habit of finding humor in every situation may be two factors that limit how you manage players and coaches. It’s obvious that you are intelligent and compassionate, but sometimes (in the soccer environment) that doesn’t come across. You see yourself as the arbitrator on the field but don’t always concern yourself with the other participants.

Tough message. Ultimately, Bob was able to wrap his head around it and make the connection between his refereeing skills (very high) and his refereeing personality (not suited for all situations). That’s when it occurred to him that he might not have the right stuff to move as high up the ladder as he wished. And, over time, he developed new ways to deal with players, coaches and peers that allowed him to be better received as a referee.

There are a lot of ways to measure personality. One that is often used combines one of the following out of each category: introverted or extroverted; sensing (observing) or intuitive (instinctive); thinking or feeling; and judging or perceiving. So it’s possible to be an extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging individual like Bob, or you could be some other combination of traits. You are whatever you are. Being aware of what you are allows you to moderate your behavior and presentation in useful ways, paying attention to how those qualities impact our refereeing.

In Bob’s case, there was a tough sense of right and wrong that was portrayed so strongly that the players expect a performance with no errors. They perceived that they had no room for errors from the referee. Maybe your personality is one of facilitation, which often comes across as weak and indecisive. Whatever it is, unless you are very young, it’s going to be difficult to change. But knowing what your personality traits are will help you take important steps to improving your officiating (along with your knowledge, interpretation skills, foul recognition, and — oh — fitness).

Josef Zeevi is a 20-year referee from Austin, Texas. He is a NISOA National Clinician.