The following article was written by Scott Van Noordennen as part of the AFL’s Umpire Coach Professional Development Program. Scott is the Southern Football League’s Director of Umpiring in Metropolitan Victoria.
The Umpire Coach PD Program is having a tremendous impact on umpiring as it continues to provide stronger support and training to umpire coaches throughout Australia.
Umpire coaches who are not already in the program are encouraged to join and take advantage of the networking and education opportunities provided. For further information contact your local State Umpiring Development Manager.
ATTITUDE = ENVIRONMENT
“Where negativity exists in a sporting environment, people are quick to blame each other and feel a sense of injustice. With a negative attitude, you are less likely to be accountable and reliable.”
In my time as a coach and in life I have long lived with the philosophy of “the tail does not wag the dog”, meaning, that the positive majority is the driving force and what I focus my energies in, not the destructive minority.
As a Sporting coach I have had to learn how to & deal with many different attitudes of people within our organisation. One of our biggest challenges within the organisation is the attitude of our participants and managing these attitudes.
Our good work can be undermined by the destructive attitudes of the minority, if WE allow it. Seek out those who try and derail your group goals and objectives & make them exactly what they are “the minority”.
I have been apart of umpiring associations that have adapted this attitude and these associations have suffered the short term pain of not being able to fill some games initially, because they chose to deal with the problem, to being rewarded with improved morale, greater participation, better recruitment and greater overall success.
The key to this is to focus your energies towards a greater environment for your members. Your meetings to the group should be aimed at the positive majority, not the negative minority.
We as umpiring coaches have got to adopt the attitude of it is better to remove the negative and unacceptable behaviour (no matter how talented they are as an umpire) from our ranks so that we can change the culture for our positive participants and create an environment of support, safety, development & belonging.
“Coaches who hone mental and physical skills while ignoring moral virtues too often produce magnificent competitors who are menaces to society.”
Michael Josephson
