Let Me Share My Nightmare, Learn How to Prevent Yours

March 18, 2008 |

I’ve written about the basketball official’s pre-game conference, and how that lesson applies to real estate. The same is true for the rigorous post-game evaluation that officials do. Post game evaluation is very useful to basketball officials. Every game is filled with calls that could have gone one way or the other, and despite what you might believe, basketball officials don’t get every call right. :-) We do strive to get every call right and to be as successful as possible. Post-game evaluations are a critical part of that endeavor. Evaluating decision-making and the actions that lead to those decisions go a long way to putting yourself in a position to succeed.

Let me share with you a VERY personal example of what I mean

The next-to-last game of my season took place during the local High School district tournament. It was a semi-final game. Due to the way in which the seedings worked out, the winner of the game received an automatic birth to the state tournament. The stakes were high. The game was close.

With about 10 seconds left, the home team (white) was inbounding the ball, trailing by 2 points. They inbounded on the side of the court opposite of me, meaning I was all alone on my side. As the play developed, white made a pass to a player in front of me. Officiating mechanics dictate that I should move toward the baseline when this happens to get a good look at the play. I did that. Almost immediately, the player in front of me began to dribble towards the top of the key, away from me. After about two dribbles, the ball bounced off a foot and went out of bounds. From my angle, the ball appeared to have bounced off of white’s foot. I hit the whistle, pointed, and yelled “RED!”

The home crowed went nuts. As did the white team’s bench, since the play was literally a few feet in front of their head coach (who wasn’t very happy). He asked my partners to intervene, but that call was all mine. Mine alone. I made it. The home team ending losing the game a few seconds later, ending their season.

It was gut-wrenching.

I immediately went home to watch the tape of the game on the local news station. Luckily, the cameraman had an angle that was completely opposite of mine, and completely unobstructed. As we say in officiating, “the tape don’t lie.” If the camera was rolling, my call was on that tape, and it would be in the highlights.

It was. I went home and watched that play DOZENS of times. I practically wore out the DVR going forward and backward, slow motion, pausing. Every time, the play was the same. The ball went off a foot, out of bounds, I called “RED!” and everyone reacted.

The funny thing was, as many times as I watched it, I still couldn’t tell if I was right or wrong. I had Kari watch it, she couldn’t tell either. I used every indicator I could think of from reaction of players to the physics of basketball to evaluate that call.

I’ll just have to live with the fact that I’ll never truly know if I got it right or wrong. That is a tough thing for a referee to have to accept. I did, however, find out what the participants thought.

Learning from my nightmare

Luckily, that is not the way my season ended. It actually ended a week later with a very competitive state regional championship. I was very pleased. I will always remember that one play, however.

As a referee, it is my responsibility to learn from it, and I know that I have. I now know that if that situation arises again, I am going to have to be more aware of the ball potentially going out of bounds, and I will work even harder to get on top of that play, or move towards the sideline in an attempt to gain a better angle.

That’s it. One simple change. It will probably require 2-3 physical steps, maximum. Doing that might prevent that nightmare from ever happening again.

Good. Lesson learned. On to the next game.

Applying Post-Game evaluation to Real Estate

Post-game evaluation is drilled into the head of every successful basketball referee. During the upcoming NCAA tournament, EVERY CALL of EVERY OFFICIAL is tracked and evaluated (its a tournament for the refs, too). In the NBA, the league makes a tape of every game and edits together the good the bad and the ugly of the officiating and requires the refs to watch that tape immediately after the game.

You should be just as rigorous in evaluating your own performance. You should evaluate every transaction, every marketing plan implementation, every decision you make that affects your business. Be hard on yourself (but not too hard). Hold yourself accountable.

When things go wrong, don’t wallow. It’s okay to feel bad about things for a moment, but if you want to prevent bad things from happening in the future, you need to learn from whatever mistakes you may have made. If you did things right, you need to take the steps necessary to repeat those decisions.

Better yet, ask your clients what they thought of your performance. Encourage them to be honest and offer suggestions about things that you could do better. Do whatever it takes, ask whatever questions you must, gain all the information you can so that you can continually improve.

Post-game evaluation is a critical process for the success of every basketball official. If you make it part of what you do, your chance to be a successful real estate professional will increase exponentially.

Posted by Daniel Rothamel | Filed Under Blog, Industry Issues, Officiating 

Comments

3 Responses to “Let Me Share My Nightmare, Learn How to Prevent Yours”

  1. Missy Caulk on March 18th, 2008 3:09 am

    As a basketball fan, I love the analogy. It happens to both sides.

    I send out a follow up questionaire after a sale or a close. We ask people to be completely honest. We want to improve and we get a good response rate. We also include a self addressed, stamped envelope to send it back to us in.

    How do you know if you don’t ask.

    Off topic… I was at the rec center today working out, and a commercial came on from not fedX buy the other one. It was like In Black and White, the guy was holding up posters. Have you seen it? I thought about you and the Zebra.

    [Reply]

  2. BawldGuy Talking on March 18th, 2008 6:11 am

    Daniel — I feel your pain Bro.

    The analogy to our business is so on the money. I have a third party conduct a survey a few times yearly with clients who have AND haven’t been in a recent transaction with us.

    Calling it a learning situation can be kind at times. :) It’s been one of the best things we’ve ever done. In fact, one of the best ever marketing ideas came from this survey technique.

    Good stuff Daniel.

    [Reply]

  3. Jay Seville -- Arlington real estate on March 28th, 2008 6:13 am

    I’m not a basketball fan, but I LOVE this post. All the time I redo in my mind phone conversations, negotiations, contracts and decide what was right and what could or should I have said or written or advised. One can learn so much from their transactions if you really analyze them afterwards/during. By doing this for awhile you get to where you are way above the pack in protecting your clients when writing a real estate contract.
    j

    [Reply]

Got something to say?





Creative Commons License