Is Emotional Intelligence Important For Referees?

Emotions, we all have them. That’s what makes us human. However, do you know that the simple shift of having better knowledge of emotions could enhance your refereeing ability?

Understanding how others, such as players and club officials, are feeling as well as how you’re feeling can have a massive impact on your performance levels. But how is this possible? How does something intangible affect your physical ability?

I have been looking into emotional intelligence, and whether it matters for officials. This is what I found:

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and the emotions of the people around you. If you have high emotional intelligence, you can identify what you are feeling and what those around you are feeling. You can also understand what those emotions mean and how they can impact behaviour. For example, identifying that a player is upset that he missed a penalty uses your emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can be divided into two emotional competencies:

1. Intrapersonal emotional skills – These are how well we identify, express, regulate and use our own emotions.
2. Interpersonal emotional skills – These are how well we identify, express, regulate, and use the emotions of others.

Both of these emotional competencies play a huge role in emotional intelligence. But what impact do they have for referees?

How Does Emotional Intelligence Impact Referees?

The fixtures officials are appointed to naturally have a high emotional element attached to them, more often than not.

Imagine you are refereeing a Cup Final. It is likely your emotions will start to arise under severe amounts of pressure. This is completely normal, but these intense emotions can either cause you to thrive or crumble. With emotional intelligence, you may be able to avoid the latter.

Officials who are emotionally intelligent can usually identify the emotions of others through their non-verbal behaviours. This could be through analysis of facial expressions, body language, eye contact and even posture.

When performing, it is important to recognise which emotions are influencing your performance and if this effect is positive or negative. Gaining knowledge of this will help you switch to your best emotional state when refereeing and enhance your performance.

What do Studies Show About Emotional Intelligence?

Studies have shown that emotional intelligence has a positive impact on officials’ performances. In this interesting research, participants were asked to watch videos of referees during matches and guess whether they were performing well or badly. Emotional intelligence will help you identify that when the officials are struggling, they tend to display more negative emotional states compared to when they are performing well, in which their emotional states are seen to be more positive.

Now, you would think participants who had higher interpersonal emotional skills (identifying others’ emotions well) would do a better job at identifying which referees were performing well or badly, right? Well, shockingly, that’s not the case. Results showed it was those with high intrapersonal skills (identifying their own emotions well) who were more successful in the study.

Yes, how well we express, identify, and understand our own emotions has a direct effect on how well we can do the same for others. So, how does understanding our own emotions better help us understand the emotions of others? The answer may be mirror neurons. Let’s take a look at the science behind that.

The Brain & Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that activates when we watch someone do something, causing our brains to “mirror” what we see. For example, when watching your favourite player take a penalty, have you ever felt as nervous as if you were taking the penalty yourself? That’s because of the mirror neurons.

These special neurons explain why having a better understanding of our own emotions helps us to understand others. If watching an action and performing it cause the same part of the brain to activate, then it allows us to understand how these same actions can also elicit the same feelings in other people.

Referees with high intrapersonal skills can better relate to what other officials are feeling thanks to similarities with what they may have experienced during a fixture or fitness testing. Think about it, if you’ve ever performed poorly in a key fixture or missed a game changing incident, you know how it feels. So, if you see another referee in the same situation, you’ll have a more accurate idea of what they are feeling just by observing their emotional state through non-verbal behaviours, you’ve been through the same thing yourself.

What Does This Mean For Your Refereeing?

Emotional intelligence can play a big role in officiating. Increasing your emotional intelligence can provide a better insight into players, club officials and even your colleagues.

Emotional intelligence also allows you to manipulate your own emotions if you have a good understanding of them. For instance, if you are aware that you perform your best when you’re calm, you could engage in meditation to lower your arousal levels and help you relax before you head out into the middle.

Four Tips to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

So, we’ve learnt that to better identify others’ emotions, we need to better understand and manage our own. But how can we do this? Here are four tips:

1. Keep a journal for matchday and training – Noting down what emotions you feel and how they impact your performance can be very beneficial. It allows you to identify what emotions you need to regulate during fixtures to help you deliver games successfully.
2. Listen to music – Listening to music before a game can manipulate your emotions depending on the type of music you listen to. If you need to feel energised, then upbeat music may be the best choice, whereas if you want to feel relaxed, try calming music.
3. Positive self-talk – When you consistently use positive self-talk, you create a relationship between self-talk and emotion. Positive self-talk can help you achieve the emotional state you desire before performance and maximise your potential.
4. Goal setting – Setting emotionally-focused goals can help develop your emotional intelligence. Once you establish which emotions aid and hinder your performance, the next step is to try and change these emotions, and goal setting is a good way to do so.

Final Reflections

Who knew emotions could have such a significant impact!

The power of emotional intelligence is never ending and if you invest a little extra time into improving it, this will really show in your performances out in the middle. Emotional intelligence can give you an advantage over your colleagues and enhance your abilities in high pressure situations on the field of play. Therefore, if you try to understand your own emotions better, this could really change your officiating, for the better.

At The Third Team I work individually and in collaboration with different professionals where I have developed workshops and 1-2-1 sessions associated with Resilience and Mental Toughness Development to help referees. The workshops and 1-2-1 sessions are interactive, where referees are encouraged to open up and share their experiences to help themselves and each other.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like to know more about my workshops or 1-2-1 sessions and how I could help you or your officials.

Best Wishes,