If you don’t know me well, you might want to check out my introduction that I wrote a couple weeks ago.
So what is it I think I’m supposed to do as director? The obvious director-y things are putting out announcements, adjudicating challenges, clarifying the rules, pairing each round, keeping records, providing equipment and supplies, and so forth.
But what about at a higher level? What’s my role in helping the club not just continue, but to flourish? That breaks down into two categories of actions: Promoting good things, and preventing bad things.
Promoting good things, like keeping us on good terms with the diner, helps the club grow. I don’t really believe in growth for its own sake, but I want enough new members coming in to backfill for departing members, and to have good turnout for both live and virtual club sessions. This website is another thing I’ve set up to promote growth.
Other good things I try to promote are fairness, friendly competition, players’ improvement, and preparation and encouragement for tournament play.
Preventing bad things is driven by the recognition that we are all very different people. The only thing we are all pretty certain to have in common is our love for Scrabble. We have all skill levels. We come from widely varying socioeconomic, religious, political, ethnic, and sex/gender backgrounds. As with any niche hobby that requires some smarts and involves lots of dedication to things like memorizing lists, we are also very neurodiverse. Some of us are completely neurotypical and fully able, while others among us, myself included, are neurodivergent to varying extents. It comes with the territory.
Neurodiversity (including neurotypicality) creates behaviors that can grate on other people and cause conflict. We who live with things like ADHD, autism, OCD, etc., do our best to get on in a neurotypical world. It’s a lot of work. From the other side, each of us has to tolerate our club mates’ idiosyncrasies. That’s also a lot of work.
As director, it is my job to try to figure out where to draw the line between how much one person has to change their behaviors versus how much another has to accommodate that behavior. When conflict arises, I will listen to all sides, then take whatever action I deem necessary to resolve the conflict and keep a pleasant atmosphere for the entire club. If I’ve hit the sweet spot, then the people involved remain only angry at me, not at each other.
Matt Hopkins, the director of the first tournaments I went to almost 20 years ago, used to jokingly remind players that he needs things to do to not feel useless. His point was that people should not wait until they’re ready to come to blows before bringing him in. I’m going to say the same thing about our club. As soon as things get dicey, come get me! Its what I’m there for.
This will go a long way in helping the club stick to what I see as its priorities, which are (starting with the least important):
- Win Scrabble tournaments and gain rating points;
- Get better at Scrabble;
- Play Scrabble;
- Have fun!
