Sporting referees make rapid decisions under pressure, regardless of popularity. What can business leaders learn from them?

Your shift can last anything from 90 minutes to eight hours. You can't hire your underlings but you can fire them. Salaries range from zero to six figures. And performance reviews are rendered in the foulest terms imaginable, in some cases by tens of thousands of people.

All in all, the job spec of a top sporting referee or umpire is unique. Speak to a leading official about the lessons they learn in the course of doing their job, however, and you'll discover that many of them have a direct application to the world of business.

Coping with temperamental stars (people management), running a game in conjunction with other officials (teamwork), cooling a flashpoint (crisis management), juggling the main event with peer review sessions, fitness training and briefings (time management), and-perhaps above all-making split-second judgements (decision-making under pressure).

Mark Jackson, who combines a career as an independent PR consultant for clients such as Microsoft and General Motors with his role as a referee of club rugby, is certainly convinced of the side benefits of his weekend activity.

"I take into the game a lot of the skills I learnt as a PR person and I take into my working life a lot of the skills I learn on the pitch," he says. "The number one thing for me is communication. Rugby is quite specific in this area because it encourages officials to talk to the players to help them stop offending. It's called preventive refereeing.

"You're encouraged to be pithy and to the point and avoid what we call white noise. If you're constantly talking, people can't identify what the important thing is that you are trying to get across.

"It helps to encapsulate what you want to say quickly and succinctly. If you're talking to a six-foot-eight second- row forward who's twenty-odd stone and you need to get him off the pitch for 10 minutes because of something he's done, you need to pick your words carefully."

And this situation has obvious parallels in the workplace. Jackson adds: "In a work environment, with complex team issues, many managers try to wrap up a negative with praise either side. But staff will often say, 'Tell me what's wrong and how to fix it.'

"My rugby experience helped me talk to people at work about negative news. I remember having to tell a colleague he had screwed up. Rather than beat about the bush I put it much more simply. This is the problem, these are the consequences and here's what we are going to do about it. I just got to the point as quickly as I could."

Anyone who remembers the legendary rants of John McEnroe or Ilie Nastase will be aware that people management is also one of the tennis umpire's most challenging tasks.

"We use a card system," says Matthew Porsz, one of the Lawn Tennis Association's top chair umpires and a member of its development group. "When a player is complaining we don't want to go straight for our top trump." This means that if a player questions a line call, the umpire may respond by saying: "The ball was out." If the player persists, he might move on to "I saw it clearly out," and even then he will have other phrases such as "I am sure," and "There was a space between the line and the ball," to counter the most aggravated protests.

"If I used all my cards in the first sentence, what would I say when the player wanted more discussion?" asks Porsz. "It is important that we keep strong under pressure and that we allow players to have the last word, to avoid confrontation.

"You can make comparisons to negotiating in business. Are you going to go all out in the first instance? Of course not, you want to come out with the best result. For us it is the same. We don't want to lose control of a match, just like a business doesn't want to lose a deal. We could be in our hot 'office' for another two hours, so communicating effectively is essential."

While there are many common characteristics required of officials in all major sports, each has foibles of its own. A cricket match, for example, can last far longer than any other sporting event, and that calls for particular qualities in its umpires.

"In cricket, the umpire is stood with a clear line of vision, he doesn't move anywhere and the decisions are of a more psychological nature [than in other sports]," says Nick Cousins, who is both senior executive officer of the England and Wales Cricket Board's Association of Cricket Officials and chairman of the Rugby Football Union's London Society of Referees.

"Cricket is a more leisurely game," he adds, "but umpires are on for seven to eight hours so they must have a huge capacity for concentration."

Like tennis, cricket has introduced a right of appeal against decisions, which lays match officials open to a very public exposure of their misjudgements.

Hawkeye, the hi-tech ball-tracking system that is used to check whether a player really was LBW, for example, is one device used. The other is Hotspot, which shows if a batsman actually made contact with the ball or not, and is used to check LBW decisions and whether a player has been caught behind.

In football, there is no such failsafe and the referee's decision is final. This puts even more pressure on the official in a game which is already uniquely fast-moving, according to Mike Riley, a former Premiership referee who was appointed general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials body in January.

"The difference with football is the immediacy and fluidity of the game, which is very different from tennis and cricket, and rugby is more stop-start," he says. "With football the stresses last for the whole 90 minutes."

This means that referees are making decisions under pressure-and that pressure comes not just from the fast pace of the game and the reaction of the players but the people on the sidelines.

"One of the hardest things is making unpopular decisions, such as giving a penalty against the home team or sending off a player in front of 30,000 people," says Riley. "For that you need courage and your reputation will be based on your ability to get it right."

He adds: "You have to differentiate the decision from the consequences. If it upsets people, you still make that decision and that's about self-confidence."

Perhaps the best example of an official who has transferred the skills learned on the job to the sporting stage is World Cup final referee Howard Webb. He is currently on a five-year sabbatical from his position as a sergeant with the South Yorkshire police force.

Webb once said of his time on the force: "Some of the skills you apply day-to-day are really relevant. You are dealing with heated situations and trying to get people to see things your way. I've had knives pulled on me, and firearms, too. That's part of the job."

With that sort of background, you're hardly likely to be fazed by some back-chat from Ronaldo. But the referee is not completely isolated. Officials stress the importance of teamwork. The tennis umpire may cut a lonely figure as he sits isolated in his chair high above the action, but working in close co-operation with others is a key part of his role too, according to Porsz.

"The goal is to have a successful tournament and officials play an important part in achieving this," he says. "This is the same if everyone is striving to reach company targets. It cannot be done by an individual.

"On court we have line umpires, ball children, court attendants, and-off court-the referee, tour manager and other personnel. We work closely together and everyone has an important role to play. Once one 'department' crumbles others will follow. We, as chair umpires, are in the firing line and therefore it is important for us to create this team atmosphere on court."

In rugby, Jackson says it is crucial that referees learn to trust their assistants. "There was an occasion last season when I was looking at another piece of the action and a touch judge told me what he had seen necessitated a red card," he recalls. "I had no choice but to give it."

The final whistle may signal the end of a game but it also heralds a new phase for the match official. The road to self-improvement as a referee lies to a great extent in analysing what went right and what went wrong after every game. And here, again, there are lessons for the business manager.

"It can be quite a lonely business and you learn to cope by self-awareness and self-judgement," says Jackson. "You have to review each game with a critical eye and decide what needs improvement and what went well. I write it down and refer to it later.

"I think in business people can forget to take stock. Too often, if they win a pitch they don't think why it was that they won the client and, if you don't do that, you can't repeat good behaviours. You need to say, 'I like the way we did that,' to start to ingrain it as a habit."

Meanwhile, though not every skill applies in all sports, there is one particular quality that is fundamental across the board. "If I'm doing a training course for officials," says Cousins, "the first question I'll often ask is, 'What do you need at any level in any sport?' I hope they'll come up with the word 'integrity'. If you can't be fair, you can't do the job, irrespective of your competence or skill level.

"The best officials are regarded with respect by players. If you make a mistake, they respect your decision because they respect you. It's the same in the workplace. People will still work with you because they are aware it's an isolated incident."

The last word, however, goes to Porsz. He strongly believes that his experiences on court have helped him off it. "Since starting officiating I have grown as a person," he says. "The skills developed in tennis have helped me in everyday life. I remain calm in pressure situations, I've become a good negotiator and learned how to communicate effectively to a range of people. These skills help in business situations."

Howard Webb is speaking at the IoD Winter Sporting Lunch. For details, visit www.iod.com/wintersportinglunch