Flying home yesterday on Southwest, I came across an article about the book What Every Body is Saying, by Joe Navarro. Joe’s been studying non-verbal behavior for over 30 years – Twenty-five were spent in the FBI catching spies.

I loved reading what my different poses mean to other folks. Knowing that a large percentage of our communication with our players is non-verbal, I became fascinated to learn how I could be more intentional with my physical messages.

Here are a few examples:

Standing With Hands on Hips

Use It When you feel you’re being bullied. By putting our hands on our hips, we make ourselves look strong and powerful. It says, “I am standing my ground.”

Avoid It If you want to appear calm and approachable. It’s a very territorial stance—it makes you larger—which is why you often see people do it when they are in a heated discussion.

Crossing Your Arms

Use It To demonstrate that you don’t like what you heard yet you don’t want to just say so. Crossing your arms can also say, “I am here, but I don’t agree with you.”

Avoid It When an athlete wants to discuss an issue. Crossing your arms can be perceived as a blocking behavior. Keeping your arms at your sides or your fingers intertwined below the belt line makes you look friendlier.

Shaking With Both Hands

Use It Exclusively with your grandmother. Only she will appreciate it.

Avoid It At all costs. This is, by every account, the worst handshake you can give. Nobody likes it. Do not use it with a recruit’s parents. Politicians think it scores points; it doesn’t.

Placing Hands Behind Back

Use It To establish formality and decorum when necessary, or when you wish to be alone.

Avoid It When you want others to feel comfortable. The regal stance implies that formality and distance are appreciated. It makes you look standoffish, distant, and unapproachable.

Since the vast majority of our nonverbal cues are driven by our subconscious mind – they are important indications of how we are feeling and what we’re thinking. Pay close attention to what your body language is saying to your team and vice versa!

Teamwork is always a hot topic in sports.  Some coaches scour the land looking for the latest tips on team building while others feel team building games are a waste of time.  So the question remains, “Do team building activities lead to improved teamwork?  It depends. It depends on what stage your team is in.  Sport psychologists often refer to four stages that teams go through. These stages are typical of most teams and groups. Surprisingly one of the normal stages teams experience is fighting!

The four stages, “forming,” “storming,” “norming,” and “conforming” were first developed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965.  It is one of the best-known team development theories.  It’s useful to keep Tuckman’s stages in mind as you progress through the season.  They will help you select appropriate team building activities and/or they may explain many of the behaviors that drive you crazy!

The first stage, “forming” is also known as “testing.” In essence, team members size each other up. Players make judgments about the coach, the strengths and weaknesses of the other players and where they themselves fit in with the team.

The next stage is called “storming,” also known as the “infighting” stage. During this stage, there is often arguing, tension, conflict, and rebellion. Players are competing against one another and trying to establish their position on the team. They wonder:

• Will I make the team?
• Will I start?
• What does the coach think of me?
• What’s my role on the team?

The third stage is the “norming” stage. It’s the quiet period that follows the storming period.  Ideally everyone now knows their role on the team, and they have accepted there place on the team. If players continue to express dissatisfaction with their roles, the team will not be successful. The main focus now is TEAM not ME.

The last stage is the “performing” stage. At this point, each team member is genuinely concerned about the welfare and progress of teammates. When one player experiences success, other teammates are genuinely happy for them. In fact, teammates help each other to achieve success. In this stage, there is a high degree of trust.

Arriving at the “performing” stages means weathering the other stages. It means patience, persistence, hard work and constant re-commitment on the part of the coach and the team. A coach needs to know the stages of team development to reflect on honestly assess where a team stands in their progression, and in turn, what to work on to attain their next level. The good news is what might appear as discouraging, may actually be the team reaching an essential milestone in their cohesion toward their next level of evolution as a “performing” team.

Effective coaching is not so much what you say but what you ask.  Asking your players powerful questions is much more productive than telling them what to do.  True coaching is about developing a strong relationship with your players for the purpose of THEIR growth and development.  It’s about helping your players fulfill their goals and commitments.  Applying effective communication skills in coaching helps you to develop a strong relationship with your players.

One of a crucial coaching skill is having open coaching conversations with your athletes. Coaching conversations are side-by-side interactions where both of you are looking at where the athlete is headed and discussing what is the next step they need to take to get them there.  Your job is to conduct dialogues of inquiry with your players where ultimately they discover the next action to take.

As a coach, you set the context for these dialogues.  Setting the stage for effective coaching conversations begins during the recruiting phase and is reinforced every time you address your team.  Your players need to know clearly who you are and what you are trying to accomplish in your program.  Players need to know from the outset of their relationship with you that their goals and dreams are in alignment with yours. Effective coaching dialogs help to facilitate strong team communication and it creates an open atmosphere in the team.

Once a “good fit” is established, then the dialogues of inquiry can take place.  To coach anyone effectively, you need to know what they are committed to in their life.  Once you know what they are up to, it’s time to ask questions that will reveal the proper path to getting them where they want to go!

Resilience is a key component of mental toughness. Stanford football Coach Jim Harbaugh embodies it and his team is following his lead – all the way to their first National Ranking since 2001.

Harbaugh honed his resiliency during his tenure as an NFL Pro Bowl quarterback – a time when he studied with Dr. Jim Loehr.

“As an NFL quarterback, my job was to perform under pressure. During the heat of battle in a big game, I often only had seconds to make critical decisions — and those decisions could win or lose games. Loehr’s training system helped me mentally and emotionally to make more game-winning decisions than ever.”

Loehr defines emotional resiliency as “the ability to take a punch emotionally and bounce back quickly, to recover quickly from disappointments, mistakes, and missed opportunities and jump back into battle fully ready to resume the fight.”

Now as a Head Coach, Harbaugh has instilled a winning attitude and resilient culture in which players expect to win week in and week out. Here’s what Harbaugh had to say after the Cardinal bounced back from two road defeats to beat ASU and rock 7th ranked Oregon:

“Our guys don’t quit. They never give up. You cannot kill them. You can’t demoralize them; they won’t go away. Now we have to be relentless. We must be the hunter. Eventually, we want to kill you. We need to make that next step to get up there with teams like USC.”

Training Tip: Balance the ups and the downs. Bad losses, slumps and sassed opportunities are all potential sources of stress. Help your team handle the stress by encouraging them to keep fun in their lives. Remind them to go to the movies, hang out with friends, shop, etc. This means you too, coach! Planning for the emotional ups is a critical step to coping with the inevitable “emotional downs” of competitive sports!

Fall is in the air and scholastic sports are in full swing.  Post competition comments are also flowing freely.  In the last few days I’ve heard the following comments from various coaches:

• “We had our chances there. We just didn’t execute well”
• “We just didn’t execute the way we wanted to”
• “We just didn’t finish off the drives, you know. We had one little thing go wrong. We have to get all eleven on the same page”
• “We tried to battle it out, We had a game plan all week. We just didn’t execute I guess”

So what you ask?  I finally figured out what irritated me about these lines – they sound like excuses.  They remind me of an athlete saying “my bad”.

Saying “We just didn’t execute” is letting yourself and your team off the hook.  The conversation needs to go deeper.  Why didn’t you execute?

Winning in competition is about executing skills at a high level, at high speed, at less than optimal conditions and under pressure.  It requires consistently making the right decision about when, where and how to execute the skill.

If you are coaching at the varsity or collegiate level, it’s doubtful your team suddenly lost their ability to execute (the how to’s).   If they still have the ability to execute, then what got in the way?  Tactical mismatch?  Mindset?  Mental toughness?

Rarely is a team sport athlete going to execute their skills with technical excellence – there are too many variables (opponents, weather, field conditions etc.)

If “poor execution” pops into your mind following a competition, challenge yourself to dig deeper.  Look beyond the scoreboard and stat sheet.  What else was going on?  Why was this game plan beyond their ability to execute on this day?