WE NEVER STOP TALKING

I have been thinking a lot about communication lately, or sometimes the lack of it. Emails that never get returned. Texts that go quiet. Calls that never get returned. And somewhere in that thought, I landed on something that struck me as a little strange. Sports might be one of the single best examples of communication working exactly the way it is supposed to, and yet plenty of us who grew up in it still struggle to communicate off the field.

Watch a football play develop and count how much communication is happening at once. The coach calls the play, and it gets in through a signal or a headset. Then it gets adjusted again, out loud, on the field, both by the offense and by a defense reading what it sees and shouting calls of its own. There is even a whole layer of communication that never makes a sound. A look a quarterback gives a receiver before the snap, understood by nobody else on the field, built entirely on chemistry. When communication on the football field fails, a big mistake is about to be exposed. When a receiver runs the wrong route, or an offensive lineman blocks the wrong gap, or a safety gets confused by what he sees, that typically leads to big plays for the opponent.

Basketball may be louder about it than any other sport. The defense should never stop talking. Screens have to be called out. Movement has to be tracked out loud. Teammates communicate encouragement to each other constantly, in the middle of the possession, not just after it. The offense signals or calls its own play, and players will huddle up mid-game just to get on the same page. Even the officials communicate entirely through hand signals, a whole separate language running underneath the game.

Baseball may be the most quietly sophisticated of all of them. Traditionally, almost everything ran through hand signals, a base coach signaling in from the box or the bench, a catcher flashing fingers down low to tell the pitcher what to throw. Technology now lets a coach call the pitch directly to the pitcher and catcher, which speeds up the game and keeps the other dugout from stealing signs. Soccer runs its own version, with officials communicating through cards and players calling for the ball with a raised arm or shouting for help on defense. Goalkeepers have to communicate where they need support in front of them. A quiet goalkeeper is usually not a very successful one.

There are not many team sports left standing that do not depend entirely on communication to function. Beach volleyball might make the case louder than any of them, precisely because there are only two of you out there. Defensive hand signals behind your back tell your partner which way you are committing to block before the point even starts. Everything else, on offense and defense both, gets called out loud in real time. With only two players covering the entire court, there is no room for assuming the other person knows what you are thinking. You have to be on the same page, every single point, or the gaps show up immediately.

Sport Does Not Leave It To Chance

Here is what I keep coming back to. None of that happens because athletes are naturally better communicators than the rest of us. It happens because the sport requires it.

The huddle is not optional. The signal system is not a suggestion. A basketball defense that talks through every screen is not a group of unusually chatty people, it is a group that got coached and drilled until calling out a screen became automatic. Nobody asks a catcher if he feels like putting down a sign. Sport builds communication into the architecture, so it does not depend on anybody being in the right mood that day.

Real life has no huddle. Nobody signals you to check in on a friend. There is no whistle that stops play when two people quit talking to each other. Off the field, communication only happens if a person decides, right then, to make it happen, and that is exactly the kind of decision that gets skipped when we are busy, or tired, or frustrated, or convinced the other person should have reached out first.

So maybe we are not worse communicators than athletes are. Maybe we are just operating without the structure that made them look so good.

Making It A Rule Instead Of A Mood

As a teacher, I try to acknowledge every student I recognize when I pass them in the hall, even if it is just a nod. It costs nothing and I think it makes them feel seen. Communication does not have to be spoken or written at all. A fist bump or a high five carries just as much weight. I am big on that as a coach, because to me, that gesture says I've got your back without a single word attached to it. Sometimes that is enough to quiet the conversation happening inside somebody's own head, the one that tends to run negative if nobody interrupts it.

I was trained early to respond to any email within 24 hours, and I still hold myself to that. Silence gets filled in by whoever is waiting on you, and almost never with something generous.

I apply a version of the same rule in the other direction after a game. Don't contact me for 24 hours, and I won't be reaching out to a player in that window either. Athletics bring out every emotion a person has, and right after a loss is almost never the right time to communicate anything that matters. At the higher levels of sport, so much time is devoted to having a team ready to play. Between film, practice, and everything else that goes into trying to get a win, you pour everything you have into it. When you don't get the result you want, the last thing you want to hear is how you could have done something different, or that a different lineup would have changed things. Something gets said in the heat of the moment that would never have been said otherwise, and it does not sit well with anyone once the emotion clears. Waiting 24 hours gives that emotion somewhere to go. You might still be fired up on the other side of it, but you have given your head a chance to get right first.

Those two rules look like opposites. One says respond quickly. The other says wait. But they are the same rule underneath, which is that I do not trust myself to get this right on instinct alone, so I built something to hold me to it.

I am not writing any of this because I have it figured out. Reading a room has always come easy to me. I can usually tell what someone is carrying before they say a word about it. Where I have work to do is on the other side of it. I will say the thing I am thinking without always accounting for how it is going to land, and being right about something has never made it easier to hear.

Communication only works when the message is delivered in a way that the recipient receives the message and processes it accordingly.

 So here is what I am sitting with. Communication is not just whether the message was sent. It is whether it landed the way you meant it to. Who did you say something true to this week, and did you say it in a way they could actually hear?

 — Kevin