That question more and more is drawing the attention of businesses. In this Harvard Business Review article, researcher Sandy Pentland concludes that patterns of communication mean more than factors like intelligence, personality, skill, and the substance of discussions combined.

But what exactly are patterns of communication?

Pentland has developed a badge that measures the energy, body language and even the places where people communicate. Strangely enough, the badge doesn’t measure — or care about — the substance of the communication. It just collects data on how people interact.

If you’re a coach, boss or leader of any kind, the video in the article can help you think about your team.

As a clue, listen to what Pentland says about the personality type that best predicts a team’s success: a charismatic connector. This is the person who goes from team member to team member, asking their opinion on certain issues.

This Psychology Today article goes into the subject of charismatic connectors. It said, “In brainstorming sessions with teams whose social style was similar to these charismatic connectors, the resulting quality of the talking was characterized by high levels of listening, more even-handed turn-taking, and high levels of engagement, trust, and cooperation.”

Who knows? Perhaps Jeremy Lin is a charismatic connector, and that helps explain why the New York Knicks improved with him in the lineup.

Do you know enough about charismatic connectors? Do you have one on your team?

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.

She also said, with not as much pride, that her daughter can only do one thing at a time.

Only?

By being able to do “only” one thing at a time, her daughter owns the key to success. Doing “only” one thing at a time is a gift, not a limitation.

“I can’t do two things at once,” said Helena Bonham Carter. “I can’t even do one thing at once.”

Great things come to people who can define a task and then stay with it through completion. Narrow focus helps you beat the odds, win the big prize. It’s a basic part of your mental game. Multitasking is the enemy of quality.

“Multitasking is a way of screwing up several things at once,” a wise person once said.

Besides, the ability to focus on more than one thing at a time is a myth. You can switch quickly from one thought to another, but your brain cannot hold two simultaneously.

“To do two things at once is to do neither,” said ancient writer Publilius.

I’m not sure what the woman who can 12 things at a time does for a living, but I would bet on the quality of the work turned in by the daughter who can do “only” one thing.

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.

This comes to mind because of a Geoffrey James article in Inc. titled “8 Things Great Bosses Demand from Employees.”

Top on the list is “Be True to Your Word.”

Writes James, “Your boss wants to trust you. Really.  Therefore, whenever you accept an assignment, follow through religiously, even fanatically. Do what you say you’re going to do. Never overcommit, and avoid hedging your bets with vague statements like “I’ll try” and “maybe.” Instead, make your word carry real weight.”

This advice applies not only to the relationship between boss and worker, but also to coaches and athletes, teachers and students, friends and even spouses. No one wants to be lied to or fooled.

As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

A friend of mine recently had a chance to meet baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken. A slugging infielder, Ripken is best known for playing in 2,632 consecutive games, the most in big-league history.

He was the ultimate in trust. For more than 16 seasons, managers trusted to Ripken to show up in shape to play, and to give his best effort. Ripken never betrayed that trust.

If you want to have a great relationship with anyone, begin by doing what you say you are going to do.

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.

“We’re going to re-set your baseline today,” a SEAL tells a group of athletes as they embark on a grueling session to test and expand their limits.

Olympians and SEALS are just like the rest of us. They have limits to their ability to endure discomfort, pain and frustration. The difference comes in the way they handle those limits. Their life is a struggle to re-set boundaries.

That’s what brought them to SEALS training, with its freezing water, rolls in the dirt, and heavy loads to lift, as detailed in this article from USA Today.

“We push in our training,” says Zack Railey, a 2008 Olympic silver medalist in sailing, “but this was just a totally different type of physical and mental exhaustion.”

Olympic gold medalist Garrett Weber-Gale went through the training with Michael Phelps and other swimmers in 2009. “I guess what I took away from that was the human body can always achieve more than we believe,” she said. “And that’s controlled purely by our minds.”

You may never play in the Olympics, but you can compete against the most important foe of all — yourself. You can become a SEAL or an Olympian in the way you struggle with the things that are holding you back.

As peak performance expert Dave Cross has written, all the things you want lie outside your comfort zone.

“You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown,” said Denis Waitley.
Don’t wait for a Navy SEAL to re-set your limits. Start doing it yourself today!

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.

As a wise person once observed, “The problem isn’t the problem. The way you handle the problem is the problem.”

For a look at how great problem-solvers approach their work, here’s an article. It’s from Inc. and it’s called “4 Secrets of Great Critical Thinkers.”

In case you’re wondering, these recent posts have been very brief because I’m putting final touches on a new book wit co-author Dr. Rob Gilbert, a sports psychologist. It’s called “Thank God You’re Lazy!” But whenever I see a post that may interest coaches or other leaders, I try to pass it along.

*** *** *** ***

Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.

The good news is that you have a great ability to focus. If you don’t believe me, think abut the last time you watched a great TV show. You were really locked in.

The bad new is that you don’t always use this focus for the right thing. You know how it goes: When you’re at work or school, you think of home. When you’re home, you’re preoccupied by work.

Here’s a great article on how you can use your incredible ability in the right way.

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.

“Do not leave this road unless you know exactly where you are going,” it read.

You didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what the sign meant. All you had to do was look at the landscape. Glowing red rock, parched sand and no sign of water. If you got lost out here, you wouldn’t be coming back.

That advice was perfect for that time and place, but not so much for your life right now. In fact, just the opposite is true. If you don’t leave the path now and then, you are merely following others. If you don’t risk, you can’t discover. If you don’t fail, you can’t learn.

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary,” says speaker Jim Rohn.

You can see risk on display in the new baseball season. Every time a batter swings at a pitch, he risks missing the ball. But if he never swings at all, he will never hit it.

To win the big game, to perform at your peak, to beat the odds, you must take risks. Some people say, “What if I give everything I have but don’t win?” By refusing to take risks, they are taking the biggest risk of all — that they will never truly live.

I recently read a quote about the fear of death. It went something like this: “Don’t worry about dying. Worry that you may never start living.”

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how!

Berg was a mediocre batter, but he did speak seven languages, prompting Dave Harris, an outfielder for the Washington Senators, to say, “Yeah, I know, and he can’t hit in any of them.”

Anyway, as the story goes, Berg’s intellect and skill in languages won him an invitation to teach baseball in Japan in the early 1930s. At first he protested, saying that he didn’t speak the language He made the trip anyway, and when it was time to go home, someone noticed Berg speaking to a dignitary in Japanese.

“I thought you didn’t speak Japanese,” the person said.

“Yes,” replied Berg, “but that was a month ago.”

It turns out that when you look at the details of Berg’s life, the story isn’t true. At best, it is a jumble of stories about a person who had a passion for languages.

But passion led him all over the world. Passion can change your life.

“A person can succeed at almost anything for which they have unlimited enthusiasm,” said Charles M. Schwab.

Whether you’re an athlete, a student, a leader or in business, you will accomplish more if you approach your work with passion.

“Said author Jack Kerouac, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live.”

When I talk about passion, people often say, “But what if I don’t feel that passion?”

It’s a great question, but most people don’t like the answer. Here it is: If you don’t feel passionate about what you’re doing, either look  more deeply into what you’re doing, or do something else.

This answer turns off many people because they are comfortable where they are. They’re not happy, but they’re comfortable. They don’t want to risk income, especially in this economy. Unfortunately, comfort is the enemy of growth. To change your life, yoiur must change your thoughts. Find a goal. Find a mission. Find what you are mad about.

Someone once said, “When you know clearly what you want, you’ll wake up every morning excited about life.”

Who knows? Maybe in a month you’ll be speaking Japanese.

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Does your group need a speaker? TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Injuries, bad calls and momentum swings will test the will of all teams, and the one that responds best will win.

It will take mental toughness to survive, which raises a key question. In planning their practices, why don’t more coaches work on building that kind of toughness?

If it’s a sure thing that every team will face adversity in games, then every team should face adversity in practice.

A creative coach can find many ways to test will as well as skill.
– Find drills that put the athletes into pressure situations.
– Make the athletes succeed at a certain skill several times in a row.
– Throw in an officiating “mistake” now and then.
– Pipe in loud noise to simulate a rowdy crowd.

There is a fancy phrase related to this kind of training. It’s called state dependent remembering, which means that when someone learns something, their mood and the surroundings become part of the same memory.

So if the skills are learned in a calm environment, the athlete will have a hard time performing them in a crazy gym.

What ways do you use to train for adversity?
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Does your group need a speaker? TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

By dumping the supposed ashes of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il all over Ryan Seacrest, Cohen gave us all a peek into where greatness comes from — outside the comfort zone.

“The skills and actions you need to be the (performer) you want to be lie outside your current comfort zone,” says peak performance expert Dave Cross, who adds that winners have an “ever-growing comfort zone.”

Most people could never have done what Cohen did. They are too shy, too cautious. Greatness must be brave, and great performers push the envelope of effort, skill and daring.

“It keeps things exciting,” Mark Foster of Foster the People said. “I love when people do something outside the box.”

To really improve at anything, you must work slightly outside your comfort zone. Otherwise, you’re practicing things you already know. If you’re working on your basketball free throws, try to make more than you made yesterday. Force yourself to start over if you miss. That’s deliberate practice. Do anything to expand your comfort zone.

There’s a saying that if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. If you want to get what other people want, you must do things they are not willing to do. That means working outside the comfort zone.

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it,” said Goethe.

So can you!

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Does your group need a speaker? TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.