You’re giving a presentation. You’ve just shared an idea you’ve been preparing for weeks. Then you notice someone in the room cross their arms, lean back, and furrow their brow.
The instinct, for most of us, is immediate: They don’t like what I’m saying. Maybe they’re angry. Maybe they’ve stopped listening. Maybe I should wrap up and get out.
But here’s the thing: When it comes to reading nonverbal cues, you almost certainly have no idea why that person is reacting the way they are. And your assumptions are probably wrong.
When Reading Nonverbal Cues, the Trigger and the Reason Are Not the Same Thing
Research from Dr. Paul Ekman, the psychologist behind the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), identifies seven universal emotions that we can read on the human face across cultures: anger, disgust, surprise, fear, contempt, sadness, and happiness.
Each of these emotions has a universal trigger. Anger is triggered by the obstruction of a goal. Sadness comes from the loss of something we value: a job, our credibility, or an opportunity. Fear comes from a perceived threat. These triggers are reliable enough that behavioural analysts, credibility experts, and coaches use them as a framework for understanding what someone might be experiencing.
But here’s what that research doesn’t tell you: why someone is feeling this emotion right now.
Why is the person crossing their arms in your meeting? They could be angry because your idea threatens a project they’ve spent months building. They could be sad because you just reminded them of a missed opportunity. Their shoulder could be sore. They could have gotten a text from their vet this morning about their pet and be carrying grief they have nowhere to put. Or they might love what you’re saying and be comforting themselves because they wish they’d known it sooner. They might also just be cold!
Physical reactions to emotions do tell you something. They just don’t tell you everything. And when we assume they do, we risk getting it wrong.
Single Nonverbal Cues Are Routinely Misread, Even by Experienced Leaders
The crossed arms example isn’t hypothetical. It’s one of the most misread nonverbal cues in professional settings, largely because people feel so certain what it means.
We’ve absorbed a cultural shorthand: arms crossed equals closed, resistant, defensive. But a self-hug (which is what crossing your arms actually is) is often a self-soothing response. We do it when we need comfort, when we’re processing something, or when we’re cold. Sometimes it can even signal confidence: I don’t need to open myself up to you. You need what I have. Other times, it may simply mean someone is deep in thought, taking in what you’re saying.
Eye contact is another commonly misread nonverbal cue. Conventional wisdom says people avoid eye contact when they’re lying. Research suggests the opposite may be true. Skilled deceivers sometimes use more eye contact, watching your reaction carefully to calibrate their story. Meanwhile, someone avoiding your gaze might be doing so because they feel shame, they’re overstimulated, neurodiverse, or anxious for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
A single cue tells you almost nothing. Behavioural analysts look for a cluster: multiple changes that deviate from what’s normal for that person. Not one crossed arm or one averted glance, but a constellation of variations that together suggest something worth paying attention to. That’s not because those cues clearly reveal what someone is experiencing. Instead, they signal that it’s time to ask questions and better understand what the person is experiencing in that moment.
Why Baseline Is the Key to Reading Nonverbal Cues Accurately
This is where relationships matter. The better you know someone, the more useful nonverbal cues become. That’s not because you know what they mean, but because you know what’s different from that person’s normal, or baseline, behaviour.
One example: an engineering supervisor with a prominent eye twitch. His team learned quickly that the twitch was simply part of who he was. It was his baseline, constant and unremarkable. What they eventually noticed was that when things weren’t going well, the twitch stopped. That departure from his norm became a meaningful signal. Not because they knew what was wrong, but because they knew something was wrong.
That’s the distinction worth making. A variation from baseline is an invitation to ask a question, not a conclusion to jump to. It tells you something may be happening, not what that something is.
Cultural, demographic, and individual differences matter here, too. Someone who grew up in a culture where sustained eye contact is considered disrespectful or confrontational will behave differently from someone for whom it’s expected. Someone who fidgets constantly isn’t displaying anxiety. That just may be how they regulate. Or it could be something else entirely. Learning someone’s baseline is an ongoing process, and it pays off most when a conversation is at its toughest.
How Coaches Can Use Nonverbal Cues to Have Better Conversations
It’s easy during difficult conversations (giving feedback, talking about performance, or managing up) to make assumptions about why the other person is reacting the way they are.
Their face flushes and you think: they’re angry at me. They go quiet and you think: I’ve lost them. They cross their arms and you think: they’re shutting down.
Knowing that emotional triggers are universal and that a single nonverbal cue can have a dozen different causes gives you somewhere else to put your attention. Instead of monitoring yourself through their reactions, try becoming genuinely curious about them:
- What are they experiencing?
- Where is it coming from?
- What does it mean for them?
That shift from self-monitoring to curiosity is where coaching begins.
When you notice a cluster of changes from someone’s baseline, you don’t need to interpret it. Simply use it as an opening. Ask a neutral, open-ended question. Keep them talking. Let the emotional state they’re in – whatever it is and whatever caused it – become information you’re gathering, rather than a verdict.
You don’t have to dig for the reason or try to “out” them in the moment for experiencing an emotion they’re not ready to share. It’s simply another data point. Be gentle and curious. Don’t force the conversation. Sometimes people need time to process what they’re feeling before they’re able to articulate or share their experience.
The emotion isn’t about you. Or at least you don’t know that yet. And that uncertainty, once you’re willing to sit with it, isn’t a weakness. It’s the beginning of a real conversation.
This article draws on the work of Dr. Paul Ekman, the Emotional Intelligence Academy’s partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, and former FBI investigator Joe Navarro.
Key Takeaways:
- A single nonverbal cue tells you almost nothing. Crossed arms, avoided eye contact, or a flushed face can mean a dozen different things — look for a cluster of changes, not one isolated signal.
- The trigger and the reason are not the same thing. Emotions like anger or sadness have universal triggers, but the specific reason behind someone’s reaction in the moment is almost never obvious.
- Baseline matters more than the cue itself. Knowing someone’s normal behaviour helps you notice meaningful deviations — it doesn’t tell you what those deviations mean.
- A variation from baseline is an invitation to ask, not a conclusion to jump to. Treat it as an opening for a neutral, curious question rather than a verdict.
- Curiosity is where coaching begins. Shift your attention from monitoring yourself through someone’s reaction to genuinely wondering what they’re experiencing and why.
Meet our expert: Monique Kavelaars, Director, Assessments & Team Coaching
Monique Kavelaars brings more than 15 years of experience helping high-performing teams thrive — first in elite sport and now in corporate environments. An Olympian and Canadian National Team épée fencer, she competed at the Olympic Games, World Championships, and Pan Am Games. As Third Factor’s Director of Assessments and Team Coaching, Monique designs and facilitates leadership programs and workshops for global organizations, bringing an energizing, practical approach that helps teams build trust, communicate, and align around shared goals.
“I know there’s a lot going on in people’s lives that I don’t see: personal challenges, cultural background, identity. How do I make space for that without making it awkward or overstepping?”
When I first moved to Sweden after four years in Paris, I went from feeling fluent and capable to being a complete beginner again. There I was, sitting in a classroom for foreigners learning Swedish, fumbling through sentences a five-year-old could manage.
The room was full of strangers. We had nothing in common. A dentist. Engineers. People who’d come for love, for work or for school. A few had no choice but to leave home. But inside that room, we were all beginners.
That shared confusion did something: we became friends. A man from Ghana and I bonded over feeling completely lost. And because of that shared experience, it got easier for us to speak Swedish badly out loud. We took more risks with the language because neither of us feared looking foolish in front of the other.
When I first walked into that classroom, I didn’t know anyone’s story. What I saw was a room of adults mangling their introductions. What was actually there were decades of careers, entire identities – all set aside to start over for reasons I’d never have guessed sitting next to them.
That’s the part of coaching nobody tells you about. At work, what you see in others is only a small slice of their day. What’s actually shaping it is usually invisible.
So how do you make space for all of that without making it awkward or overstepping? The answer isn’t to automatically know everyone’s full story. It’s to coach as if there’s always more beneath the surface that you can’t see. Here’s how to get started:
01. Get Curious About the Iceberg
You only ever see the tip. Don’t fill in the rest with guesses.
I saw this most clearly when I was fencing at the World Cup. I was competing alongside a teammate from Algeria.
It was Ramadan. She was fasting. That meant she had to be up before dawn to eat enough to carry her through the day – which could stretch to 12 hours if her results were good enough to keep her in the competition longer.
To most of the room, she just looked a little quieter than usual and slower to warm up. A few competitors assumed she was having an off day. Our coach knew better, and so did the rest of us on her team. So we adjusted around her without making it a production: quieter check-ins, no unnecessary chatter before her matches, and extra time built into her breaks.
Nobody outside our circle saw any of that. They just saw the tip of it, a fencer who seemed a little off. The rest – the fasting, the fatigue, the discipline it took to compete at that level while managing both – was entirely beneath the surface.
This shows up in offices, too. If someone’s gone quieter lately, replies slower, seems distracted, don’t start with what you think is going on. (“You’re upset you didn’t get to lead the project.”)
Ask something genuinely open instead: “I’ve noticed you’re a bit quieter lately. How are things landing for you this week?” You won’t get the full picture on the first question. But if you stay curious, you’ll be able to keep the conversation going until you actually start to understand what’s happening.
02. Build Real Psychological Safety
Safety isn’t niceness. It isn’t a shield from accountability. It’s a pattern people can predict.
The Swedish classroom built safety in the way that any team environment can. People admitted what they didn’t know without it costing them. (None of us knew the language, after all.) That’s what Harvard leadership professor Amy Edmondson calls psychological safety. It’s the belief that speaking up won’t get you punished or humiliated.
Safety isn’t announced; it’s demonstrated. Naming your own mistake plainly (“I misjudged the timeline on the client deliverable last week. I should have flagged it two days earlier.”) teaches people more than any values deck. They calibrate their own willingness to take risks based on what leaders do, not what’s written on a wall.
03. Balance Support and Accountability
Curiosity isn’t softness. It’s finding out what someone needs and still holding the line.
Safety and standards aren’t a trade-off. They work as a pair. Without both, you get either comfort or anxiety, not real performance.
When someone’s struggling to hit a deadline, keep the standard and the support as two separate moves. First, state the standard plainly: “This needs to ship Friday.” Then ask a separate question: “What would help you get there? More time, fewer meetings or something else?” Keeping those distinct means the bar doesn’t move; the support around it does. That’s what stops flexibility from quietly becoming a lowered standard.
Nobody lowered the bar for my teammate at that World Cup. The standard never changed. What changed was the support around her, which allowed her to meet the standard.
The iceberg doesn’t disappear because you ignore it either. It just keeps shaping what you see without you knowing why.
Stay curious. Build safety as a pattern, not a policy. Coaching across differences isn’t about lowering standards. It’s about coaching the person who’s on your team.
Key Takeaways:
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What you see is the tip of the iceberg. Ask open questions that leave room for an answer you didn’t expect, instead of filling gaps with assumptions.
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Safety is shown, not announced. Naming your own mistakes plainly teaches people more than any policy on the wall.
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Keep the standard and the support separate. Set the bar clearly, then ask what would help your team member meet it. The bar doesn’t move. The support does.
Great leadership, especially when coaching others, does not always come naturally. The way you normally interact may feel comfortable, but it is not always what a person or situation needs. Sometimes an abnormal approach works best. That’s why strong leaders think carefully about how they show up in coaching conversations. Even a small change in approach can make a big difference in how well a message is received.
Take a few common situations. You might have someone on your team who lacks confidence. Anne, for example, is capable and thoughtful, but she often defers to more senior people. Your instinct might be to tell her to speak up. But that rarely works on its own.
A better approach is to help Anne recognize her value. Point out where her thinking is strong and create low-pressure opportunities for her to present her ideas. In this case, you are not building competence; you are building confidence. That requires a different kind of conversation.
Or consider a high performer like Martin, who keeps getting in his own way because of poor interpersonal skills. You may need to challenge his assumptions about what is acceptable behaviour.
That can be uncomfortable, especially if you dislike confrontation or have already formed a negative opinion about his intentions. How will your coaching conversation style help Martin receive the message while also feeling your support?
Why Coaching Conversation Styles Matter
We all have a “go-to” interpersonal style, often shaped by what has worked for us in the past. But effective leaders are flexible. They adjust their approach based on the person in front of them and what they are trying to achieve.
At the centre of that flexibility are conversations. As leadership expert Susan Scott says, “The conversation is the relationship.” If you want stronger relationships and better performance, you need to be more intentional about how you have conversations.
Below is a useful assessment tool to help you reflect on conversations you may want to have with a person or a team. The tool looks at five behavioural dimensions.
Five Conversational Behaviours to Track
- Control: Do you tend to take control of the conversation or give control to the other person? Are you more likely to do most of the talking and give direction? Or do you prefer the other person to explain their thinking and share ideas?
- Pace: Do you tend to speed things up or slow things down? You may want a quick decision and have little interest in exploring feelings or options. Or you may prefer to discuss ideas carefully and think through possible problems before making a decision.
- Extroverted or Introverted: Are you energized by talking things through with others? Or do you prefer to think about an issue on your own before discussing it?
- Intellectual Expression: Do you quickly share your opinions and ideas? Or do you usually hold back your thoughts and listen first?
- Emotional Expression: Are you more likely to challenge ideas, criticize and say no? Or do you naturally express support, recognition and optimism?
Adjust Your Natural Coaching Conversation Style
The tool below can help you adjust your conversational style for different situations.*
STEP 1: Assess Your Natural Style
- First, think about your usual tendencies. Using the tool below, assess your natural style.
- Where do you normally fall on each scale when speaking with staff or team members?
STEP 2: Consider The Situation
- Now think about a specific leadership or coaching conversation. It could be one you are preparing for or one you had recently.
- Think about your goals, the timeline and the person involved. What style would increase your insight into this person’s behaviour and help them succeed?
- For example, if you want input and ideas from others, you may need to give up some control. You might ask open-ended questions, slow the conversation down and listen more carefully.
- On the other hand, if a quick decision is needed and you are dealing with someone who likes to overanalyze every possible problem, you may need to create urgency. In that case, you might take more control, make decisions faster, give direction and express optimism.
- The right style depends on what the person needs to improve and succeed. Go through the scales again choosing the ‘This situation’ tab. Drag the dot to the numbers that best reflect the coaching conversation style you think will produce the best outcome for this person in this situation
STEP 3: Compare And Adjust
- Once you have done that hit the ‘Compare’ tab to see where there may be gaps between your natural tendencies and what you believe would be the best approach for coaching this person in this situation.
Think About Your Impact
As a coach, it is important to think about both your impact and your goals for the person you are coaching. It helps to ask yourself what you want the other person to gain from the conversation. Keep in mind that your natural tendencies often become stronger during important or stressful conversations. Before a high-stakes discussion, especially one connected to a person’s development, take time to reflect on your style using the scales above.
You may decide to adjust your approach depending on your goal. Are you trying to teach a new skill? Mentor someone through office politics? Gain insight by listening and asking questions? Or confront a behaviour that needs to change?
Different goals require different coaching conversation styles.
Learning From Difficult Conversations
In our workshops, we ask participants to think about a conversation that did not go well. We ask them to score themselves on each scale based on what happened in that conversation and how they behaved, and then reflect on what they might do differently if they had another chance.
One participant chose a conversation that had quickly gone off track. The employee had failed to share important information that would have changed the project timeline. The employee was talented but junior, introverted, and not naturally expressive. They rarely shared ideas unless someone asked them directly. In this case, no one asked.
What would have been the best coaching style for this employee? What numbers would you circle on the scales? And how closely would that approach match your natural style?
The supervisor’s normal style was high control, fast-paced, highly expressive and somewhat critical, with lower levels of positive reinforcement.
The supervisor entered the conversation feeling frustrated and reactive. His goal, he believed, was to understand why the employee remained silent and to coach them on the importance of sharing information and ideas with teammates, even when not asked. Those were important coaching goals.
Unfortunately, because he was upset, the manager became highly controlling, highly expressive and highly critical during the discussion.
Later, he realized he had handled the conversation poorly. Given this employee’s profile – talented, junior, introverted, and non-expressive – the manager needed to dial down his need for control, slow the conversation down, and build the employee’s self-awareness by asking clarifying questions.
He should also have listened non-judgmentally, asked how he could help in the future, and worked on strategies for the employee to use when feeling this kind of pressure in a more senior group. The goal: help the employee see the value in speaking up for themselves and for the team. It was a great opportunity to teach leadership skills, recognize the knowledge the employee held, and build confidence.
When you are working with a valuable employee over the long term, trust and respect matter. Difficult moments are often when those qualities are tested most.
It helps to identify small, specific adjustments that can improve your effectiveness as a leader and coach while still getting the job done. Often, this requires conscious effort and clear focus during the conversation. This conversational scale can be a great assist in planning the conversation.
Good conversations are the vehicle through which good coaching travels.
Key Takeaways:
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Your default style isn’t always the right style. Comfort isn’t the goal; what the person or situation needs is.
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Confidence and competence are built differently. A team member who lacks confidence doesn’t need to be told to speak up. They need low-pressure chances to be seen.
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Five dimensions shape every coaching conversation: control, pace, energy, expression, and tone. Naming where you sit, and where the moment calls for you to sit, is what makes a conversation intentional.
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Your natural style gets stronger under pressure, not weaker. It’s easy to default to your natual style in the exact moment that calls for the opposite.
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The conversation is the relationship. Small, deliberate adjustments, not big gestures, build the trust that difficult moments test.
*Credit to Robin Pratt for the development of this tool drawn from the work of Sport Psychologist Robert Neidifer; Test for Attentional and Interpersonal Style Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, once described the evolution of organizational change in a visceral way that has stayed with me. He said change used to feel like crossing a river. You stepped off solid ground, navigated the current, and eventually reached stable ground on the other side.
Today, it feels more like crossing an ocean. The waves come from every direction. Just as you get past one, another wallops you. Then another. Forget about the shoreline. There’s none in sight.
That image captures what leaders are experiencing now. We are not managing one big disruption, then going back to normal. We are operating inside a permanent state of flux. We’re managing today’s business while trying to build tomorrow’s amid unprecedented economic, technological and societal changes.
Over three decades of working in high-performance environments, I have learned that while we cannot control the waves, we can control how we respond to them. Three practices can make a meaningful difference.
01.
Start With Mindset. Then Respond.
03.
Create A Culture Of Feedback.
01. Start With Mindset. Then Respond.
Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman observed something deeply human about surprise. When unexpected events occur, people tend to believe the lesson is that they now know what to do in similar circumstances in the future. We assume the mistake was a lack of information or insight.
But this is the wrong conclusion. The real lesson is that the future is inherently surprising. No matter how prepared we are, some events will catch us off guard.
That realization changes everything. When leaders shift from asking, “How did we miss this?” to saying, “Of course something unexpected happened,” they build resilience in their teams. They create space for response instead of reaction.
“Over three decades of working in high-performance environments, I have learned that while we cannot control the waves, we can control how we respond to them.”
Jocko Willink, a former U.S. Navy SEAL commander, trains his teams to respond to setbacks with a single word: “Good.” If a mission is delayed, good — there is more time to prepare. If resources are reduced, good — it forces simplification. “Good” is not meant to dismiss difficulty. It is meant to redirect energy toward action.
Serial entrepreneur Brad Jacobs learned a similar lesson in his twenties. When he once presented his mentor, Ludwig Jesselson, with a long list of business problems, Jesselson responded bluntly: “If you want to succeed in business, you must get used to problems. That is what business is all about: solving problems.” Jacobs would later say that this advice shaped every leadership team he built.
Still, mindset alone is not enough. Letting go of an outcome people were deeply invested in is not a purely intellectual act. It is emotional. Frustration, disappointment and fear surface quickly when plans unravel.
That is why elite performers rely on ritual.
Defensive backs in the NFL sometimes use a mental “20-second clock” to feel the impact of a play and then release it. NHL star Connor McDavid, after a difficult shift, removes his helmet, runs his fingers through his hair once, and resets. Performance psychologist Jim Loehr found that elite tennis players use the 25 seconds between points to perform deliberate physical and mental routines that lower their heart rates and restore focus.
In business, the ritual will look different. But leaders who help their teams develop a deliberate reset — a clear transition from what just happened to what happens next — build resilience into their culture.
02. Prevent Isolation
When people struggle with change, they rarely announce it. More often, they withdraw.
They stop asking questions. They avoid drawing attention to what they do not yet understand. They tell themselves they will figure it out before asking for help.
Competent adults do not like feeling incompetent. When change triggers that feeling, the instinct is to work harder in private rather than admit their struggles in public.
Yet isolation slows learning. People move up learning curves faster when they receive feedback, hear about best practices and learn what to avoid. Progress accelerates when difficulties are shared.
A leader’s role, then, is not to rescue but to interrupt the silence.
When someone says, “I haven’t really started yet — there’s so much to learn,” the instinct may be to give them a pep talk. A better move is to ask, “Where could you start?”
That question helps identify a small, manageable step the individual could take. By breaking the overwhelming into bite-sized bits, something important will start to happen. Progress will become visible, and confidence will follow.
And confidence changes how people experience change itself.
03. Create A Culture Of Feedback
In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle depicts one of the most remarkable examples of rapid team problem solving under pressure.
On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 suffered a catastrophic loss of hydraulic control over Iowa. The odds of that failure were estimated at one in a billion. There was no checklist for it. No training scenario had prepared the crew.
The plane’s pilot, Captain Al Haynes, did something critical in that moment. He did not attempt to solve the problem on his own. First, he accepted help from an off-duty flight instructor who was a passenger. Then he asked his crew, “Does anyone have any ideas?”
What followed was a real-time exchange of up to 60 pieces of information a minute among the crew – what was working, what was not, what they needed next – solving problem after problem to fly their dying aircraft to an airfield where they had a chance. Together, they crash-landed the aircraft in Sioux City. Of the plane’s 285 passengers, 185 survived. The accident could have been far worse if not for the crew’s actions.
Later, experienced test pilots attempted to replicate the landing in simulators. None succeeded. The difference in the landing was not skill alone. It was communication. The crew members who survived weren’t more skilled than the test pilots. They had better information because they asked for it, shared it quickly with one another and integrated it into their operations.
“The challenges organizations face are too complex and too fast-moving for any one person to solve alone.”
For leaders today, the lesson is clear. The familiar phrase, “Do not bring me problems; bring me solutions,” is largely obsolete. The challenges organizations face are too complex and too fast-moving for any one person to solve alone.
The capability you need is already inside your team, your colleagues, your organization. As a leader, it’s your job to unlock it. Build a team where giving and receiving feedback is simply part of how work gets done – where people are comfortable bringing problems forward, knowing the group will help solve them.
There’s only one certainty
We can be certain of one thing: the waves are not stopping. The shore will not always be close. Sometime over the next several months, something none of us anticipated will test our well-laid plans again.
The question is not whether uncertainty will appear. It is whether we treat it as a temporary interruption or as the environment itself.
Leadership in this era isn’t about having a better crystal ball. It’s about building habits that hold when predictions fail – the habit of coaching your team to reset quickly; helping your people to reach out instead of retreating; and building a culture where feedback and open idea exchange are the norm, not the exception.
These practices do not eliminate uncertainty. But they change how we move through it. And sometimes that’s enough to keep us moving forward in turbulent seas.
Key Takeaways:
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Expect the unexpected. The lesson of surprise isn’t that we missed something. It’s that the future will always contain surprises. Build teams that respond quickly instead of searching for blame.
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Shift to response mode. When plans break down, redirect attention to the next action. Progress starts the moment the team moves from reaction to response.
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Reset quickly. Elite performers use small rituals to move on from mistakes. Leaders can help teams create deliberate resets that refocus attention on what happens next.
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Interrupt isolation. Change often causes people to withdraw. Leaders accelerate learning by encouraging small starting points and open conversation.
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Make feedback normal. Complex challenges require shared intelligence. Teams perform best when problems and ideas move quickly between people.
When people picture elite sport, they usually imagine the glory: the medals, the anthem, the moment everything comes together. What they don’t often see is the psychological turbulence underneath those performances – the doubt, fear, shame, and self-recrimination that show up when things don’t go according to plan.
Years ago, Third Factor founder Peter Jensen was working with a Canadian national team that was, by all measures, one of the best in the world. They were perennial contenders, a program with history and swagger. And yet, in the first days of a world championship, everything came undone. They lost to their arch-rivals badly, and the shock was devastating.
We’re always navigating the gap between what is and what ought to be. That gap hurts. But the hurt is meaningful. And if we can help people explore that meaning, we unlock the very thing that allows them to grow.
By the next morning, the athletes stood in the hotel lobby looking hollowed-out. Angry. Embarrassed. Anxious. They knew the tournament was short. They knew another loss could knock them out. And they knew they were at risk of spiraling.
This is the territory we work in every day – not just in sport, but in business, education, and leadership. People experiencing disappointment, failure, or the deep discomfort of not living up to their own expectations. As psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski wrote, we’re always navigating the gap between what is and what ought to be. That gap hurts. But the hurt is meaningful. And if we can help people explore that meaning, we unlock the very thing that allows them to grow.
What follows is how Peter helped that team turn a moment of psychological crisis into the fuel that carried them to a gold medal, not despite their negative emotions, but because of them.
01.
Acknowledge the pain and help people observe it
02.
Move toward compassion, not criticism
03.
Help them find the meaning inside the pain
1. Acknowledge the pain and help people observe it
When Peter asked the players how they were feeling that morning, they didn’t hold back: awful, embarrassed, sad, angry. A typical response might have been reassurance: You’ll be fine, shake it off, don’t worry about it. But reassurance rarely helps; it often makes people feel more alone in their emotions. Instead, Peter simply said: “Yeah. You look awful.”
It may sound blunt, but it wasn’t judgmental. It was observational. It told the players: I see you. What you’re feeling makes sense. Let’s look at it together.
When the strength coach announced they’d be doing lunges at practice, Peter asked: “How are you going to look doing lunges? How will your teammates know you’re back?”
These were reflective questions not about the loss, but about how they were showing up in response to it. They invited the players to step outside themselves and observe what was happening internally.
This is the first job of a coach in hard moments: Help people dis-identify from the emotion without dismissing it and let them see the feeling rather than become the feeling.
2. Move toward compassion, not criticism
Negative emotions become destructive not because they exist, but because we weaponize them against ourselves. We interpret them as proof: I’m not good enough. I’ll never perform. I don’t belong here. A coach must interrupt that spiral.
Peter did this in an unexpected way. That morning, a staff member had told a long, mundane story about buying a T-shirt on sale. The players had zero patience for it. Peter asked the staff member to tell the story again to the entire team. Afterwards, he asked: “Why did he buy that T-shirt?”. Eventually someone answered: “Because he got a good deal.”
Peter replied: “Right. He wasn’t going to overpay. He knows what shirts are worth. You guys are overpaying right now.”
No judgment. Just compassion and perspective. The point was simple: Don’t pay more than the moment is worth.
You lost a game. It hurts. But don’t add interest by beating yourselves up. A coach helps people see the whole truth, not the narrow, distorted version they’re stuck inside.
3. Help them find the meaning inside the pain
That afternoon, the team played a weaker opponent and won only 2–0. Instead of relief, they felt further proof that they were failing. So Peter gathered them and asked each player to share what it meant to represent their country. What surfaced were stories of parents driving endless hours to practices, communities fundraising to support them, comebacks from injury, and dreams that had taken years to build. It was emotional. And it was clarifying.
The problem wasn’t that they had lost a game. The problem was that they weren’t living up to what the opportunity meant to them. And when people reconnect with meaning, they reconnect with agency. They can choose how to move forward. From that point on, Peter reinforced that meaning daily:
At practice: “An American player woke up today preparing to face you in the gold medal game. How are you preparing?”
In the weight room: “Can you improve 1% today? What will you do to show you’re getting better?”
By naming their pain and understanding its purpose the team turned the emotional energy inward, toward growth instead of self-attack. They never lost another game. They won the gold medal.
When negative feelings become a weapon
Negative emotions are not the problem. What hurts performance is when people interpret those emotions as evidence of inadequacy: “I failed, therefore I’m a failure.”
This is the voice of the critic – a destructive internal narrator that convinces us we’re incapable of growth or unworthy of success. A coach’s role is to challenge that voice by asking better questions:
- What is this feeling signaling?
- What is the conflict between what is and what ought to be?
- And what does this moment make possible?
That’s how people reclaim their will – what we call the third factor: the inner capacity to direct your own development.
The takeaway for leaders and coaches
Whether you’re leading a national team or a project team, the principles are the same:
- Acknowledge negative feelings without trying to eliminate them.
- Help people step back and observe their internal state.
- Guide them toward understanding what the discomfort is pointing to.
When we do this, people stop treating hard moments as evidence of failure and start treating them as invitations to rise.
Crisis becomes a catalyst. Pain becomes fuel. And performance becomes possible.
While uncertainty and change present an array of challenges for today’s leaders, a less obvious one is the need to coach for confidence.
Confidence – the inner belief by an individual in their capacity to successfully meet the demands of a performance situation – is an ephemeral quality or state of mind. It’s difficult to observe, quantify or measure, and yet it’s an undeniable performance enabler. When people are confident, they can more fully express their capabilities, and are more willing to make decisions, innovate and take calculated risks.
When the New Zealand men’s National Curling Team undertook a largely self-funded move to Calgary, Alberta to enhance their preparation for the 2024 World Championships, they encountered a frustrating obstacle: rental housing was scarce and expensive. Cassandra Murray, a Retirement Living Consultant with Chartwell, one of Canada’s largest owner-operators of retirement residences, saw their appeal for help on social media and reached out with an offer: the team could stay at the Chartwell Colonel Belcher retirement village during their 2-3 month stay.
Now, having a group of young athletes sharing a living space with a group of retirement residents is not without its risks, but Cassandra saw an opportunity that she was confident could provide huge benefits for all involved. The outcome was not only a heartwarming story, but a win for the team, the residents, the staff and the organization.
Three-quarters of the New Zealand men’s national curling team in 2023.
And that’s the key thing. When we are truly confident, we think win-win. When we lose confidence, we play not-to-lose.
What follows are two practical approaches that we have seen effective leaders use to support the confidence of their people as they navigate change:
01.
Clarify strengths AND how to apply them in the new environment.
02.
Focus on progress, not perfection.
Clarify strengths AND how to apply them in the new environment
During times of significant change, people sometimes lose sight of their strengths or are unsure of how to apply them in new circumstances. As a leader, you may not have all the answers about how things will operate in the future, but you can help your team regain a sense of direction by reconnecting them with their core strengths and how to leverage them in a new environment.
Start by revisiting familiar ground. Encourage your team members to reflect on their past successes and identify the strengths that contributed to those achievements. Ask them specific questions that prompt introspection:
- Where have you been most successful in your current role?
- What skills or abilities helped you achieve those outcomes?
By guiding them through this process, you help them rebuild a foundation of confidence based on what they already know about themselves.
Once individuals have reconnected with their strengths, the conversation should then shift to the new environment. Discuss how their roles are changing, what challenges they anticipate, and what aspects of the new setup feel most daunting. From there, work together to identify ways their existing strengths can be applied to these new challenges. This process of translation—helping individuals see how their strengths remain relevant—creates a bridge between the past and the future.
Focus on progress, not perfection
The second coaching tool you can apply is to help people see progress. A proven track record of accomplishments is a huge source of confidence to rebut doubts, fears and voice of your inner critic. One of the challenges we face when we go through significant change is that we lose that track record. We’ve been successful in the environment and conditions of the past – but have a blank slate moving forward. And so, building a new track record becomes vital.
Start by creating a roadmap that identifies where they want to be six months or a year down the road, and then add-in markers of progress along the way. When our founder, Dr. Peter Jensen, works with a team one of the first things he does is create a visual staircase in which the bottom is the current moment, the top is the target (e.g., “Make the Paralympic team” or “win an Olympic Medal”) and the individual stairs are the key milestones. These can be skill-building initiatives, for example holding week-long winter training camp, or important accomplishments, such as finishing in the top 2 at a qualifying tournament.
It is remarkable how often high performers take for granted how much they know and have learned along the way. The goal for the coach is to highlight that growth and make it visible to the performer.
Once the staircase has been created, get them moving forward with a singular focus on the next step. The smaller the better. When a technical expert with a large US wealth management firm described how she got seasoned investment advisors to be comfortable using Zoom technology for client meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic, she replied “one meeting per day”. She scheduled a daily 15-minute zoom meeting with some of her veteran advisors to get them comfortable being onscreen and to allow them to play around with the technology in a safe, non-judgmental environment.
The value in having the overall framework is twofold. First, it helps the individuals embrace a learning mindset. Peter often reminds teams that “we’re going back to school” and that the key objectives are learning, practice, and improvement – all of which are under our control.
Second, having the roadmap allows the coach to periodically help the individuals and team step back and connect with the progress they have made. This can be particularly useful during a tough slog when it feels like nothing is getting done, or when a set-back occurs to help the team get past the disappointment by reminding them of how much has already been accomplished. It is remarkable how often high performers take for granted how much they know and have learned along the way. The goal for the coach is to highlight that growth and make it visible to the performer.
In Summary
Confidence is essential to sustaining courage through change, but confidence is ephemeral – and building it can be tricky: coaching for confidence requires empathy and a willingness to meet people where they are. With a twin focus on helping people see how their strengths can be applied in a new environment, and helping them connect with progress and small wins as they adapt, you can help them remain the bold, adaptable go-getters you know them to be.
Coaching with Courage: The Tough Conversations
Watching Olympic coaches operate, as we have for 40 years, makes one thing very clear: the courage to have a direct conversation when needed is vital to helping someone reach their potential.
This is why we are pleased to share that our popular
Managing Challenging Conversations program is now available in webinar and live keynote formats.
Coaching with Courage: The Tough Conversations is a one-hour tour of the communication skills leaders need to tackle their toughest coaching conversations with confidence. Be among the first to experience this new session in a special preview event with Third Factor Principal Trainer
Garry Watanabe on Thursday, March 6, 2025.
Drawing on lessons from our 40 years of work with world-class coaches, we’ll explore how to:
- Build the courage and mindset to initiate a direct conversation
- Structure a clear opening statement that gets tough coaching conversations off on the right foot
- Work through resistance and defensiveness using strategies to diffuse tension
- Manage your own reactivity to stay composed under pressure
Whether you are an individual looking for help with your own challenging conversations, or a leader tasked with creating a culture of courage and continuous improvement within your organization - you’ll leave armed with the inspiration and practical tools to get started.
Coaching with Courage: The Tough Conversations
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About the presenter:
Garry Watanabe is an expert on coaching and performance psychology with a wealth of experience working under the peak of pressure in both business and sport. As Principal Trainer for Third Factor, Garry has helped thousands of leaders apply the principles of coaching, collaboration and resilience in their professional and personal lives. His corporate clients include Deloitte, Toyota, RBC and the USGA.
It’s 2:15 pm, and a calendar notification pops up: “Check-in with Leo.” My heart immediately starts to beat faster. Leo is one of my top performers. He delivers great results and is seen as a future leader in the organization. But there’s a problem: Leo has a habit of shutting down his peers in meetings – dismissing ideas he thinks are weak and pushing back aggressively when challenged.
I’ve tried to address the issue, but it always goes sideways – tempers flare, and we both leave frustrated without resolving anything. I’ve been walking on eggshells for the past two weeks, but I can’t avoid this conversation any longer. Am I even capable of getting through to him? What if I lose my cool in the process? Will he still respect me afterwards? It’s 2:30 pm. Time to brace for impact.
Confronting is a Coaching Conversation
Confronting is a coaching conversation. It doesn’t fit neatly with the popular notion that coaching is just about asking good questions, but watching Olympic coaches operate, as we have for 30 years, makes one thing very clear: having the courage to have a direct conversation when needed is vital to helping someone reach their highest potential. In fact, avoiding a difficult conversation about something that’s preventing a person’s success is the opposite of good coaching.
That’s why confronting is one of the four core communication skills in our 3×4 Coaching model, and one that builds on the other three communication skills – questioning, listening, and feedback. It’s not the first or most frequent approach that coaches reach for, but it’s an important part of the overall coaching skill set. Knowing that you can navigate complex, high-stakes conversations is part of what underpins your confidence as a leader.
Choose Your Challenge
Having a confronting conversation with Leo is going to be challenging because I don’t want to damage our relationship. It doesn’t take tremendous courage to call up the airline after my flight was delayed and demand a refund because I only care about getting compensated, not my relationship with the customer service representative. But Leo is one of the strongest performers on my team and I want to have a good relationship after this conversation.
It’s also going to be challenging because Leo has been resisting making this change and now it’s getting in the way of his success. This isn’t just a straightforward piece of feedback anymore. There are real stakes. If Leo’s behaviour continues, we could end up in the realm of more formal performance management channels.
“When done effectively, these conversations can resolve the issue at hand, build the other person’s commitment to making progress, and strengthen the relationship.”
It’s easy to see the threats in these conversations but there are also potential benefits. When done effectively, these conversations can resolve the issue at hand, build the other person’s commitment to making progress, and strengthen the relationship if they see you as someone who holds them to a high standard yet cares about them and respects them.
So, I choose my challenge: I can avoid the conversation and deal with the fallout – Leo’s behaviour continues, our relationship becomes strained as my frustration seeps out, and I lose credibility with other people who see me allowing this behaviour to continue.
Or I can face the discomfort of addressing the issue head-on and put my coaching skills to the test.
Connection Before Correction
Once I decide to address the issue, how do I have this conversation in a way that not only protects our relationship but gets Leo committed to making a change? It starts before I even enter the conversation.
Often, we fall into the trap of thinking that we need to emotionally distance ourselves from the other person in order to be “tough” or objective. But it’s our relationship with the other person that’s the foundation for coaching them. I cannot coach Leo if I lose my connection to him.
So rather than distancing myself, I start by strengthening my connection to Leo. I put myself in his shoes and explore the most generous, plausible story I can come up with for why he might be acting this way. Maybe he’s under a lot of pressure that is leaving him with little patience. Maybe I’m not aware of some underlying tension with his teammates. Or maybe Leo is so enthusiastic about his ideas that he doesn’t realize he’s shutting down other people. I choose the story that most strengthens my connection to Leo because it puts me in a mindset to engage in this conversation in a direct but caring way.
I also need to get clear on the specific change I want to see – not all the ripple effects of Leo’s dismissive behaviour, or the fact that I’m also irritated because he was late for our team meeting yesterday – but the specific gap between what I need to see from him and what I’m currently getting.
Open Strong
Next, I need to prepare my opening statement. This will set the tone and direction for the conversation. Without carefully crafting and practicing my opening, things can go sideways quickly.
I could fall into the trap of starting with a sneak attack, “Well Leo, I guess you know why we’re having this conversation…”
Or I might unleash my pent-up frustration and anger, leaving Leo like a deer in the headlights trying to respond.
Or I might revert to the classic “feedback sandwich”, muddying my message and leaving Leo guessing at what I really mean.
An effective opening is short – less than 60 seconds – and clearly articulates the specific behaviour that needs to change, the impact of that behaviour, what’s at stake if it doesn’t change, and my desire to work together to reach a resolution.
“Leo, I want to talk to you about a pattern of dismissing input from your peers. For example, in yesterday’s meeting, Sarah raised a concern about the project timeline. You interrupted and said, ‘That’s not really an issue.’ I felt worried that you dismissed her question because I’ve noticed people hesitating to speak up in front of you. This can affect your ability to get the information needed to make good decisions and manage the concerns of staff. Advancing in this organization depends on your ability to build relationships and collaborate effectively. I haven’t been entirely clear on the importance of this, and that’s on me. I want to find a way to modify this behaviour. What are your thoughts?”
Drop Your Agenda
After delivering my opening, it would be great if Leo said, “got it boss, no problem.” But that’s not what typically happens. I’m likely to get resistance – anger, excuses, deflection, or awkward silence.
Counter-intuitively, that resistance is not something to fight against or try to “objection handle”; instead, I need to recognize that the path to a solution is through the resistance. So instead of defending my position, I drop my agenda and lean in to explore the resistance I’m getting from Leo.
Questioning and listening are the critical coaching skills at this stage of the conversation. Questions to deepen and clarify my understanding of his story: Can you say more about that? Could you give me an example? What is significant about that? And active listening to draw the person out and check for understanding: So, what you’re saying is…, Let me see if I have this right…
I stick with asking questions and listening until I can summarize what we call “the third story.” The third story represents all of what is true for me and what is true for Leo. It’s like I have a bucket, and I keep adding things into the bucket. I don’t take anything out and try to solve it yet. I just add things until we’ve collected all of what is true for both of us.
“So, to summarize, I need you to listen to the concerns and questions of your teammates and address them. It’s frustrating for you to have to consider other people’s concerns as you’ve already thought it all through. Further discussion is unnecessary, slows you down, and may interfere with you hitting your numbers. Do I have that right?”
I don’t necessarily have to agree with Leo’s perspective, but I need to get to a place where I understand him, where I can summarize his point of view in a way that he says, “yes, that’s it.” And if that’s not it, then I keep asking questions until we get to the core of the issue. It’s not until we reach that point that we can start problem solving.
It’s this final stage of the conversation that is often more comfortable and familiar – generating options and agreeing on a path forward. It’s best if most of the options come from Leo so that he owns how he wants to move forward but I can offer ideas as well. Together we can agree on a plan and next steps. Be sure to build in support and accountability. “What do you need from me to put this plan into action?” “Let’s schedule time to check-in and see how it’s going.”
Manage Yourself
Now, is it ever that easy? Of course not. While it’s helpful to have a map for these conversations, no matter how prepared we are, it never goes exactly how we expect. People are complicated and will almost always throw a wrench into the conversation that we never saw coming. Or they’ll do something that seems perfectly designed to get under our skin – raise their voice, roll their eyes, or say that one thing that touches our most sensitive nerve
And so, a big part of the discipline of these conversations is having a plan for how we will manage ourselves in the face of the triggers that could knock us off our game.
First, we need to be aware that we’re triggered in the first place. Often, we become our irritation, or our anger. Instead, we need to notice it by tuning into our internal signals – I might notice myself thinking “here we go again with the excuses,” or that my breathing has accelerated, or that I’m starting to feel impatient. These signals are like lights on your car’s dashboard. When the “check engine” light comes on, you don’t smash the dashboard – you check under the hood. The same goes for triggers in tough conversations. Get curious about what the signal is telling you and take corrective action to get yourself back on track before you respond.
If we don’t notice and manage our triggers, all sorts of unintended behaviours appear, and we can become the worst version of ourselves. Things start to escalate, or the other person withdraws, and we get further and further from a resolution.
The Courage to Coach When it Matters Most
Being effective in these conversations requires the very best of us. It takes self-awareness and being a big person. But the 3×4 Coaching model provides everything we need to succeed. We need to enter the conversation with a generous mindset and clarity on our objective. We deliver a clear opening statement to get the conversation off on the right foot and then drop our agenda to explore the other person’s perspective before we jump into problem solving.
It isn’t always comfortable, but the goal of coaching isn’t comfort. It’s about challenging someone to reach their highest potential. It requires the courage to speak up, the patience to wade through the discomfort, and the belief that the people you’re coaching are capable of more.
